Ɀeus

as a way to search inside communities: https://www.search-lemmy.com/ is in early development but it works surprisingly well usually

may i introduce you to… (other free site hosts are available,^[1] but neocities is very much based around the spirit of geocities/angelfire)

meh, i’d say they’re obviously buttons from context (why would a calculator app just have a bunch of random unclickable symbols?). but assuming they don’t immediately read to you as buttons; md3 calc app only has 8 buttons: AC, (), %, ÷, ×, -, +, & =. the rest is just exactly the same mess of text randomly laid out edit 2023-08-03: i have now looked at this image on a better calibrated monitor. the numbers actually do have background circles (why did no-one pick me up on this). however, this does prove my point about the complete lack of any contrast on anything

having areas is good as it allows the eye to do a sort of binary search: if i want a scientific function i’ll look in the white on blue, operators in blue on white, numbers in black on white; then search for the exact button i want. without that, everything’s an unorganised mess (for instance why are brackets in the same section as operators?), with some functions hidden in the v button at the top right

also i’ve just noticed - how do the brackets work in md3? do you have to tap the button once to bring up a menu and then tap the bracket you want? or does it automatically insert one based on whether you’re inside a set? if it’s the latter, how does one do nested brackets?

i wouldn’t even mind the colours if they didn’t tint the background. tinting solely the main text colour and the main buttons might look quite nice. to be honest though, i just loathe pastel colours in general, so it’s possible that’s influencing my opinion

personal opinion, i think padding is worse for delineating objects than a bit of colour; or just, like, a line. look at this example - there are four distinct segments on the left, whereas on the right they all merge into one and a half

padding is really useful, yes, but if you put padding on everything then what’s there to be separated?

yeah, i hated material ew as soon as it was announced. so much padding everywhere, and so little contrast - to paraphrase the incredibles: if everything’s orange^[1], nothing is. your eyes will adjust to it. i want actionable items to stand out, not be a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. it also looks rather like a fischer-price my first phone interface

i must say, if an app (for example, jerboa) uses material 3, i usually try to look for an alternative

[1] other colours are available, i just like orange

edit: some examples:

with material design, it’s clear what’s a header, what’s a footer,^[2] and what each button’s state is.

with all the padding, there’s also less space; leading to less functionality

with material ew, it’s much harder to tell at a glance what each app is, one has to scrutinise the icon rather than just tell at a glance by colour

i also really dislike monet; the way it pulls this horrible washed out sickly pastel colour from a wallpaper and washes it over the entire app. if i just pulled one accent colour, and applied that to, say, the header and main action button, i’d like it a lot more

[2] look at the lack of contrast on that “new post” button

i like it. i’m glad to see a bit of depth and personality coming back into the design à la mode