Upcoming IT Changes - Mon 28th Oct 0000 UTC (Part 2)

Online Resources
22

I can’t log in to SOTA Map.

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As @M0VAZ John said,
I get an error when I try to log in to SOTA map.
I can log in to SOTA Waych.
Is this an issue with my environment?

Katsu JP3DGT

1 Like
23

No, it’ll be an issue with the SSO library used by SOTAMaps

2 Likes
24

I understand.
Thank you.

Katsu JP3DGT

25

I’ve kind of got it working for some of the pages - it may need a refresh or two to get it to a fit state.

3 Likes
26

Thanks so much for this huge upgrade, this kind of solid IT makes doing SOTA so smooth and satisfying. I have just a tiny comment about the colour palette for the points on sotawatch:

image

There are few quirks here, for example the eight point colour patch is the only one with a black number, which makes it oddly stand out. And the 6 has very little contrast between the number and the background, making the number blend in and hard to read, especially for the vision impaired, and in very bright conditions.

I wonder if you might consider instead something like the palette we see on sotl.as, with 1 point summits in green on the left, and 10 points in red on the right, and a very smooth transition between summits of 2-4-6-8 points:

image

I think sotl.as might be using ColorBrewer’s “RdYlGn” (Red-Yellow-Green) divergent palette. It has a narrower hue range and more gentle gradient of brightness which means white numbers are equally readable across all the colours on the palette. Could something similar be used for displaying points on sotawatch?

Anyway, just a thought, thanks again for this amazing IT!

10 Likes
27

I pulled the palette direct off SOTAMaps, but I can adjust if there’s enough desire to do so.

5 Likes
28

This is fixed.

Found another bug, and RBNHole is now pushing spots.

As per other thread, I have put in a thin translation layer, which seems to have resolved some client issues (eg, SOTA Goat and VK Port-a-Log). If I notice particular IPs hammering the translation layer, I will block and notify as required.

5 Likes
29

That is exactly what I thought when I first saw the new design. These new colours seem a bit too aggressive and randomly chosen for me whereas the colours in SOTL.as are a bit more “harmonic” …

Here is a comparison:

SOTAwatch
sotawatch_colors

SOTL.as
sotlas_colors

But probably other users will think completely different about this subject?

15 Likes
30

Colour is of course subjective. Of interest is we have several competing challenges to address:

  1. It has to look nice,
  2. It should be reasonably consistent between SOTA sites, and
  3. It should be accessible for those with colour deficiency.

Now, I simply started with number 2 - what SMP uses, and didn’t really go beyond that. Number 1 is going to be the subjective one, and no matter what gets chosen, someone will hate it. Number 3 is more important with an aging ham population, but I am no expert in that, other than Red->Green as a palette probably isn’t ideal, if the points score is missing from the block for whatever reason.

I’m not wedded to the colours, happy to listen to feedback.

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31

I’d probably prefer something like:

https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=diverging&scheme=BrBG&n=8

which is ok for colour blindness according to whatever parameters they use to determine that

2 Likes
32

Can you explain the color scheme of the “Frequency & mode” field in “Alerts”?
Some entries are in light blue, others in dark blue, but you can see “14-ssb” for example in both colors.

1 Like
33

It’s intended to be HF and VHF but people use all manner of formats for frequency that it gets confused. I may just switch to a single colour

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I was about to say. Some people still have not figured out the correct format. So now it looks like a quality control for pattern matching :sweat_smile:

1 Like
35

I think the same as you… I also find the colors aggressive… and I also find the color gradient in sotl.as more harmonious.

73 Armin

13 Likes
36

The problem we have is the dichotomy of units used for SOTAwatch and the cluster. We want MHz and the cluster uses kHz. I don’t know an easy way to enforce MHz that doesn’t involve a lot of number parsing. There’s nothing wrong with such code other than it needs writing and testing.

In the SMS spotter parser it checks for a variety of formats for the separator. Europeans use a comma and “English” countries use a period for the decimal separator, i.e. 14,235MHz and 14.235MHz. The parser changes commas and some other characters that were easy to type in the days of T9 predictive keyboards into a period and then it checked there was only one. So 14,235 became 14.235 and was accepted. 14235 would be rejected and 14,235.0 would also be reject. It’s not easy and fraught with pitfalls.

We’ll get there. It will just take a bit of time and some conditioning of the users.

1 Like
37

Also, it really helps if the text is the same colour whatever the number, and if there’s going to be a dark/light theme flip then the colours need to work with both black and white text. Colour scales like this are complicated… :man_shrugging:

2 Likes
38

How about an option to pick your own colours? :wink:

39

It appears to be fixed now.

40

I love the new look, thank you for all your work!

The Sotl.as colour progression seems intuitive to me, from green = low to red = high, without having to read the numbers each time.
Numbers would be important to those with a visual impairment, though…

3 Likes
41

We have several themes under the settings. I’m trying out a monochrome-ish version now that looks OK, but I won’t get a chance to push it until tomorrow morning at least.

Edit:

image
image397×680 44 KB

4 Likes