[2025] Event suggestions / feedback 💜

Somehow, I find the Canvas event isn't getting much visibility on Lemmy and Mastodon. I am subscribed to the community and hashtag, but I will hardly see it popping in my feed without doom scrolling.

If the event visibility could improve,I think a lot more people would be interested to join and participate. Maybe we could reach out to admins from big and medium instances and ask if they are interested to pin a post for the next canvas, propose a template for people to participate in, something like that.

visibility always seems to be a pain point for this event :/
this year i did create the fediverse.events api which is intended for app developers to add event details into the app, but afaik it wasn't utilized this year
we do have some plans for next year to help get the word out more, so fingers crossed it'll be better next year 🤞
Internal Tracking

Feature request: Audio chime when my pixel reserve is full.

Edit: Yes Sugar, I am aware of the audio chime for single pixels :)

Ategon showed interest in the chat on making the notification chime configurable. So you could for example have it chiming when it's full, or for any number of pixels.
ahh i see you were watching ategon's liveee lmao
you probably already heard it from our discussion there, but ategon has plans for more audio cues (i've also created an issue for it)
- Awesome! Can't wait for next year! Thanks for all the work you do for us!

I noticed a very minor typo: the login button labeled "I'm already apart of the fediverse" should read "I'm already a part of the fediverse."

Otherwise it was great. The canvas size and cool-down period both felt right. The final artwork looks good. Thanks for putting on the event again!

wdym it was always spelled like that 😆
thank you for participating once again, as always it's super fun to host :)

Bug: I seemed to be able to effectively store up 7 pixels, not 6.

How? The maximum the UI displays is 6/6, but after receiving the 6th pixel, there seems to be an invisible 30 second timer which runs in the background. When I place my next pixel, the timer counts down not from 30, but from whatever the invisible timer was at. If the timer had reached 0, I immediately received an additional pixel.

I'm not complaining about the extra pixel, but it would be nice for the UI to match :)

I would suggest looking into the colour picking from a template function. It is quite frustrating when it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't and also triggers when you use your middle mouse button to pan.

I would even love it when there is an option to disable it all together, so that the one hardware element that is used for navigation in so many other applications is fully working on the canvas as well.

It was great though that the software and server was throughout the event so stable, so kudos to that!

the template color picking is a bit annoying rn, i've created an issue to track it here
i've also added an issue for allowing to switch panning to middle click instead of left click
and finally, thank you for participating :) a lot of effort goes into making this event run smoothly and i'm glad you enjoyed it

Unrelated, but my last second pixel placement didn't work out. I waited till last second and it already said Canvas frozen :(

Adding to DmMacniel's suggestion - picking colors from pixels placed on canvas would be nice, as the color pallette differs when certain theme settings are set in browser. Also, template toggle button would be nice to see on desktop

DmMacniel's comment for reference
picking colors is possible on desktop by middle clicking, but it wasn't made super obvious (made #177 for this)
i'll also look into seeing if it's possible to prevent extensions from changing the palette colors (#178)
a toggle template keybind also existed, but it could be more descriptive like a google maps-style overlay toggle system (like #144)
- For some reason, color picking never worked consistently for me, especially after a disconnect, when picking would always pick black instead.

It is excellent, thank you for doing it.

thank you! i'm glad that you enjoyed it :)

This was great, as always. A couple of super minor QoL things:

Would it be possible to keep the undo button available for a few extra seconds?
Is better color detection for templates possible? I saw a couple of cases where certain pixels in the image were clearly one color, but the number/symbol/dot guides said they were something different (see the programming.dev template, for example).

thank you, i'm glad you enjoyed it! :) it's always a blast to run
extending the undo timeout would be a good idea, i've added it to the issue tracker to keep track of progress on it (experimentation)
related to the templating color detection, i've heard a couple people recommend better templating support so i've consolidated them into this issue

If there are constroversial pixel wars (see the whole hungary saga) maybe make a subchat on the matrix for that

yeah that chat did get a bit spicy... the staff is figuring something out :)
Internal Tracking

Change the community logo to be in pixel art!

I got logged off a bit too often and had some issues with pixels not placing when I had an active overlay (whether it was a template or the grid), was that common/being looked into or was it just me? (Using Safari from mobile).

Other than that though, I had definitely less issues than the past years, and it was definitely a good time as always. Canvas size was perfect imo, unless the fediverse has significant growth by then (which god I hope it does), next year I’d suggest making it 500x500 again, or at most 600x600. I’d also prefer if it was in Fall or Winter instead, but that’s just my preference.

Either way, thanks for this year too!

glad you enjoyed the event! :)
i wasn't aware of any mobile issues, but then again it wasn't tested very thoroughly... i've added it to the issue tracker so it doesn't get lost