Fixed Poll - Check Mark Rendering

[Shadab]

Can anyone post up a tiny screen shot of what it is supposed to look like?

Here you go:

 

[James]

This has been an issue as long as I can remember on this site. I have no idea what is supposed to show up.

Can anyone post up a tiny screen shot of what it is supposed to look like?

 

[Dean]

Thanks! I had no idea it was a check mark, it has always shown up as an undisplayable (sp?) character for me, like the Chinese posts in the test forum.

 

[James]

I've just noticed that the tick renders much more smoothly in whatever browser Shadab is using mine looks so bad in Chrome!

 

[Shadab]

I've just noticed that the tick renders much more smoothly in whatever browser Shadab is using mine looks so bad in Chrome!

It renders exactly the same to me whichever browser I use:
Firefox 3.6.8 (screenshot taken in), Chrome 6b, Opera 10.61, Safari 5.0.1, IE8.

If you are on windows, do you have ClearType enabled?
Turn it on, if not. The text looks a lot better with CT turned on.

 

[Dean]

What is clear type? Window item? Fire fox?

 

[Paul B]

What is clear type? Window item? Fire fox?

Windows. Control Panel.

 

[James]

Yeah, I have ClearType enabled. It still renders badly (as you can see in my screenshot above).

EDIT: Works okay after a Chrome restart.

 

[Dean]

Ok, I googled and found some marginally useful instructions from microsoft. My steps were not exactly these, but close enough.

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
2. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
3. Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.

I will go look for a symbol on a poll to look at, but must say 2 things:

• Now that clear type is on xf looks Horrible. Every character is now blurry. Whatever happens with regards to the poll check mark issue I will leave it off.
• Our users are not capable of turning their clear type on/off. Before they take the time to do that they will go to my competitions forums.

 

[Dean]

I went to a test poll, no difference, still get the strange character instead of the check mark.

 

[Cezz]

Our users are not capable of turning their clear type on/off. Before they take the time to do that they will go to my competitions forums.

Cleartype isn't anything to do with this check, it was a suggestion to make it look less jagged... However it is a personal preference and has to be tuned...

As for the check mark it just seems to be that you are missing a number of charsets on your PC... like you said you have the same problem with the Chinese threads etc on here it is because you don't have the Chinese charset installed on your PC... Windows actually installs most of them as standard now so I am surprised you don't...

✇✈✉✌✍✎✏✐✑✒✓✔✕✖✗✘✙✚✛✜✝✞✟✠✡✢✣✤✥✦✧✩✪✫✬✭✮

 

[James]

ClearType does need a lot of adjusting for personal preference. When you first enable it, it looks blurred.

 

[Dean]

Cleartype isn't anything to do with this check, it was a suggestion to make it look less jagged... However it is a personal preference and has to be tuned...

As for the check mark it just seems to be that you are missing a number of charsets on your PC... like you said you have the same problem with the Chinese threads etc on here it is because you don't have the Chinese charset installed on your PC... Windows actually installs most of them as standard now so I am surprised you don't...

✇✈✉✌✍✎✏✐✑✒✓✔✕✖✗✘✙✚✛✜✝✞✟✠✡✢✣✤✥✦✧✩✪✫✬✭✮

Thank you for clarifying the clear type. I can see an airplane in the 2nd place in that long string, the rest are non-displayable characters.

 

[Luke F]

Could do some browser/OS sniffing and use the tick character in Webdings, with a fallback to the unicode tick in non-Windows OSes.

 

[Paul B]

Why not just make the option you voted for bolded?
An extra option would be a tooltip on mouseover - "You voted for this option".

That resolves any problems with graphics/characters then.

 

[Dean]

LOL... I think people have issues with bold/not bold too, based on some screen shots, hence one of the reasons for the dot in front of an unread thread.

Any character universally displayed could work: < * ! <---

Just a wild idea, I am sure this will be fixed in an elegant way.

 

[Brandon_R]

Why not just make the option you voted for bolded?
An extra option would be a tooltip on mouseover - "You voted for this option".

That resolves any problems with graphics/characters then.

That solves the problem without adding a new graphic to the set. Liked.

 

[James]

The only problem is that bold doesn't stand out when using OS X. Maybe italics.

 

[Shadab]

I'd vote for bold and a star * in place of the existing check-mark
So users with excessive font smoothing can identify the voted options easily as well.

It would be sad to see this nice check-mark go away, though. :(

 

[Dean]

Italics work. Or even a slightly larger font?

Leaving the strange character would not be ideal. If I cannot see the check mark, I am sure there are many on our forum would not be able to see it.

Bolding does seem to have issues, which is quite strange because that works really well in vb3.x