Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Any feedback, suggestion, bug reports, problems....
olduser
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:33 pm

Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by olduser » Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:36 am

Sorry, almost forgot a very important thing.

Please check these flags, with the countries you mentioned :

SS:
Image

BL:
Image

AW:
Image


All those flags are freely available, and are a much better alternative to the current ones.

Mecki
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 7:53 pm

Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by Mecki » Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:54 pm

olduser wrote:Mecki, to be honest I don't know what you have tried to say, I only understood that you like light themes and prefer the default ones.
You seem to have gotten the wrong impression that I'm arguing against you, yet I'm totally on your side. In my first reply I was just answering a post from DaveG. He claimed that the reason for the flags looking dim or washed out could be caused by "my Firefox theme" and I just told him, that I am not using any theme other than the default one (theme refers to Firefox theme here, not Flagfox theme or the flags). And in the last sentence I said that I liked the "brighter, flat ones from the last version", last version means Flagfox 4, not Flagfox 5. I never said that I like the flags from Flagfox 5; the only reason for me posting in this forum is because I don't like them.

In my second reply I was just given an explanation for you asking whose color blind. The reason why some people may have confused Ireland and Italy is because their monitor is displaying colors rather poorly or has a bad brightness/contrast value and this can easily change the colors so that one flag appears like the other one or the other way round. You seem to be able to tell both flags easily apart, so am I, but we may both have high quality monitors and mine is also accurately calibrated.

Please see to my very first post in this thread (that was not a reply), it's the last post on the very first page, where I clearly say that the new flags are ugly, dull and washed out. So I'm trying to back up your point of view here, not to argue against it.

olduser
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:33 pm

Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by olduser » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:20 pm

Thanks Mecki, it's much more clear now.

This approach of Dave G to add dull flags just for some users with bad vision/monitors to be able to see them, seems to me like adding traning stabiliser wheels to each bicycle with NO OPT OUT, just because "some" people don't know how to ride a bicycle.

Mecki
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 7:53 pm

Border and Scaling Problem

Post by Mecki » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:38 pm

One reason for the flags looking so blurry is that they are downscaled on my Mac. The flag images (the PNG files) are all 16 pixels high, however the flags displayed in my address bar are only 14 pixels high, that means they get downscaled which causes them to be a bit blurry and structures being smeared. I guess that's because the whole flag is 16 pixels height, but 2 pixels on top and bottom are wasted for the border.

See screenshots:
Image
Image
Zoom in an image editor and count the pixels.

And this is my next issue. The border is not clearly visible as border. Visually it's merging with the flag and often this causes flags to appear "dirty" around the corner or in some cases causes other strange effects.

E.g. see this image:
Image

And last but not least: Icons, that change their aspect ratio, are an absolute no go in interface design. Icons change their content, but never their aspect ratio or size (not unless all the icons belonging together change their size e.g. because a whole icon bar changes its size). Yes, flags do have different aspect ratios, but until Flagfox mentioned that, I never even realized that in daily life (I may have seen that before, but I wasn't really fully aware of that fact and thus I never saw a problem that pretty much the rest of the world around Flagfox draws all flags with the same aspect ratio and nobody ever complained about that).

Don't tell me this flag looks correct at the bottom. It looks like there is a white line before there is a strange border that seems to be more present at the bottom than anywhere else (also to the left and right bottom corners). This all is just an optical illusion, caused by the fact that the last yellow line is a bit brighter than the rest, but anyway, the whole thing gets worse because of the border.

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DaveG
Flagfox Developer
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Location: Philadelphia, USA

Re: Border and Scaling Problem

Post by DaveG » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:15 pm

Mecki wrote:One reason for the flags looking so blurry is that they are downscaled on my Mac.
Wider flags are downscaled slightly so that all the flags take up a comperable area. If you'd like to turn this off, you can set the maxwidth to 45. They'll be big and prettier, but would make the icons vary in size dramatically. All of the ones that are slightly downscaled look decent at their shown size. (this is not what I'm saying about the German flag you mentioned; read below for that)
Mecki wrote:The border is not clearly visible as border. Visually it's merging with the flag and often this causes flags to appear "dirty" around the corner or in some cases causes other strange effects.
Yes, the border is not perfect. It's tweaked in my current development version a bit, namely to work better with different themes. I have people reporting issues that are clearly optical illusions, so I'm looking into ways to tweak that more.
Mecki wrote: Image
Yeah, it's not supposed to look like that. I don't know why you're getting a light bit on the bottom there. This does not look like this on other things I test, however I don't own a Mac to test in their default theme. The variations between the different themes on different OSes are a pain in the ass to deal with, and beta testers are surprisingly useless. I will be looking into a way to fix this today. Thank you very much for posting a specific screenshot with an issue. That's a hell of a lot better than calling them ugly.
Mecki wrote:Icons, that change their aspect ratio, are an absolute no go in interface design. Icons change their content, but never their aspect ratio or size (not unless all the icons belonging together change their size e.g. because a whole icon bar changes its size). Yes, flags do have different aspect ratios, but until Flagfox mentioned that, I never even realized that in daily life (I may have seen that before, but I wasn't really fully aware of that fact and thus I never saw a problem that pretty much the rest of the world around Flagfox draws all flags with the same aspect ratio and nobody ever complained about that).
The issue here is that aspect ratio makes it easier to tell the flags apart. For example, say a user isn't 100% familiar with the flags of Italy & Ireland or has issues seeing the colors. The different aspect ratios mean that you can tell them apart without even needing color. It's a notable usability improvement. Due to the location of the icon, no other content on screen should be getting shuffled around by AR differences, with the exception of people who have installed other addons that put their icons to the left of mine.

I'm aware that I've sort of damaged some people's world views. They just were not aware of what flags actually looked like. This, however, is not enough of a reason for me to go back to 1990's styled glossy 3d button effect icons with everything squished and the wrong colors.

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DaveG
Flagfox Developer
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Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by DaveG » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:38 pm

If I test showing the German flag in a compact theme to force it to get squished down a couple pixels, I don't see that light bit at all here under Linux or Windows. Are you using the current version of Firefox? Old versions had a crappy down-scaling algorithm. It's possible Mac is lagging behind in this regard, because even with the squishing of the German flag, that light bit shouldn't be there.

Mecki
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 7:53 pm

Re: Border and Scaling Problem

Post by Mecki » Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:30 pm

DaveG wrote:Wider flags are downscaled slightly so that all the flags take up a comperable area. If you'd like to turn this off, you can set the maxwidth to 45.
Did that and now the flag is not scaled down anymore, but honestly, nobody can tell me that this is looking good:
Image
It's one of the ugliest US flag icons I've ever seen in my entire life. Looks like a much bigger version that was just scaled down in Photoshop, causing some lines to blur and all the stars to blur with their background.

Here, try this image search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+flag ... %2Ciszh:16
8 out 10 flags on this page look much better IMHO.
DaveG wrote:
Mecki wrote:Image
Yeah, it's not supposed to look like that. I don't know why you're getting a light bit on the bottom there.
Even without scaling the border makes the yellow appear wider than the other colors:
Image
DaveG wrote:Are you using the current version of Firefox?
27.0.1

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DaveG
Flagfox Developer
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Location: Philadelphia, USA

Re: Border and Scaling Problem

Post by DaveG » Thu Mar 13, 2014 8:05 pm

Mecki wrote:Here, try this image search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+flag ... %2Ciszh:16
8 out 10 flags on this page look much better IMHO.
There's aproximately one decent looking one in there, and I'd still much prefer the current flag:
Image
Image

Of course you're not going to make out stars or count the stripes at this size. It, however, is not stylized nor is there anything broken.
Mecki wrote:
DaveG wrote:
Mecki wrote:Image
Yeah, it's not supposed to look like that. I don't know why you're getting a light bit on the bottom there.
Even without scaling the border makes the yellow appear wider than the other colors:
Image
Only if you stare at it too hard. It looks good to me.

What did you do to kill the scaling? Did maxing out the maxwidth pref cause it to not scale down and have that light bit on the bottom?

olduser
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:33 pm

Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by olduser » Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:51 pm

Well, my case is even worse, with a dark theme.


Image

Image


Image


Image

Image



Sadly it looks like you NEVER tested those new flags on any machine other than yours.

olduser
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:33 pm

Re: Flagfox 5: can I have the old flags back?

Post by olduser » Thu Mar 13, 2014 11:06 pm

Look what a beautiful set :

https://www.gosquared.com/resources/flag-icons/

And they have all those countries like South Sudan, which doesn't even have an own IP address space yet.

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