Modern Vespa

It's not perfect. And honestly, I hate it. But let's see how many things are broken.

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you probably don't use dark mode, which is great. Dark mode is an abomination).

Not a fan!

Do you have your OS set to dark mode?

I'm not a Star Wars fan ...

Yes set to dark mode. Websites with dark bg and white text just dont look right. It's harder to read light text on dark bg than the opposite, plus photos with transparency tend to take on an inverted image style due to the dark. bg.

Dark mode works for most apps and doesn't bother me visually, which is why i leave it on, but as soon as you get into web browsing it's no good. I have my chrome settings to ignore dark mode. But i guess i didn't realize until now that the new extreme battery saver feature causes chrome to default to dark mode when extreme battery saver is active.

Loving the new dark theme!

Cats can see in the dark, no problem!

Not all are cats ...
PS: I use Chrome Star Trek mode.

Although I mainly use dark mode on my iPhone, this is TOO dark. Don't like it. Is there an option to choose the theme mode??

Yeah not so great and I like dark mode. Good thing I have a handy little toggle automator action that let's me swap modes is about a second. Here are the instructions for Mac users ( https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/14/how-to-toggle-dark-mode-with-a-keyboard-shortcut-or-the-touch-bar )

You've been doing great Jess and I know all too well how easy it is to go down that rabbit hole when dealing with software options and functionality. The issue with dark mode is you need to go in and tweak a lot of other things and as said white text on a black background can be fugly and hard on the eyes. But hey if some people like it and we have the ability to set a preference for light or dark mode under our accounts prefs I say keep it. Might want light mode to the be the default for guest login though.

Hate it. Is that a pink Vespa?

I like it. I keep my phone in dark mode most of the time. I recently got a new one, and its features... leave some to be desired. That includes the fact that the darn thing doesn't seem to be able to dim its screen enough for normal people to see it properly without wearing shades.

The forum looks pretty good to me on it.

The nays seem to outweigh the yays, so off it goes.

For the record, I am philosophically opposed to dark mode. One of the huge innovations that Macintosh brought to the mainstream (yes, I know the Xerox Alto did it first -- I know this bit of history better than most, thankyouverymuch) was black text on a white background. I've spent many hours looking at black-background displays, and I can state firsthand that black text on a white background was a monumental improvement in Human Computer Interaction. Dark mode, then, is the opposite of that. It is a step backwards. Retrograde.

So what's changed between 1984 and now? Two things:

1) people have forgotten what an incredible improvement black text was, and

2) displays have gotten brighter. A lot brighter. Display nits have become a huge competitive issue among manufacturers.

Along with increased brightness comes a higher minimum brightness, which is largely because it's difficult to modulate LED backlight below a certain level without flickering. (This is a part of the computer industry that I've actually spent some time in).

OLED displays should be capable of lower minimum brightness, and use less energy at lower brightness levels as well. So yes, they use less energy in dark mode, too. Ugh.

So what does all this mean for Modern Vespa? I dunno. I did this as an experiment to see if it would work. I don't think it did. But I'm just one guy, running a website as a hobby, and the matrix of things I have to test against is growing, while the hours I have per day are not. Testing against multiple browsers at multiple screen sizes to make everything look good is a challenge. Add an entirely different set of rules for dark mode and I'm looking at an even bigger challenge. It's not impossible, but it's growing unwieldy.

So dark mode is off for now.

100% agree regarding when viewing/reading text. This is why i set individual app theme settings to ignore dark mode if they are apps predominantly for reading text. But for non text based apps like Instagram, YouTube, etc i prefer dark mode for that reason that everything but the content in trying to view is dark and reduced focus. It's like framing a photo with a black matte board... Giving your eyes some visual space to reduce distractions.

You people do a great job! Thank you.

Gone before I could even see it. 💨

My dark mode only turns on at night.

Imagine the whole site, but darker.

I don't normally like Dark Mode, even though my Windows Phone is close to it. I do like the login screen though.

You mean MV's login screen, or your phone's login screen?

Why?

something that is broken for me:

the [1][2][3] that appears next to a multi-page topic when looking at the list of topics is missing when using Brave on Android but is visible in Brave on Windows

edit: I notice the paperclips for attached pictures are also still missing

Missing altogether, or just abbreviated? On especially small screen sizes, the number of page options is reduced in order to allow it to fit.

A screen shot would definitely be helpful, if you can. That was intentionally removed a couple weeks ago.

Hi Sir!

What happened to the roundels? I don't see them anymore. Also the reply button is now in the bottom of the thread. Is that how you meant it to be? Max

On small screens, the roundels (and awards, location, scooter, title, etc) are a lot of clutter. For any given post, however, you can click the details button (see picture below) and you will see the details for that poster. I believe strongly that one should read the topic before replying. You can still quote someone directly, and in fact I would prefer that people use quote over reply. But if you're going to reply, the top of the thread is the wrong place to do it.

You know, I really miss that monitor we had for our Apple IIe. There was a button to switch between green, gold and cyan. As long as you're experimenting, I think that would be a swell option. When we installed our 80 column card the cyan was much better than the green, just my opinion.

Yeah, it's been a long road. And those who forget history are bound to repeat it.

(FWIW, Lode Runner is still the best. Game. Ever.)

This.

Uhh this user details toggle is awesome! I had also missed the extended user details since the mobile updates but figured they were unnecessary in favor of space. Hadn't noticed the details link until you mentioned it. Love it! It also has a much improved visual layout. Almost wish the layouts were universal across desktop and mobile now (with mobile thread style becoming the default) cause I'm starting to prefer the mobile version! It kinda helps condense negative space that is unused below the user info on the left of the desktop version, and gives more width for those extra long posts to take up less height, or those occasional super wide posts due to a link that won't wrap, etc.

Excellent work.

It wasn't part of the initial mobile version. It snuck in over the last couple days. The side-mounted author detail in the desktop version actually serves a purpose. With text, you always want to avoid extra-wide lines. The theoretical optimum line length is 50-60 characters, and more than 100 characters (or so) reduces readability a lot. That was one reason I started limiting the width of all MV pages to 1000 pixels (though I later upped it to 1280) and the reason that I'm not likely to change the side-mounted author information. If it weren't there, I would have to fill that space with something else.

If you really like the mobile version, though, just make your desktop window narrow and it will change layout on the fly. The layout is based on screen (or window) width -- I'm not actually trying to figure out what kind of device you're using.

Way!

when things go badly I still make the "Ugh... Ugh, Ugh" dying sound.

And here's a dirty little secret for you: In order to achieve the dual side / top author details, the information is present twice. For every single post. One is always hidden while the other is showing.

Funny..i noticed this the other day when i experimented with viewing mv over command line text browser! Cause it showed the user info twice for every post. I figured it served some technical back end purpose. Got my answer in the end!

I can probably optimize it to only need a single set of details for each post, but it's tricky and I wanted to get the mobile update out this month, instead of next year.

Only device I use Dark Mode on at all (and usually at night, because yeah) is my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S10e, and to my eyes at least, all looks fine as of today (and a few days ago, for that matter). This is using Samsung's own browser, as well as Chrome.

Also: major props on the tweaks for phone-browser compatibility/readability: still checking for any potential bugs, but overall I'm digging the scale-appropriate format. I "could deal" with the old setup, but one never knows what's been put up with until there's a change like this. (Hope you're getting some sleep throughout this, Jess.)

EDIT: No Dark Mode via Chrome on phone for some reason now...can't toggle to it either. No major thing.

Thanks! And yeah, I have managed to catch up -- a little bit, anyway -- on sleep. Yeah, Dark Mode on MV didn't last but about 12 hours before it got switched off. It didn't even last as long as the NSM/MP3 Fusion mod.

See: ATTENTION: NSM and MP3 forums are now MERGED!

Well that was sheer entertainment for the past 30 minutes. I had to read through it all to find out what happened in the end, despite already knowing the ending!

Good stuff from mv history that i have never heard of before.

sad about the paperclip.

see attached screens showing the missing [1][2][etc]

Clippy had it coming. I've confirmed that the pagination links are present on every browser I can reasonably get my hands on:

- Brave for Mac
- Firefox for Mac
- Chrome for Mac
- Safari for Mac

- Brave for iOS
- Firefox for iOS
- Chrome for iOS
- Safari for iOS

The HTML involved isn't particularly adventurous -- just a div floated right. It's really basic. Given that it shows up literally everywhere except Brave for Android, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is a browser bug.

Speaking as a professional programmer with a few years under my belt, and having used their browser, I can say with reasonable authority that I am unimpressed with their coding skills. These are the same guys that deliberately mislabeled Ironfoot's banner at the bottom of each topic page as a "tracker", so I am also unimpressed with their level of honesty. I hold it as self-evident that parties who engage in deliberate fearmongering and dishonesty are rarely good stewards of privacy.

Not much else I can do here.

chrome on android is also broken so ...

Broken how? Those page links are right there.

sorry, I forgot to draw a big red circle around the missing thing. There on windows but not on android.

Turn your phone to the left or right and all will be solved.

Or tell your emulator to view page in landscape mode.

This is a design feature, not a bug. The whole point of this thread is simplification to make space for the basics to fit on mobile devices. Removed ui details that didn't make the cut are still available with increasingly wider displays. Landscape mode on phone gives you wider display for some of those removed ui details.