First, it’s great to have more highlighting options. Highlighting has become an essential tool in my notetaking with Bear.
However, Bear 2.3 introduces new highlighting colors but removes the old high-visibility green in favor of a washed-out pastel. I appreciate the new options in theory, but strongly prefer the way it was and in fact built my highlighting around the way the old color interacted with text and theme. Failing to offer me the original option is shocking from an app that otherwise puts such a premium on aesthetics. Why not offer both options for those who relied on (or just liked) the old color?
This isn’t just a matter of taste. In 2.3, highlighted text doesn’t remain its original color–it becomes a darker variant of the highlighted color, at least when using light themes. That actually works to deemphasize the highlighted text; the degree of that deemphasis depends on which theme you’re using. And, if you want for any reason to highlight text in a note with two or more highlighting colors, you’d end up with three or more text colors–the original and the highlighted colors. It’s visually a mess.
Devs, please consider restoring the old highlighting option for those of us who have been using it for years and vastly prefer it.
I posted about it already (and haven’t received a response yet), but I have red-green colorblindness and the new colors are a step back for me unfortunately
I have difficulty recognising how it’s not just a question of taste. The new feature extends the functionality of highlighting and I think it has been implemented well from a visual point of view, even if I would like it more in the light themes if the font colour wasn’t changed to match the highlight colour. This is a matter of my personal taste and relatively arbitrary in terms of functionality.
In what way are you limited in functional terms if you restrict yourself to the main colour?
First, I never thought I would be so opinionated about a highlight color.
To be fair, the aesthetic/beauty of Bear is one of the two reasons why I pay for this app (Markdown is the other). I appreciate the options for colors but I hope the Devs add the light/original colors back (or at least make the default highlight the original highlight color).
After all, if functionality was solely my concern, there are plenty of other powerful note taking apps. It’s the atheistic of Bear that makes it the best in my opinion (and the markdown!)
The one thing I have in my favor is that, before the update, the colors were carefully selected to match the themes. Now, it feels like anything goes with anything. If design didn’t matter to me, and I thought this way, I might as well use Google Docs.
In old version there was just one highlight colour. This gave the freedom to choose the colour that best suited each individual theme. However, as soon as several highlight colours are introduced, green must be green and yellow must be yellow in each theme. Instead of demanding the old functionality back, try making a constructive suggestion. An option would have something absurd if you could choose between one colour and a set of colours in which only one colour can be used.
I don’t need a set of colors; I just need one suitable color. If you need a set of colors, that’s your problem, not mine. I don’t need to provide “constructive criticism” - I’m a consumer. I was satisfied before, but now I’m less satisfied. I’m doing a favor by taking my time to communicate this, and now I’m done.
In the second case, the new highlighting’s rendering of the text color works against the highlighting of the passage. For me, the text recedes into the highlighting rather than standing out, as it did with the original highlighting. One now has to bold the text to make the highlight stand out again with the original’s force.
To me, that’s a matter of functionality, not just a matter of taste. And for those for whom highlighting is an important part of noting, the aesthetics of highlighting are not a trivial matter.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood you. So your problem are not the new highlight colours but the colour of the fonts?
As far as I’m concerned, the text could still be kept in the same colour as without marking. I would also like it more. But in terms of functionality, at least I don’t care
To be clear, the suggestion is to add the old high-visibility green as an option to the new color lineup with highlighted text rendered within that green in its original color.
Sorry, I can’t understand how the suggestion you just made fits in with the reasoning you gave earlier. On the one hand, the colour of the font bothers you, but then you make a suggestion that relates to the colour of the marking
That part I would support. In the dark themes, which I don’t use at all, nothing has changed in this respect. When I make markings in a real book, the text colour doesn’t change either.
No, this is not a matter of taste. It’s a matter of accessibility. This feature doesn’t work for people with red-green colorblindness, but it could if more care was taken to make the color choices accessible.
I wish I could revert to the previous highlighter, which looked and worked great. This update is a step backward for me.
It also takes an extra mouse click, which I don’t love.
The highlight features were extended on high user demand. Rather than having an option to go back to old and limited functionality an option to have a more bright and garish colour set would make more sense. What do you think about that as long as those colours consider the aspect of accessibility? At least here in german stationery trade you can choose between pastell markers and those who offer garish neon colours. Why not in bear?
