Whenever changes are made...

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Moonchild
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Whenever changes are made...

Unread post by Moonchild » 2012-06-10, 11:46

Whenever changes are made... there are always people who resist these changes.

I just wanted to say that regardless of what you may personally think about the changes, most of them are fairly easy to revert and all of them are made for a reason. I also want to make clear that changes made cannot all be made configurable in the browser UI or about:config; you would end up building control mechanisms for every small entry in UI-related elements which inevitably will bog the browser down.

If there are changes you don't like, I will listen to your feedback and take it into account, but it won't mean that it's going to be reverted just because you have a personal dislike for the change. There has to be a good and logical reason to do so beyond personal choice, because any Pale Moon specific changes have a good and logical reason behind them to be made in the first place.
If you want to bring such things to my attention, be nice.
I will not respond well to people sending me hate mail or "I ditched Pale Moon because of this one thing" feedback, because I don't cater to people who will just abandon what has now been 4 years of my work over a single fickle thing. Besides, if you "already ditched" it, then I no longer have to take your opinion into account, right? 8-)
It certainly doesn't make a good case if you want me to consider an alternative to the change made (any alternative will cost me time to research and implement).

As an example:
Change: the "top level image" background color was lightened in 12.2 in a neutral color instead of a very dark grey (by many perceived as black).
Reason: extremely dark or extremely light surrounding colors for an image create forced contrast and you lose visual detail in the image. This is also the reason why art sites like DeviantArt don't use very dark or very light backgrounds in their site themes, to make the images retain full visual detail. In addition, this plays into the way a lot of TFT screens are set up with "dynamic contrast" which will literally degrade the image if bordered by (almost) pure white or black - meaning a hardware consideration, also.
Revert: change the color in TopLevelImageDocument.css in res\ with notepad to #222 - takes 10 seconds to do. Building a control mechanism: takes 10 hours (or more) to do properly.
Reason to revert: Personal taste or it "not fitting with a certain UI theme". I have yet to see an argument countering the logic behind the change made.
Result: Reversion not accepted.
Note: The control mechanism was eventually implemented, to give people requiring custom background colors the option to quickly do so without editing a system file, but the default color was not reverted to Firefox's choice.

As a second example:
Change: smooth scrolling for all controls in 12.1 enabled by default.
Reason: overall better legibility when scrolling, easier to follow page structure.
Revert: switching off a default option.
Reason to revert: Feedback was given that page-by-page smooth scrolling creates visual friction, and that it was too slow overall with the mouse compared to previously. Both of these are valid arguments and acknowledged. Otherwise the overall use of smooth scrolling remains a personal preference.
Result: Reversion made for Page-by-Page default, and default timing for scrolling adjusted in 12.2 -- however, the smooth scrolling default remained on.
Last edited by Moonchild on 2013-09-14, 19:19, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Reworded, explained what feedback I'm more likely to respond to.
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