Hi all,
A new 2.1.55 beta is now available:
https://betas.ankiweb.net/anki2.1.55.html#beta-3
Please let us know how it goes for you.
Previous thread: Anki 2.1.55 Beta 1-2
I always forget where to find the beta builds and have to track them down each time. To save you time, you can find them here.
3 Likes
I really appreciate all the UI improvements that have been done in this new version!
One thing I feel could be changed a bit, is the font size of the field names in the browser editor and add card window. It feels a lot larger than before. My editing font of the first 2 fields is set to 16, which is already pretty large, and still the label sizes seem even larger.
1 Like
Just FYI, the deck presets issue is still present in beta 3. @kleinerpirat
2 Likes
There seems to be a problem with the background colors in the browser. All my cards have white/grey alternating background. There’s no yellow for suspended colors, or flag colors. If you then do an action that changes the color, like add a flag, the background color does change, but then it disappears afterwards.
There are also no flag colors in the Cards - Flag or right click menu. And some flag colors in the left side of the browser turn white when you click on them.
Another thing I’ve noticed is when editing a field, the cursor doesn’t change to a text cursor.
3 Likes
Affirmative. I didn’t get around to it yet and it’s not my decision when new betas are released 
1 Like
The plan is to make it auto-hide in the future - like the macOS toolbar. This has to wait until the three webviews are unified though.
Proper full-screen support would mean showing nothing other than the review screen.
2 Likes
That’s a long standing issue with Wayland, sadly. I’m afraid we need to wait this out…
1 Like
Did I read somewhere that the new vertical layout of the browse window was optional? I would like to turn it off. It is true that I do prefer the individual note view better than before, but contrariwise I do not like what it does to the table portion, which I feel like is the main feature of the browse window.
If this layout is not yet a preference, I suggest it should be, because different people have different needs, such as different preferences about how many columns to display. The older design showed more columns but fewer rows, while this one shows a lot more rows but far fewer columns. In my case, I would rather see fewer rows at a time and more columns; in other words, the old way.
Some general UI comments about the buttons (and I know certain things are not yet finished, but I forget which, so please forgive me if this is one of those things).
The buttons in the add window (above) look inconsistent in two respects:
-
The format buttons should be the same height as the Field, Cards and Settings (or whatever we should call the gear icon).
-
The Type and Deck buttons at the top do not match the other buttons, and now they look out of place.
Lots of nice changes! I especially like the new “highlight line on hover” function in the main screen.
I personally am not a big fan of the Anki-redesign look. I don’t dislike it either, I used to use the add-on myself (which also has the perk of allowing you to customise almost anything via its easily accessible css files), but eventually uninstalled it as I found modern Anki’s default look to be more appealing.
The things I struggle with are the very round buttons, the padding between the lines in the main window (which looks pretty, but takes a lot of space, I have to scroll to see all my main decks; maybe also because I am on a relatively small laptop) and the top bar which again looks good but is a bit distracting, especially in light mode.
Overall, I find the new aesthetic clean and pleasing.
Some things I noticed (Windows 10 qt6):
- in light mode, the default card background color does not match the color of the top and bottom toolbars anymore
- the timer is displayed on top of the review count/answer buttons instead of the “More” button, and is also partly cut
-
the buttons of the type
<button></button>seem to have become bigger, with no border-radius nor margin-top?
-
lastly: I kinda preferred the “symmetrical + thick borders when active” look the Editor fields had in the last two betas. I like the new one too, but the previous was among my favourite UI changes introduced by .55
5 Likes
The release notes for the latest beta requested comments on the layout changes, so here goes:
In the Add dialogue and in the Browser, the feature where the background of the first field changes colour to notify of a duplicate seems to have disappeared again. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but I think it would be a nice feature to maintain.
Also, the different parts of the Browser seem less clearly distinguished now that the background of the scroll bars and other distinctive border elements have gone. Compare the two attached screenshots from 2.1.54 and 2.1.55b3. I think the latter version is more difficult to parse graphically, and I prefer the former, to be honest.
PS: Also the vertical spacing between the individual decks and subdecks on the main screen seems to have increased which makes it look somewhat less neat and organized, I think.
1 Like
The new layout is actually the horizontal one (it’s about the direction the widgets stack, not the direction of the split line).
You can set it to vertical in the View menu of the browser toolbar.
That’s because Damien wants to keep the native style of Qt widgets on macOS. Because there seems to be a rush in getting this new version out, I wasn’t able to get a separate style for mac going for the toolbar buttons before this new beta.
On Windows/Linux they should be consistent now.
1 Like
Thanks for that info. I wasn’t concious about this feature when I redesigned the toolbar buttons, as I don’t use it myself.
I’ll fix this along with the other issues mentioned above.
1 Like
Me too
The new look was part of Henrik’s PR that I finished a few days ago.
You can see his opinion here:
I agree
The new design is addictive…
But it’s impossible without some bugs 
… so here it is:
RTL:
In the “Fields” window the text “Explanation displayed in hover” etc. should be gray:
In addition, I still think that QRadiobutton should have a circle inside the marked circle, not a V. This distinguishes it from a regular check box and it does not reflect its behavior the user expects since the user will think that to cancel the option he has to click the box once more instead of moving the check to the corresponding box.
There is also a problem with the new method for explaining deck definitions - when you click on a certain term, besides opening the explanation window, the definition itself also changes - this is unexpected behavior for the normal user. Besides, the idea of a new window burdens the user who prefers as few dialogs as possible.
Another thing, the corners of the menus are not round. This is actually a complete function with all the design including night mode:
def menu_style(m):
m.setWindowFlags(
m.windowFlags() | QtCore.Qt.WindowType.FramelessWindowHint
)
m.setWindowFlags(
m.windowFlags() | QtCore.Qt.WindowType.NoDropShadowWindowHint
)
m.setAttribute(QtCore.Qt.WidgetAttribute.WA_TranslucentBackground)
# set stylesheet, add some padding to avoid overlap of selection with rounded corner
if night_mode_on:
m.setStyleSheet("""
QMenu{
background-color: #272828!important;
border: solid 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);
border-radius: 8px;
box-shadow: 0 4px 8px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 6px 20px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.19);
}
QMenu::item {
background-color: transparent;
font-size:12px;
padding:3px 15px;
margin:5px 10px;
color: #d7d7d7;
font-weight: 460;
}
QMenu::item:selected {
background-color: rgb(195, 195, 195);
border-radius: 4px;
}
""")
else:
m.setStyleSheet("""
QMenu{
background-color: hsla(0,0%,98%,.9);
border: solid 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);
border-radius: 8px;
box-shadow: 0 4px 8px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 6px 20px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.19);
}
QMenu::item {
background-color: transparent;
font-size:12px;
padding:3px 15px;
margin:5px 10px;
color: rgb(26, 26, 26);
font-weight: 460;
}
QMenu::item:selected {
background-color: rgb(195, 195, 195);
border-radius: 4px;
}
""")
Another bug: if an error message pops up, the software cannot be closed using the X in the corner (Windows 11) but only through the task manager.
2 Likes