I'm not trying to pile on here and maybe it's not the dithering but the color saturation with the new scheme that causes the flickering? I've no problem displaying bright white on a dark gray background and scrolling without any flickering on either my Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ, or shitty 99$ ASUS 1920x1080 monitor but when I try to usae the new school theme the flickering on both is bothersome. The flicker is gone when I use the Old School theme however.

Just wanted to let you know this flickering isn't just on old shitty monitors but what is currently the top of the line gaming monitor.

However the part that flickers is the dithered portions. I can't help but wonder if some people can't see this effect no matter which screen is tested.

When there's a screenshot of something, like, let's just say, an earlier Mac screenshot, it'll do the dithering when scrolling up and down. To me, that's normal. To some, annoying. I changed the theme back to normal and it doesn't look too bad. One thing I wish is to have different themes without changing the site's code temporarily. It's also a bit wide, but I can live with that since posts themselves can make scrolling up and down a chore. Also glad to see the go to the top button back in action.

Another wish I have is when I open the your posts link, it'll show that there is a new post, but before, it had it where you can go to a certain page in the thread itself in case there were any new replies to the thread.

krcroft wrote on 2019-12-28, 06:21:

The ASCII banner in the email notifications is broken

Works fine for me now. By the way, it is not a true ASCII banner because it contains a non-ASCII symbol. The notification emails are encoded in UTF-8. You don't seem to be using a monospace font in your client. You should! There are browser plugins that fix Gmail's interface and make it monospace.

krcroft wrote on 2019-12-28, 06:21:

(I sure like ASCII banners though! Maybe make the message HTML and then monospace-font the banner).

HTML e-mail is a bad idea because it is non-standard, dangerous, and non-retro.

krcroft wrote on 2019-12-28, 06:21:

Also, the banner now consumes sufficient vertical space that gmail auto-collapses the remainder of the message (which contains the only valuable part: the link to the post). So now requires I click the three ellipses, expand the message, and then click the link.

I think it is mostly a problem with the Gmail client.

krcroft wrote on 2019-12-28, 06:21:

I think there's enough space to squeeze in a slightly tighter mono-banner, plus the link, and boil out the whitespace and "hello $username" stuff.

I agree about the wasted vertical space. Possible solutions are: remove the greeting line and the two empty lines around it; place the greeting line and banner on the same line:

Thanks ant_222; didn't realize there was a specific gmail-monofont extension; will check it out! Agree with all your other points.

Here's something for the Terminal computer enthusiasts: connecting to Vogons in the terminal (CLI) or IRC chats. But, those won't work out too well.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-08, 18:26:

Here's something for the Terminal computer enthusiasts: connecting to Vogons in the terminal (CLI) or IRC chats. But, those won't work out too well.

It's better to bridge with usenet.

I want to bridge to a retro-compatible website; we’ll see if I can pull it off.

VileR wrote on 2020-01-05, 12:32:

badmojo wrote on 2020-01-05, 02:19:

The background colour is pretty powerful but I prefer a good contrast over the all too common light grey text on a white background that has me bobbing my head to find a workable viewing angle.

Yup, the overall choice of bright-on-dark is very welcome; screens are not paper. OTOH there are objective (i.e. scientifically backed) reasons for avoiding very saturated colors as site backgrounds - some examples... not that the colors here are especially bad or anything, but toning it down slightly wouldn't hurt.

This is a long and boring post about scientific research so please feel free to skip it as it doesn’t have any meaningful bearing on your life probably, but I typed it out so I might as well send it anyway 😀

Before I start, please understand that it is not my intent to use this post to dismiss the concerns that people have. Rather, I only want to be clear about (1) how the site measures up to the standards in that article, and (2) the conclusions the article draws from the articles it cites.

From the examples given by UX Movement we can determine whether the VOGONS background meets their saturation criteria. The HSB saturation of the VOGONS background is 60%.

The “bad” background colours given have saturation values of 84%, 85%, 88%, 91%, 93%, and 100%.
The “good” non-pastel background have saturation values of 38%, 56%, 67%, and 70%.

So the VOGONS background falls within the range of “good” saturation, according to that article.

Now, about that research. The first study is on the use of colour to draw attention. The second and third studies are about arousal and valence (i.e. pleasantness) when using colours of different hues and intensities. The leading claim in the UX Movement article that “too much [saturation] in a large area overstimulates the retinas which can strain the eyes” remains an arbitrary and unsourced claim. None of the linked studies include any attempts to draw causal relationships between physiology and measured responses, with the exception of a short note in study three when discussing the paradoxical (lower) arousal scores during exposure to blue light.

How were the studies conducted, and what do they actually say?

The first study, DOI:10.1002/col.10214, looks at the effects of hue, saturation, and brightness on attention by showing participants a 9x7 grid of colour blocks on a CRT in an office-like environment using eight different coloured backgrounds, with one axis being H and the other being SB. The coloured backgrounds always have maximum saturation and brightness (SB100). They ask the participants “Which colour square attracts your attention the most on the background colour on the screen?”. The result was that colour squares at SB100 were considered the most attention-grabbing against the SB100 backgrounds 67% of the time. There was no statistically significant (P<.05) difference on hue for their main image set, but somehow they got highly significant (P=0.0001) results for 4 of 8 colours in their supplementary image set. I didn’t see any explanation for this in their analysis so this makes me slightly concerned there was some flaw in at least part of the study. Also, the raw data is unavailable for analysis (of course), so it’s not known to me what people were choosing when they weren’t choosing the SB100 colour squares.

The second study is not available without a fee so I am unable to review it. The abstract sounds very similar to the third study, though it seems to reach different conclusions. The abstract talks about self-reported arousal and valence measurements and their correlation to skin conductance response (SCR) magnitude. The abstract reports that only colour saturation, not hue or brightness, was associated with a measurable change in SCR, and that this change in SCR was correlated only with self-reported arousal ratings.

The third study, DOI:10.1007/s00426-017-0880-8, looks at the effect of colour on SCR, heart rate (HR), and self-reported feelings of arousal and valence. It tested pure red, green, blue, and grey. There were 3 levels of brightness for each group, and for the colours, 3 different levels of saturation. Participants were shown colours on a Eurolite LED light panel in a dark room. The results showed arousal was positively correlated with warm colours, high saturation, and high brightness. The results also showed valence was highest in medium saturation colour, then high saturation colour, then low saturation colour, which is inconsistent with other studies. There was no statistical significance in valence based on hue alone, but there was when combined with saturation and brightness, which is also inconsistent with other studies. HR showed no correlations between any of the chromatic stimuli and the one significant effect (greys) was <1bpm difference from baseline. There was a sex-selective correlation in the valence of greys (lower in women). The authors describe various limitations and inconsistencies in the discussion section and suggest further study is needed to determine anything beyond (1) “color has systemic effects on the emotional state of a person viewing the color” and (2) these effects are not solely due to any single property of colour (i.e. it’s not just saturation which causes arousal).

So any practical conclusion that I can see to take from these particular studies is pretty tentative. We can say (from study 1) that when you are displaying a background with maximum saturation and brightness, other colours with maximum saturation and brightness are the best default choice to draw attention away from the hideous background. We can say (from studies 2 and 3) that there is some psychological arousal response to colours, and that this arousal response is more intense with saturation—but that it is also observable with changes to hue and brightness in certain combinations.

The UX Movement article seems to oversimplify the details of the first study since hue was competing against a background which was maximally bright and saturated. Against different backgrounds, the impact of hue may become more significant, but the study doesn’t test that. The third study actually shows a higher correlation between hue and arousal than between brightness and arousal, so the UX Movement article’s claim that “brightness [has] a more significant impact” seems to actually be wrong here according to the data.

OK, that’s it from me for now. Always happy to continue to receive research from which I can draw better conclusions, or critiques if it seems like I have misinterpreted study data or results (I am not a data scientist).

bfcastello wrote on 2020-01-08, 18:51:

It's better to bridge with usenet.

I agree. And it has been done already e.g. by englishforums.com, but it was a loooong time ago, and they had to burn the bridge because of the difference of attitude between decetralised Usenet and a centralised forum. I still participate in the newsgroups with which those forums used to be connected.

I'm unable to sign in with Firefox mobile for android. It keeps saying something like 'The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again.' at login. I can sign in with chrome mobile though.

Snover wrote on 2020-01-08, 06:36:

swaaye wrote on 2020-01-05, 00:45:

Interesting thing here. The new site causes Android Firefox to crash/freeze on two tablets I use. The site won't even fully load. Seems related to the display driver or the OS perhaps. HP Pro Slate 8 (Qualcomm Adreno 330) and Teclast T8 (PowerVR GX6250). Works ok on my Pixel (Adreno 530).

Probably something Mozilla needs to fix. I submitted a crash report.

Yikes. So I think that I know what caused this (the attempt to avoid flickering by keeping dots at a fixed position on the screen with background-attachment), though I can’t tell you why it caused it, other than that maybe the browser was trying and failing to do GPU compositing to avoid expensive CPU repaints in those areas. Please let me know if it is OK now.

It seems to be working fine on the tablets as of Jan 6-7 when I tried again. Maybe you fixed it. 😀 I don't think any software updates happened.

If possible make a smaller font for "Fair use/fair dealing exception" under the attached photos. Thanks

I've noticed that the search functionality doesn't prioritize the most relevant results, but just sorts post that contain any keyword by date (descending), meaning that the most recent post comes first. So if you search using 4 keywords, a recent post containing only 1 keyword will appear at the top and the one matching all 4 will be lower. Also search operators like +, - or "" don't seem to work. The cog button at the search results page offers some options but relevance is not one.

What I dislike about reply notifications is that they force me to fire up the browser and actually log in to vogons.org in order merely to read the new post. It would be great if the full text were included in the notifications and they were not disabled until the next login. That way, we should be able to track discussions in our e-mail clients and log in only when we have something say.

Ant_222 wrote on 2020-01-09, 13:37:

What I dislike about reply notifications is that they force me to fire up the browser and actually log in to vogons.org in order merely to read the new post. It would be great if the full text were included in the notifications and they were not disabled until the next login. That way, we should be able to track discussions in our e-mail clients and log in only when we have something say.

That seems to be a highly personal taste topic. But in reality most forums work like this: a notice that a new reply came in with the link to the topic and no further notifications before you visit the forum. I *think* this also what people prefer over being spammed with mails. And that is how Vogons did before.

Might be a topic that could be polled (depending on what the forum software actually allows).

I prefer it the way it is done.

Whoa. I just tried the Old Skool color scheme and it made my monitor freak out! It flickers like crazy and I see visible, yet faint, horizontal lines. Acer R240HY LCD monitor and using Firefox. Pretty bog-standard monitor and I haven't experienced this with any other web pages before. Maybe just lucky?

Trying on a different PC with chrome and no flicker or lines. Also the colors are washed out on the flickery display, but closer to the actual old colors on the display that seem to work.

edit: hmmm. I have found another site (just one) that I see a flicker on (on the one monitor), and it is also a blue/grey/purple with an area of solid color. Must be something really specific.

I'd say a bug in the site somewhere. Haven't had that issue on any display I throw at it.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-08, 15:05:

I'm not trying to pile on here and maybe it's not the dithering but the color saturation with the new scheme that causes the flickering? I've no problem displaying bright white on a dark gray background and scrolling without any flickering on either my Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ, or shitty 99$ ASUS 1920x1080 monitor but when I try to usae the new school theme the flickering on both is bothersome. The flicker is gone when I use the Old School theme however.

Just wanted to let you know this flickering isn't just on old shitty monitors but what is currently the top of the line gaming monitor.

However the part that flickers is the dithered portions. I can't help but wonder if some people can't see this effect no matter which screen is tested.

I could see a small problem on half-tone dithers with smooth scrolling when I was looking for it. This pattern has been removed everywhere now except on disabled buttons.

As a follow-up, I’ve done testing with a bunch of different patterns here from the old Mac ROM and could create some troubles with most of the mid-tone patterns, but not with the light ones (like the one being used right now).

It may be relevant that the screens I’m using are either OLED or slow response LCD (the fastest is 5ms G2G). I guess it is possible that there’s some inverse bell curve where it’s fine on properly fast monitors and fine on slow monitors and just awful on the ones that are in that 1–4ms range (the “gaming monitor” range).

I see that the PG27UQ has some “anti-flicker” mode—it shouldn’t be necessary to make any changes to the hardware to make the site not have problems, obviously, but I am curious just as an experiment if making changes to that setting make the problem better or worse. Could you try it and let me know?

I’m also going to whip up a test page with some knobs that can be used to find the bounds of the problem. I’ll post a link here when it’s up.

Ant_222 wrote on 2020-01-08, 18:00:

I agree about the wasted vertical space. Possible solutions are: remove the greeting line and the two empty lines around it; place the greeting line and banner on the same line:

I like this, except that the width of the display is unknowable, so it’s not possible to reliably position anything to the end like that. I’ll try moving the greeting up and see how weird it feels. Or just get rid of it entirely—who needs to be friendly when you’ve got such a cool logo art, you know? 😉

konc wrote on 2020-01-09, 13:28:

I've noticed that the search functionality doesn't prioritize the most relevant results, but just sorts post that contain any keyword by date (descending), meaning that the most recent post comes first. So if you search using 4 keywords, a recent post containing only 1 keyword will appear at the top and the one matching all 4 will be lower. Also search operators like +, - or "" don't seem to work. The cog button at the search results page offers some options but relevance is not one.

Thanks for noticing this. The built-in search code in phpBB is depressingly poor. I’ve paved over it with a custom implementation so now you’ll get relevance by default when doing keyword searches, and actually be able to use extended query syntax, and excerpts will actually show the correct word highlights. Check the help on the advanced search form for details on the new syntax options. Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

Ant_222 wrote on 2020-01-09, 13:37:

What I dislike about reply notifications is that they force me to fire up the browser and actually log in to vogons.org in order merely to read the new post. It would be great if the full text were included in the notifications and they were not disabled until the next login. That way, we should be able to track discussions in our e-mail clients and log in only when we have something say.

I can understand this desire. Unfortunately the way the notification system works is really intended to deliver only one email per topic and is not really amenable to change. Also, the next thing people would ask for after this is the ability to reply to posts from the email, and now we’ve created a listserv and all the new headaches that come with managing something like that securely, so I am not sure if this is even a good road to go down 😀

7F20 wrote on 2020-01-10, 16:22:

Whoa. I just tried the Old Skool color scheme and it made my monitor freak out! It flickers like crazy and I see visible, yet faint, horizontal lines. Acer R240HY LCD monitor and using Firefox. Pretty bog-standard monitor and I haven't experienced this with any other web pages before. Maybe just lucky?

Could you please take a photo of this? It’s interesting to me how this is monitor is another one which comes with “flicker-less technology” and yet somehow is a big offender.

Maybe dragging the refresh rate back down might help, perhaps?

Snover wrote on 2020-01-10, 17:22:

Thanks for noticing this. The built-in search code in phpBB is depressingly poor. I’ve paved over it with a custom implementation so now you’ll get relevance by default when doing keyword searches, and actually be able to use extended query syntax, and excerpts will actually show the correct word highlights. Check the help on the advanced search form for details on the new syntax options. Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

Wow that was fast and seems to work perfectly, thank you for all your efforts. The search functionality is now much-much more efficient.
(I absolutely love the implied "+" between the search terms and how it's not "|" by default like most search boxes do to return more-but-useless results)