Congratulations on making the writing in the side bar of a bright blue color

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Congratulations to whomever had the splendid idea of making the lettering in the brown side bar of every page in this site a vivid shade of blue! This is a great improvement and might stem the repeated complaints that people find it difficult to read the small print in the list of topics being answered, etc.

The only doubt I have about this is what might this mean for someone that suffers of a condition that makes it hard or impossible to see the blue end of the visible spectrum. Perhaps those with this condition see the letters as being of a dark grey color, so it is not a big problem for them?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Charlie, wavy

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You’ll note that here in the main body frame of the page those active link colors are still dictated by the site. On this white background that may be a purposeful style choice. But I wonder if the blue is intentional. That may be an accidental regression, allowing your browser default color selection for unused links rather than forcing the site chosen color scheme. At least it matches my default settings.

Interested to hear from someone who knows. Should it stay or should it go?

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For what this might be worth: I have just looked at this site using Waterfox, FireFox, Safari (on my Mac) and Chrome, and it is the same blue lettering showing in all four browsers’ windows.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Have you looked in the settings of those four browsers to see that they all use the same default colors? It is a common setting, unless changed by the user. At one time I preferred a bright orange for unused/not yet visited and darker green for used/already visited. But it has been a long time since I cared to tweak that much. Not long enough to forget the setting is there.

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OscarCP

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The right side looks the same to me as it was. I do not see any blue. Using Chrome.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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CADesertRat: I am looking at this page with Chrome and, unlike you, I am still seeing the bright blue lettering. (Anonymous might be right that blue is just all of my browsers default color.)

Weird, isn’t it? But I hope this, or some other easy-to-see color, because it contrasts with the yellowish-brown background, could be adopted as a permanent feature everyone can benefit from, no matter when and with which browser. And if something got changed in the software used at this site that makes the browser’s default color replace the dark brown lettering, well, that’s an improvement, except for those with the eyesight problem I mentioned earlier here. But they might be able to change their default color to something more helpful for them.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I’m using Firefox and the right-hand panel still looks fifty shades of brown to me. The only blue is on the calendar.

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MrJimPhelps

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Maybe this only happens when one is using  Mac to come visiting here, as I am doing today? But that would be even weirder.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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[The Surfing Pensioner]

Now this is weird. I accessed the site for the first time today a little while ago, and, behold! I saw the print in the right-hand panel – for the first time – bright lilac. Hey, I thought, the magic colour update has finally hit my P.C. Then, I logged in – and the right-hand script turned to brown. Mortified, I closed the browser altogether and then went in again, thinking that by logging in I’d spoiled the effect – but, no, it’s all still brown. Is this a collective mirage we’re all experiencing?

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by The Surfing Pensioner.

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The Surfing Pensioner: It could very well be a collective illusion; such things have been known to happen. But, if so, at least for me, it is a remarkably consistent and unchanging illusion: I am still seeing that blue color more than a day later, no matter how many times I have logged in, logged out, turned off the computer, turned it back on again, using any of my four browsers of totally different “brands”. And no: when I look to the writing on a screen, a magazine or a book, printed in black letters, I still see those letters as black, not blue… Or black and blue.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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It all depends on how often your web browser is configured to check for newer versions of any given web page. By default, most web browsers are configured to check once every three times when a given web page is loaded in the web browser.

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The Surfing Pensioner, woody

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Reading that others see something different, I thought maybe adblocking or other addons. I tried toggling µBlock Origin on/off, restarting browser between states, and still see the default blue/purple colors. Curiouser and curiouser, without enlightenment. Almost like we are accessing different servers or receiving different code.

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I have noticed today that the Internet, at least when connecting to via my ISP, Verizon FIOS, is erratic and strangely slow, no matter which browser I use, with frequent failures to connect and the email also being very slow to get under way after hitting “send”. Perhaps the blue color I see is, in part at least, another symptom of the same anomaly? Well, I’ll see what happens when things go back to normal, whatever the reason for the problem I am experiencing right now might be.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I just took a screenshot. Does this look blue to you???

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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CADesertRat: How about this pic taken just now of the same page as it looks to me at this moment? So: no brown-on-brown letters, and no pink elephants either…

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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CADesertRat

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Well, looks like different people are having different experiences on AW. No idea why but maybe a Mod will figure it out. I like the blue better but it’s odd that it only displays for some.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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I’m seeing the old theme on one machine, and the new one on two others (different browsers & OS on each) 🙂

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Lo and Behold, they are Blue this morning, LOL.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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I managed to trigger the blue links on the machine that was still displaying the old brown links, by clearing the browser cache. Instantly on reload, it all looked blue 🙂

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Ah, this is a web browser setting. Most web browsers are configured out of the box to check for newer versions of a web page only once out of every three times. This archaic policy was designed to reduce the load on the server which serves any given web page. Whenever I install any new web browser, one of the first things which I do is to configure the web browser to check for new versions of any web page each and every time. I do this since I need to instantly see changes which I make to my web sites, whether or or not I am viewing my web site locally or instead “live” on the Internet.

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The thing is that I have never changed the color settings in any of my browsers since the day I first installed them — and even then I did not changed them from their default values. Yet, while I used to see the links on the side bar always in brown, for more than two years by now, they have all suddenly changed to blue just a over day ago.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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The new blue code is in the updated CSS for the forum.

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woody, OscarCP

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So my choice of the title thanking the developers was on point? If so, thanks again to them for the new “blue look”! (Although perhaps a different color might be better for some people?)

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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GoneToPlaid

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Same here. I cleared the cache in Firefox and reloaded the page, and now the lettering is blue.

I kind of miss the old colors!

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM

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[The Surfing Pensioner]

Yep, I’m all sorted, too. Had a good old clear-out of all my recent browser history and lo! the bright lilac print in the right-hand panel came back to stay. Much more cheerful than the old brown-on-brown.

 

 

 

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by The Surfing Pensioner.

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Shift F5 worked for me. Nice shiny blueness – which is much clearer than the orange on brown to my eye.

cheers, Paul

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CADesertRat wrote:

I just took a screenshot. Does this look blue to you???

Try this for Google Chrome, could be just talking about visited link colors or might be outdated info, worth a shot if you’re still not seeing blue links.
https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/changing-color-clicked-hyperlink-google-chrome-20016.html

MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, and SOS at times.

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Forget the link I posted in #1963834. After taking a good look at this, it seems irrelevant to this topic. Bottom line, the blue links at the sidebar are nice.

MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, and SOS at times.

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OscarCP: FWIW, I’m using Chrome on Windows 8.1 and I see the blue links on the right hand side also.

Win 10 ver. 22H2 x64

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OscarCP

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I use Firefox and I can see the blue unvisited links. The visited links are suppose to be purple but I have Firefox set to not remember history.

Edition Windows 11 Pro
Version 22H2
Installed on ‎10/‎19/‎2022
OS build 22621.2283

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OscarCP

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fernlady, Exactly the same, as you describe it, is how things look from here: all the links in the side bar show the letters in this rich deep blue, whether these links have been used already or not.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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It is a pleasant kind of complementary colors quirk; Is the AskWoody site development team doing A/B testing on us? 🙂

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Hmm… it isn’t A/B testing, somehow AskWoody may not be asserting its own link color preferences, is it a Cascading Style Sheet or browser issue?

A test quick test, when all Site Preferences data are cleared from Firefox’s storage the default bright blue and purple colors appear and there is no reversion back to brown.

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Right. But like I noticed earlier today, it is only on the right hand sidebar. This main body frame still has the AskWoody brown and browner color preferences for link font colors. So did the sidebar regress, or is it purposeful? Them that knows, haven’t yet said.

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Anonymous  #1963974  : You are completely right about the brown links still showing on the main body of the page. Quite frankly, whatever the cause of these changes, I am fine with them, because brown-on-white is no problem for my eyes: there is more than enough contrast between writing and background with this color scheme. Ditto deep blue on yellowish-brown.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Brown on white is ok with me
FYI

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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It appears the change is purposeful and it is fine, either color set is good. 🙂

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The links are standard a href= elements with no specific formatting and the CSS specifies these as having color: #84511f. This seems to be a deep orange.

No idea why you are seeing them in blue, unless your browser has decided to override link colours.

cheers, Paul

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Ascaris

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PaulT: MY FOUR browsers have been doing that independently, without my doing anything at all to them. Others have noticed the same thing, while still others have not. So, for some of us, this strange thing is going around. Not that I mind the result, wish it were permanent. But probably it won’t be. Or rather I wish that it becomes permanent in some nicely contrasting lettering/background color scheme that does not create problems to people with difficulty in seeing certain colors.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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You can make the links any color you like on any site you like.  Firefox and its derivatives can use userContent.css to specify colors for the links on a given domain, or you could use Stylus (extension) to do that (the older, formerly excellent Stylish is no longer recommended, as its new owner was caught sneaking some unsavory things into the addon.  Stylus is a fork before that happened, I think).  There may be other addons to do these things more directly without having to edit .css stylesheets directly.

FWIW, the links appear in blue for me too, using Waterfox or Vivaldi from Linux.

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jburk07

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On Vivaldi, as of today, I see them in MY CHOSEN link color of green …I see ALL links here in green. It’s a problem when ALL links visited and unvisited display in the SAME color! I see them in beautiful, soothing green on Vivaldi because I have Stylus extension installed and have a style for the color for unvisited links. However, VISITED links should not also be in green!

On my default browser, Basilisk, colors here have been a huge mess all day until a few hours ago. Now they are in my chosen colors for Basilisk (unvisited – green) and (visited reddish purple). ALL links now on Basilisk are in these colors. UGH. I had to stop in the middle of writing this post for a couple of hours and just now came back here and now visited purple link is NO LONGER in my chosen purple but is like on Waterfox that I just tested here…the purple now is a bluish purple. A MESS. Plus, now some of the links are in the old link colors!

Something, intended or not, messed badly with the default visited and unvisited link colors here earlier today and this happened not just on links in the right column but everywhere on this site. To me, it was a disaster as the one color that is extremely hard on my eyes is the Microsoft blue that I saw here today primarily in the right column. It’s very garish on a yellowish/orangeish background.

I just started Waterfox and came here and the colors are really MESSED UP on it. Some are this site’s original reddish brown. All on the right side are in PURPLE but NOT my chosen visited link purple (a reddish purple) but instead the purple in the color chart just next to my chosen purple. It is a bluish purple. i have a very old version of Stylish on Waterfox but no styles for link colors so the site really looks horrible on Waterfox.

I would be happy if this site reverted to its default link colors as then things would look right on Vivaldi. Plus, I would not have to write styles for Waterfox and the other browsers I have not checked yet. And, as I just discovered, fix Basilisk which NOW has an ugly purple color for visited link here and is now displaying some links in the original colors here.

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The blue links and other small visual adjustments made to the Login and Calendar widgets seem to have been introduced recently: comparing the current WP theme file where the CSS styles are defined with a previous version (a snapshot taken last week) shows over 40 new lines that added style changes to the .sidebar element. People still seeing the “old” brown links might just try to clear the browser’s cache and fully refresh the website to reload it and get the new contents.

OscarCP made a really good point regarding the links readability: the use of “pure blue” might be problematic for colorblind people. Instead of “pure blue” (#0000ff) for the normal links and “pure dark blue” (#000099) for the visited links, perhaps the Askwoody site development team could use more suitable alternatives, such as (for e.g.) #0c7bdc and #4b0092 – as suggested here (scroll down to the ‘Accessible palettes’ section).

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jburk07

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Good to know that it is in the code received from the site, rather than continue to point at reader’s browsers. Thanks for looking deeper, Speccy.

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OscarCP

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Personally, I think that the bright pure blue for links in the sidebar is a bit intense.

In the site’s CSS, the sidebar presently has these CSS settings for links:

.sidebar a {
color: #0000ff;
}
.sidebar a:hover,
.sidebar a:focus {
color: #000;
}
.sidebar a:visited {
color: #000099;
}

There is an old bug in some web browsers such that a:visited should be defined in CSS before defining a:hover or a:focus or a:active. All of these should be defined after defining a or a:link. I prefer to always explicitly define an anchor as a:link. I suggest the following change for the site’s CSS in order to assure proper rendering for anchor colors. Note that I also added a:active for compatibility with older web browsers:

.sidebar a:link {
color: #0000ff;
}
.sidebar a:visited {
color: #000099;
}
.sidebar a:active,
.sidebar a:hover,
.sidebar a:focus {
color: #000000;
}

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jburk07, Ascaris, Myst

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I must repeat that, before making any final choice of color, this first has to be studied to make sure that what is chosen makes the text sufficiently visible to everybody, including those with at least the more common forms of limited color perception. And, while it might not be the most aesthetically appealing, plain old black might be the best choice taking that into account.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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jburk07, GoneToPlaid

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I agree. This evening I will dig through my saved bookmarks to find a website which has color patterns which scientists use when publishing charts and graphs in research papers which are friendly for all forms of color blindness.

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OscarCP

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In my previous post I did that: wrote “here” and that word linked to https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/ (scroll down to the ‘Accessible palettes’ section).

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SueW, OscarCP, GoneToPlaid

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Yes, bright blue links are good, quite a step forward.

Viewing in Firefox 60.9.0 ESR

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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cold blue on a warm tan = eyestrain for me.
dark green on warm tan, in keeping with the wood theme..leaves, growth, natural etc..

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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jburk07

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I have some experience with this from making presentations with plots in them.

Originally they were all in black with different thickness and different markers to tell them apart when shown together in the same slide. Not particularly pretty, but everybody could see them and distinguish the plots from each other: no complaints.

Then I started to make them in color. Sometimes I would use, as before, different lines and markers, so those in the audience could tell them from each other. Other times I just used different colors. I did this for several years, among other places, for a group at the Navy headed by an old acquaintance of mine. And would you know that, after years of working with him and his people, one day he told me that he was color blind? That revelation came after many presentations about the work I was doing and related matters, with never he giving me the slightly hint of having a problem seeing them.

So people can have real problems in this way, but also be shy about it and reluctant to acknowledge they have them.

So that is why, if a new color is to be picked for the links on the right side bar, I wold sigh with deep regret, but choose black. Because I know for sure that it works.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

making the lettering in the brown side bar of every page in this site a vivid shade of blue!

I don’t like the blue links. The color hurts my eyes. 🙁

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GoneToPlaid, jburk07

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Reporting in….
Sidebar writing is the same color.  No blue etc.
Is it suppose to be different now?
Full disclosure:  Due for yearly eye test in Feb. 2020

Chrome Browser (Windows 7)

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Re: Full disclosure: Due for yearly eye test in Feb. 2020

..we will all have 2020 vision next year

zeddy
Excel Visual Effects Unit

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SueW

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Colors will never appear as the site technical chooser intends! If for no other reason than that there is a large variety of video cards and each user sets colors in the software for their video card (like I use Digital Vibrance set on about 70% in my nVidia card and I always buy nVidia cards because they have this feature. I like very vivid colors except for the extremely harsh (to me Microsoft blue chosen here now. That blue is not nearly as bright if I turn off digital vibrance or even set it maybe to 35% but then all colors suffer and I am miserable and this happens at all sites when all I want to is have this one site either honor my link colors or not use garish blue).

What sites should do is set it so that the USER can choose link colors at each site. That way the site looks great for EACH INDIVIDUAL. Most sites don’t this though so if I choose certain link colors many sites, this being one of them, will ignore them and will force whatever this site thinks the colors should be!

When I set link colors in my browsers, every browser asks if I want that setting to OVERRIDE the chosen link colors for a particular site. I do want this! BUT if I tell my browsers to ALWAYS override the colors for links chosen by sites then most sites (not my home site though) ALSO DENY me, the user, the site’s style sheet! So, I am forced by sites that are poorly put together (and that is a great deal of them) to choose “override the site’s color choices ONLY for High Contrast themes”. That works for some sites even though I don’t use a “high contrast theme” for Windows and never have.

To get this site to use my link colors and do it via my browser’s settings, I have to tell my browser to always override this sites chosen link colors and use mine and that means at THIS site I loose the site’s style sheet also! The two things should not be intimately connected and at dslreports.com they are NOT connected. The site honors MY link colors AND also lets me use its style sheet (and choose a theme). That’s, IMO, how all sites should be. The user should not have to choose between his/her link colors at a specific site or that site’s style sheet! BOTH should be available and THAT is what this site needs to fix!

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Mele20 wrote:

What sites should do is set it so that the USER can choose link colors at each site. That way the site looks great for EACH INDIVIDUAL. Most sites don’t this though so if I choose certain link colors many sites, this being one of them, will ignore them and will force whatever this site thinks the colors should be!

In order for that to work, you would need each site to either require logging in, or else to store the user’s persistent ID in a cookie.  Otherwise, it would have no way of associating a given user’s preference with that user.  That would certainly work for some people… most of them, even, especially on mainstream, non tech sites, but 99% of the browsing I (as one example I know well) do is without persistent cookies.

The original vision of the web was for the content to be marked up (hence HTML, hypertext markup language) so that the viewer’s browser would know the type of content each bit represented, and to render that content according to the user’s preferences for that kind of content.  It was not supposed to be about having each page be digitally typeset so that it appeared the same on everyone’s screen; the whole point was that not everyone has the same hardware, and certainly not the same preferences.

That vision of the web didn’t last very long.  While the original intent of HTML was to efficiently convey information in the manner best suited to the receiver of that information, it quickly turned into a means of marketing, where branding and appearance mattered as much as, if not more, than the information being presented.  It would not do to have a brand’s information rendered according to the needs of the user… why, that might be ugly, and we can’t have that kind of thing associated with OUR brand.  It has to look exactly as WE want it to look, not as the site visitor wants it.

That’s the same reason that Microsoft decided to restrict the themes that could be applied to Windows. They require that any theme be signed by Microsoft to work, and they only sign themes they wrote.  They can’t have Windows looking like something that doesn’t “look like Windows,” whatever that may mean at any given moment.  That’s more important to them than allowing you to have any control over how your own PC looks, even if all you’re trying to do is tame the harsh white backgrounds that everyone seems to think belong on every OS and every web site these days.

In other words, most sites don’t really care about making it look great to you.  As long as it projects the image that the marketing department wants it to project, that’s what you get, like it or not.  We’re in the age of the UI or web “designer,” who cares more about some aesthetic value (not mine… I think they’re ugly) above all else.  This is where we get the minimalist UIs (on operating systems, applications, web sites… you name it) that look so pretty to eyes unaccustomed to concerns like usability and utility.  UI stands for user interface, but most of these UIs are more about branding.  Interfacing with the user is sooo 1998!

Independent sites like AskWoody.com don’t look the way they do because of the marketing people.  There are no marketing people!  But as you say, it’s impossible to please all the people with one design.  This site uses WordPress, and I don’t believe WordPress has the kind of individual customization functionality (on a per-user basis) you ask for.  Any changes to the look will affect everyone.  Any change that is made is going to make some people unhappy, even if it is just what other people asked for.

FWIW, I never found the brown text on the light orangey-brown woodgrain hard to read at all.  I found it aesthetically pleasing and functional, but I know others have said it is hard to read.  The blue links I see now are just as easy to read as the brown, but they do have kind of a harsh look, kind of eye-strainy, even though it’s very easy to read.

If you want to make things work for you, you’re going to have to take back control and make things more like the original view of the web.  You can use your own .css stylesheets that will override the ones used by web sites, to make things look how you want.  You can do this in a general way or in a site-specific way, or both.  Firefox has a custom stylesheet into which you can embed a site’s url, so that the changes in a given section only apply to that site.  Chrome and Firefox both can use an extension called Stylus to make the process of creating custom stylesheets for each site easier, and often it is possible to find a premade stylesheet that fixes the issue you have with a site.

There are probably other addons that will allow the user to change such things too.  The ability to yoink that control from the web site designer and make the web work for you is there, if you know where to find the tools.

I have a lot of addons installed to twist things back to a way that serves me instead of some designer somewhere, including the designer of the browser UI.  I haven’t found a browser that has a decent out of the box UI since Australis landed for Firefox, save one– Pale Moon, which would be my choice if it had multiprocess functionality.

Fortunately, even though they’d ruined the UI with Australis, Firefox had extensions that allowed the user to override the decisions made by their own UI designers (well, more properly, the Google Chrome UI designers, which they were trying to copy).  That was the case until the release of Firefox 57.  That’s why I use Waterfox, which is based on FF 56, but with Mozilla’s security patches applied.

I hope this minimalism in UI fad passes soon.  One size does not fit all, and it never has.

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jburk07

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[Moonshine]

Perhaps it’s time folks invested a little time and learned how to use the machine(s) that they sit in front of and particularly their chosen Browsers options/settings/available Add-ons/Extensions to try and get a compromise to a personal, acceptable visual result.
A website creator/developer/maintainer surely can’t please everybody’s wants and needs.
Individual users/viewers can, to a degree, change what they see on a screen so it suits ‘them’ and their wants/needs.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Moonshine.

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jburk07

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I’m all for the AskWoody crew decorating their clubhouse the way they like. I come for the content. Besides, it has been shown how I could make my own changes locally whenever I may need.

But if we are still giving our preferences today, for some unannounced opinion poll, then I vote for the expired style sheet. I did not have a problem with it before.

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I will throw my vote with the blueish lettering, much easier to read.

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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