du82
commented
11 months ago I like the random colors, it helps me quickly figure out who is who without having to read the username
Open makoConstruct opened 11 months ago
du82
commented
11 months ago I like the random colors, it helps me quickly figure out who is who without having to read the username
Presumably the purpose of random username colors was to make it easy to tell who a message came from at a glance. At this point, all of the display modes available (irc, modern, message bubbles) show the user's avatar, meaning that username randomization isn't contributing to that, it just makes the app uglier and more alienating[1].
Can I just make usernames the same as the theme's text color?
(If you wanted to go the extra mile, )
[1]: Anyone coming from discord (or irc?) will initially feel like the colors mean something, but the meaning is never revealed, making the app feel a little bit inscrutable. It isn't pleasant to have a random color imposed on you, a lot of people consider color to be meaningful and they like to be able to control how they appear to others, avatars give them that. Sometimes text color will be different from the avatar, or the same as the avatar of a different user, which may actually complicate the visual processing task of associating authors with colors rather than aiding it.
Have you considered any alternatives?
This discussion/issue has 56 thumbs ups: https://github.com/vector-im/element-meta/discussions/842 and has overlapping motivations, but it is a much more complicated proposal with no clear advantage given avatars.
You could pull the average color from the avatar then nudge it to make sure it's in contrast with the background of the theme, but that would be a lot of code.