Underline color collides with spellcheck in Chrome about just-not-sorry

[blundell]

+1 m but to have the underline color as a setting

[lsloan]

+1 👍

The screenshots on the Chrome web store showed the underlines as yellow or orange. I am disappointed to see they are actually red when the extension is installed. It looks very similar to spelling checker underlines. Many people won't notice the difference and will be annoyed when hovering over or context-clicking the underlined words doesn't work as expected.

This breaks the ages old user interface design "principle of least astonishment" (POLA). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

As @blundell suggests, the color of the underline should be available as an option the user can choose. I'll go further and suggest that the user be allowed to choose the style as well. Let the user choose to use underline, overline, strikethrough, boxes, background shading, or maybe even a tiny icon. By icon, I'm thinking of the tiny triangles that are shown in the corners of Google Sheets cells when there are comments. For example:

[sbenario]

FWIW, I totally recognize the vastly increased complexity in adding a
user-facing option for selecting the color and/or indicator. As well as the
fact that "most" users are likely to never use or see it and make do with
the default.

It may be worth splitting this issue out into "change the default color"
and a feature request for "allow users to customize the indicator". :-)

-- My 2c :-)

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Lance E Sloan [email protected]
wrote:

+1 [image: 👍]

The screenshots on the Chrome web store showed the underlines as yellow or
orange. I am disappointed to see they are actually red when the extension
is installed. It looks very similar to spelling checker underlines. Many
people won't notice the difference and will be annoyed when hovering over
or context-clicking the underlined words doesn't work as expected.

This breaks the ages old user interface design "principle of least
astonishment" (POLA). See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

As @blundell https://github.com/blundell suggests, the color of the
underline should be available as an option the user can choose. I'll go
further and suggest that the user be allowed to choose the style as well.
Let the user choose to use underline, overline, strikethrough, boxes,
background shading, or maybe even a tiny icon. By icon, I'm thinking of the
tiny triangles that are shown in the corners of Google Sheets cells when
there are comments. For example:

[image: image]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/20786/12145061/f4c702ec-b459-11e5-89a8-3ebba4b177dc.png

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#1 (comment)
.

[lsloan]

I won't disagree with putting color and style settings as separate issues. Whatever fits the workflow best and benefits users the most is the best plan.

PS: Shouldn't "My 2c" be added to the list of warnings? It sounds self-deprecating. 😉

[tami-cyrus]

My two cents was suggest by VOGUE :)

We'll see what we can do about changing the default color in the next few
days.

Any ideas on what you would like it to be?
Colors that are not OK bc of usability: Blue (hyperlink), Green (looks like
a positive), Yellow (contrast)

If we went more towards a yellower orange would that be OK?

Tami Reiss
CEO
Cyrus Innovation http://www.cyrusinnovation.com/
212-647-7186

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Dedicated to respect and diversity

@tamireiss / @cyrusinnovation

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On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Lance E Sloan [email protected]
wrote:

I won't disagree with putting color and style settings as separate issues.
Whatever fits the workflow best and benefits users the most is the best
plan.

PS: Shouldn't "My 2c" be added to the list of warnings? It sounds
self-deprecating. [image: 😉]

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#1 (comment)
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[blundell]

the default as yellow / orange would be great (like the screenshot). The problem is like stated above, right now it matches the spellcheck which is wrong. I might want to fix one but not the other.

FWIW when you get to X number of users you'll start getting complaints for contrasts of colour blind colours.

[lsloan]

Yellow or orange would be better than red. Google uses gray to mark possible usage problems. This is a similar purpose. It might be OK to use gray since the language highlighted is a usage problem, too. Maybe Google should start highlighting qualifying language itself.

I was thinking like @blundell: You should consult with a usability and accessibility expert. Consider following the guidelines of http://www.w3.org/WAI/ .

While you're changing the color, change the border style from dotted to dashed or double. That ensures additional differentiation from styles used by Google Mail and Chrome.

[verdammelt]

@tami-cyrus Let me know what you think of the different options for the underlining:

• dotted
• dashed
• double

(these all have the new color and a misspelled item as comparison)

[tamireiss]

Let's go dashed.

Tami Reiss
@tamireiss

Sent from a device smarter than a third grader, but with equally bad spelling habits.

On Jan 8, 2016, at 9:08 AM, Mark Simpson [email protected] wrote:

@tami-cyrus Let me know what you think of the different options for the underlining:

dotted
dashed
double
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[lsloan]

Dashed line looks nice. I'm surprised that double doesn't look double. The style probably has a border-width that's interfering with the appearance. Try removing the width or give it a value of medium or initial.

[verdammelt]

@lsloan quite right there was a border width. Here is a pic without the border width

@tami-cyrus what about this option?

[tami-cyrus]

Dashed please. Closer is fine.

Tami Reiss
CEO
http://www.cyrusinnovation.com/
@tamireiss
212-647-7186
Agile reinforcement to accelerate your development
Best place in NYC for female founders to build great products

Sent from a device smarter than a third grader, but with equally bad spelling habits.

On Jan 8, 2016, at 9:27 AM, Mark Simpson [email protected] wrote:

@lsloan quite right there was a border width. Here is a pic without the border width

@tami-cyrus what about this option?

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[verdammelt]

Dashed it is.

I will create a new issue for the creation of an user-option for the styling. This one will be closed with the above pull request.