geerlingguy
ePub Dark Icons on Dark Background
Hello, I noticed something while reading this in Google Books so just wanted to mention. Not like it's a big deal but figured id let you know anyway. Especially since the link to the issue tracker is on that page.
The tip icons (at least) are invisible when reading on dark background like the screenshot below.
Perhaps it would be good to outline them? Or even making them a dim grey may be sufficient.
Interesting... this is something I hadn't noticed since I either read the PDF or .mobi on my Paperwhite (which doesn't do dark mode like a tablet reader).
This is something that would have to be fixed by LeanPub, since those icons are generated by their Markdown parser. I'll email them and see what they have to say. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
I got a reply, and they said they'd look into a fix (and were extremely appreciative of the detail in this issue!), but no promises on a timeline. Hopefully 'soon™' :)
It looks like there may also be other issues when reading the book in Calibres, with a custom stylesheet not defining the base text colors... from another reader:
As somebody who often works in the late hours, I prefer a dark desktop theme, and applications that support that. For reading (and managing) eBooks I use Calibre, and the Reader python module will show ‘Ansible for DevOps’ as lightest gray text on a dark background. This works very well with text and graphics.
Exceptions are the ‘highlighted information’ about certain topics, the info.blurbs, warning.blurbs and tip.blurbs. Those will render as very light gray on white, as the enclosed screenshot outlines. This might very well be a problem of Calibres’ Reader, but it looks as if the formatting of the eBook explicitly asks for this in the stylesheet.css by declaring ‘background-color: white;’. In that case, the font color should to be set explicitly as well, to avoid the automatic light font on the defined white background. Even better if the background would somehow only highlight the text by being opaque.
Same issue here on Apple iBooks (iPad and iPhone; Screenshot is from the iPhone).
For a while, I wondered about the weird formatting as I was unaware that there are icons at the side... Only when referring to the PDF I realized my error... :)
Would be great if there was an easy solution (the PDF is too small to read on the iPhone, so not an option).
Reason for edit: reduced size of screenshot
The LeanPub admins also wanted to make sure I linked to a help doc entry here: How can I read a Leanpub ebook? What apps or devices do you recommend?.
They note that proper support for every app is impossible, but they strive to make the ebook formats as universal as possible. So if in doubt, try to use one of the apps they officially target and test on :)
A new version (1.23) has been provided by Leanpub. It exhibits the same problems.
Here is a picture of the calibre Reader (4.15 on macOS 10.14):
Some things have changed, but I find it worse now.
Just a quick update.
The new version 2.0 of Ansible for DevOps was published. It looks almost perfect in iBooks. The display in calibre is exactly as with the version 1.23 above (not good).
@maelcum - Thanks for the update! Maybe iBooks itself is updated to work a little better, along with LeanPub updating it's ePub output. Hopefully this can be resolved somehow soon!