• Tyfud@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s required for contrast detection.

      Also, if it was placed on something with a black background, the borders would bleed into the background and be unrecognizable when scanning.

      This is why graphic artists don’t get to determine functional standards.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 months ago

        The error correction isn’t enough to overcome a bad background?

        My memories of the early days of designing these things for ad clients (we’re talking 2010-11) were that like 20% “damage” was allowed before scanning became difficult. So of course my art director wanted to put cutesy shit all over them to be “unique”.

        I just didn’t want the client to ask when it didn’t work because their phones didn’t like them.

        • zerofk@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          People like your art director are the reason people like my product manager want us to write code to verify QR codes, so that our clients can tell their clients that they forgot the quiet zone and their client’s clients may have trouble reading the code.

          Damn that’s a lot of levels of clients.

        • Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          Error correction helps a scanner account for portions of the code being obscured/unreadable, whereas a bad background can make a code not even recognizable as a code in the first place. (depending on the algorithm used, how bad it is, yadda yadda)

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      I helped my wife make a qr code quilt (it says “quilt”). There wasn’t quite enough border around it, and you can get it to scan, but it’s not super reliable.

    • quilan@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It is - without the quiet zone, it makes detecting the locator pattern really difficult, especially in one’s looking for the 1:1:3:1:1 ratio.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I spent 20 years in graphic design shit and wish I’d thought of something as cool as “quiet zone”.

    • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I’ve seen at least one company press kit in rules on how to display their logo refer to it as “respect distance”.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’ve usually used “clear space” because that’s common with spaces around logos but i like respect distance. though I don’t know what people in general would think of it after social distancing being associated with a terrible period of our lives.

    • MeatPilot@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Personally I’m going to start saying “quiet zone” instead white space. I’ll probably get dumb looks anyway.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    everything is. whitespace is an important part of graphic design, especially margins. think about text that’s too close to the edge is the page or screen.

    • humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      especially margins

      Since it has the background color of the QR code, it’s probably padding, not margin.

      ^someone please rescue me from frontend dev^

      • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Here here, have some Chai. Take a break and everything.should.be.ok

        Edit: I’ve been free from web dev too long and it shows. Don’t even know my assertions anymore.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        i was speaking generally, which is why I mentioned pages as well as screens. that’s more of a web design distinction; never really heard of padding in any other context.

        but if you were to have a qr code on your website, you’re right, making it padding would make more sense since the border, real or imaginary, would be outside the quiet zone because it’s technically part of the code.

        • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          that’s more of a web design distinction

          I think that was the point of “someone rescue me from frontend dev” - if they’re doing so much frontend design work that they instinctively get pedantic about padding vs. margin, they need help.

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            yeah I know, but that’s still information out there and if anyone’s reading it’s nice to clarify. I both clarified and situationally agreed with them.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Yes, the Quiet Zone is part of the QR spec.

      But the bottom one is still a QR code, it’s just an out-of-spec QR code. Most QR readers will still process it just fine, but there’s greater room for error depending on what surrounds the code itself.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          i hate coding for browsers. To that end, I do not actually know css. I just called it padding when I wrote my own qr code library, because it was easier to say than “quiet zone”.

          Just like “dots” or “pixels” are easier to say than “modules”

  • elgordino@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    My current bugbear with QR codes is that lots of folks have started putting their company logo in the middle of the code.

    Sure it still works but it makes the error correction work harder so your users need to be nearer or have better cameras than they would otherwise. Annoying.

    • LostXOR@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      I hate that so much. Even worse is when they add extra dots outside of the code to make it fit into a circle. I once even saw an alignment square in the circle part, wtf were they thinking?

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s not just ugly, they don’t scan properly. I’ve had this problem many times on codes without padding because my email client or browser was set to use a dark theme.

    It often goes unnoticed because most people are using a white or clear background that gives enough contrast.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure that empty white space around it is to keep anything trying to read the QR code from getting confused by background noise.

    • regeya@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’m saving this for later, I have people send me print ads (yeah really) and this will help.

  • dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I’m also bothered by very detailed QR codes. Milk cartons in my country had a QR-code for their website. It would be a ~10 letter url, maybe with a short path. But for some reason, the QR code was extremely detailed, as if it contained several kilobytes of data. I’m not sure if there were a large number of tracking-related parameters in the url, but it was very obviously unreasonably large.

    • renzev@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Strongly agree on this one. Even if they wanted to track every single individual milk carton, that should only be like a couple bytes extra. Overly complex QR codes look ugly and are harder to scan

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The complexity is likely a product of redundancy and error correction in the QR code rather than making it unique. You begin to run into issues with camera resolution and whatnot, but in theory those codes are likely more reliable.

          • Noxy@yiffit.net
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            2 months ago

            yeah, qr codes have different levels of error correction that you can specify, could very be well turned up to the max

            or the url has a ton of tracking params appended to it for some reason

            • dan@upvote.au
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              2 months ago

              or the url has a ton of tracking params appended to it for some reason

              Ideally you should use a short URL that redirects to the full URL. The tracking parameters should be on the long URL, not the short one.

              • Noxy@yiffit.net
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                2 months ago

                Why is that ideal? Seems more prone to problems if the short URL service shuts down or suffers outages.

                • dan@upvote.au
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                  2 months ago

                  You don’t have to use a third-party short URL service. It can be hosted on your own site.

                  A lot of people are already using a third-party short URL service like qrco.de because they don’t realise you don’t actually need a service like that to make a QR code.

  • Nick@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My QR Code Scanner app can recognize Qr codes in all sizes and from many angles but it won’t ever scan the ones without border, like if I’m on dark mode on some websites

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That’s because the border is part of the code, otherwise it can’t ‘see’ the three boxes that it uses for orientation.