Too little visual feedback when pressing buttons/menu items

[cameel]

I have just tried a recent alpha build with the reworked UI (2.5alpha55). The new colors look really nice but there's one tiny feature I'm really missing. In the old color scheme when you pressed one of the rating buttons (again, hard, good, etc) or options from the top-right menu it was easy to see which one actually got activated. It was highlighted for a very short time before it took effect. In the new scheme it's still highlighted (I think) but there's very little contrast and it's harder to catch that in that brief moment. I wasn't even aware how much I relied on that until it was changed.

With touch it's not as easy to press the exact spot you want as it is with a mouse and I sometimes miss. The visual feedback was making me realize that quickly and I could undo the action. Now I'm often unsure and undo the card just in case.

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this. I wasn't sure if it's actually worth reporting but I guess some feedback about the new UI won't hurt. It's really cool apart from that. I especially like the new, more compact deck list and that it's easier to unfold the nested decks now.

[timrae]

I'll see if we can get the effect to last longer using material design animations

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 11:44 AM, Kamil Śliwak notifications@github.com wrote:

I have just tried a recent alpha build with the reworked UI (2.5alpha55). The new colors look really nice but there's one tiny feature I'm really missing. In the old color scheme when you pressed one of the rating buttons (again, hard, good, etc) or options from the top-right menu it was easy to see which one actually got activated. It was highlighted for a very short time before it took effect. In the new scheme it's still highlighted (I think) but there's very little contrast and it's harder to catch that in that brief moment. I wasn't even aware how much I relied on that until it was changed.

With touch it's not as easy to press the exact spot you want as it is with a mouse and I sometimes miss. The visual feedback was making me realize that quickly and I could undo the action. Now I'm often unsure and undo the card just in case.

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this. I wasn't sure if it's actually worth reporting but I guess some feedback about the new UI won't hurt. It's really cool apart from that. I especially like the new, more compact deck list and that it's easier to unfold the nested decks now.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/issues/3645.

[hssm]

There is an indicator that persists for about a second after you answer a card that shows you which answer button you pressed (1-4 dots and coloured according to the difficulty). You should be looking at that if you ever have doubts about which button you pressed.

[cameel]

So that's what these dots mean. Thanks. I never noticed that. If that's the case, it'll probably solve 90% my problem. I'll try that out tomorrow.

I see this lack of contrast in many places but the rating buttons was the one where it affected the functionality for me. I still think that making the pressed state significantly different visually would be better for usability but with the most important case solved it's much less of an issue for me.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hello 👋, this issue has been opened for more than 2 months with no activity on it. If the issue is still here, please keep in mind that we need community support and help to fix it! Just comment something like still searching for solutions and if you found one, please open a pull request! You have 7 days until this gets closed automatically

[cameel]

I still think contrast and visual feedback could be better but if no one else is complaining, there's no point in keeping this open.

[david-allison]

I've just added a fade animation to the selected button, and it works well for me. I'd personally like to see this in as an option.

@mikehardy Would adding another preference here be problematic?

[mikehardy]

Not that problematic. I'd be curious to see it in action like a quick youtube clip or something. I wonder if this is not another good case for javascript templating, in combination with the PoC I'd like to do/see for local storage and just showing one answer button that alters with time taken to answer, we could have this and maybe the progress bar people want. If they're not easily composable the effort will be a failure and this specifically seems like such a simple use case that testing composability along with the "only show 2 answer buttons, changing with time taken" example might make for a good PoC too :thinking:

[david-allison]

I'll need to think more about my implementation - the animation still occurred even if I had animations turned off, which would make AnkiDroid close to unusable with an e-ink device.

[luc-vocab]

@cameel shameless self promotion if you have a simple deck (with question/answer), and if you care about animations and feedback on answer, you could give AnkiReview a try. Here's a video of the reviewing animations: https://vimeo.com/382281907/553b3bf6d3

[cameel]

@lucwastiaux Thanks, but a simpler and prettier UI is not really what I'm looking for :) I'm overall very satisfied with the features AnkiDroid offers and I love how customizable it is. My cards have a lot of detail (and a custom style to go with it) and I don't care so much about pretty animations as about visual cues that let me see if I did what I intended to do (touch controls are unfortunately not very precise).

[github-actions[bot]]

Hello 👋, this issue has been opened for more than 2 months with no activity on it. If the issue is still here, please keep in mind that we need community support and help to fix it! Just comment something like still searching for solutions and if you found one, please open a pull request! You have 7 days until this gets closed automatically

[david-allison]

I still want to get around to this, probably 2.15