Those look better now. Still not quite sure what caused the garbled flags, but glad it’s fixed.
Regarding colors, they may feel “heavy”, but, I think, they are actually more accurate now, as the author of the new ones used the official (where available) color codes for each one (n.b., Russia’s colors are wrong because an older flag was used — hopefully it will be fixed). There may be some slightly inaccurate tones from the scaling down an image to so few pixels, but otherwise, on average, the new colors should be more accurate that before.
A few flags had been incorrect for several years and some were missing. The new set of flags addresses most of those issues.
The designer of the previous set hasn’t update them for over a decade, so we had to move to something different as we don’t have the skills to be adding/editing flags ourselves.
That is true and I’m not sure what’s causing this as Nepal’s flag seems correct even though its shape is even less common than Switzerland’s squared one. Will report in case the author wants to address this.
As with most changes, I won’t be able to make everyone happy at the same time and this is something we might not be able to help with.
The trouble comes from trying to squeeze detailed elements into so few pixels and also from how they were designed. While the older set was designed to be displayed at that (and only that) tiny size, the new set is described in much more detail so that it can be displayed in large size, and then the small versions are created by scaling down from the large ones — inevitably, some detail is lost on the downscaling.
An example to explain this. Take the US flag highlighted on the right here
I completely agree it looks more detailed. But It’s also wrong: the USA flag has 13 horizontal red-and-white stripes, while the previous set illustrated it as having 11 red-and-white stripes. Also, the blue part of the flag should be just 40% of the width and about half of the height, but the older version was showing with over half of the width and more than half of the height. Lastly, all flags on the older set had a styled border of sorts around them to make them look glossy, but the border doesn’t actually belong to the flag. The new ones don’t have a border which is more accurate with the actual flags (just as they are here on the forum).
But, again, I reckon the new ones are not perfect: some parts are now less detailed and there’s no denying about it. If you happen to have a high resolution screen (retina displays, some smartphones), you may actually be able to seeing them in more detail now, as we are using a bigger image, but otherwise, for detailed elements, it will now look more fuzzy in some places.
With all this said, there’s still some improvements that are coming that will partially address some of this issues. One (partial) solution for the above is to make the flags bigger: more pixels = more detailed. But, right now, most of the website uses a font size that would make the flag too tall next to the text. However, we have (separate) plans to update the font size throughout the website to help with legibility, and that will give room for the flag to have some extra pixels in height which will allow more detail to be used. I don’t have any date for these updates, but it’s coming.
For now, I would appreciate reports on any outdated/wrong flags so that I try can report them to the author of the new set. For now, I’m aware of
– Martinique (outdated, since 4 days ago!)
– Mauritania (outdated)
– Colors of Russia’s flag
Mind that we have no guarantee that these will addressed by the author of the flags, but having the issues reported will be a step in the right direction.
