Honestly i know its probably the last thing on your list if it even is on your list, but i feel snap! can go through a major re-design to look better. This shouldnt change much and i just feel a clean simple modern approach can make a big difference. I would be willing to draw up re-designed models if you need.
Do you know about "Flat design"? Give it a try, see if you like it.
... and if you don't like the blinding white background with flat design, I have a userscript that adds a dark flat theme.
- the colors are extremely hard if your colorblind
- the flat design blocks are much better but they have a weird border. doesnt look like they fit correctly
The borders were added to be able to see blocks in the same category on top of each other. I think you would prefer to be able to see the edges of a block, rather then guess.
but you can have edges and still make it much nicer looking
thanks, but no.
Thats the thing though, it's not supposed to look modern.
Snap! is based off of BYOB, which was originally a mod of Scratch 1.3(?), and the design has changed very minimaly since then.
Try Flat Design, though the white background hurts, you can try ego-lays aforementioned userscript to make it dark (which I plan to interpret into a chrome extension I've been making, and I've been meaning to talk to @ego-lay_atman-bay about)
The thing is, if we did your favorite redesign, that would make you happy, but then someone else would want a different redesign. This is a game we can't win, so we're not going to try.
But if there is a specific problem related to color blindness that we could fix, we'd welcome hearing about it.
ahh. ok. the colors no matter what you do will always be a struggle for someone because everyone is different. but you can possibly add colorblind filters to the page or the ability to change block colors
OK. We are planning a big effort on accessibility, driven by legal requirements for public web sites at the University of California. So this isn't going to happen tomorrow, but it's not going to be Real Soon Now™ either.
Like how scratch got a purple theme?
I don't know this story, but if it's about accessibility, then yeah, like that.
Scratch essentially entirely rebranded to purple "so [Scratch] can be more accessible and used by everyone"
Here is some info about the Scratch high contrast blocks.
Huh, interesting. Thanks. But what does that have to do with "purple"? They seem to have lightened all the block backgrounds and turned the text to black.
I'm trying to think about how this design approach would change the way we do zebra coloring. Their new colors are (kinda) like our lighter alternate colors for zebra coloring. We could try having pairs of light and very-light colors (all with black text), or we could make our main colors darker than they are now (keeping the white text).
I don't think the high contrast setting has anything to do with a purple theme. Part of the UI is purple with and without it:
But then shouldn't the text be white? Black text on dark background is hard to see.
I like using lighter blocks and black text very much. It gives you more freedom for instance if you want to print blocks on paper.
Can you send me the color codes of your blocks? I am experimenting with other color codes for the MicroBlocks blocks.