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[ssontech]

There have been a number of requests for a darker user interface color scheme. Karl Holt showed one in his Creative Cow tutorial, which was achieved using the Windows XP appearance manager.

I am investigating adding native support for a darker scheme (the color preference already allow much of the necessary flexibility), and am curious what people thought of it, see poll above...

For a sample screen shot, see http://www.ssontech.com/uploads/grayui.jpg

Note: the colors themselves are configurable via the existing Edit/Edit Preferences mechanism, with a few additions. The chosen colors just have to contrast a bit with some of the existing bitmapped graphics.

[ccirelli]

Hi Russ,

Just chiming in on this again - yes, please either do away with white, or better yet, allow us to set the UI colors in SE. White kills me. A medium-gray would be much easier on the eyes.

AE 6.5 does this well with a "slider" control; Combustion is set to a medium/dark gray; Carrara / Hexagon have a really nice dark slate blue/gray; just a few examples.

It may seem trivial to some, but a neutral UI really helps with eye fatigue, seeing color, etc. Thanks for your attention on this, it's much appreciated-

craig

[ssontech]

Didya look at the picture I linked to? And as I said, the colors are configurable.

Just to point out to everyone, it's not like white is a "wrong" choice. Obviously both Microsoft and Apple carefully chose the white interface schemes on which SynthEyes is based, Apple apparently thinking they had it so so right that they don't give you a way to change it [unlike Microsoft!] The white interfaces are good for typically bright office environments, the darker colors for darker studio environments....

Also, note that the Mac version will still have to have black lettering for miscellaneous text: in the example, checkboxes like "Slow but sure", labels such as "World Size", the "Error: ..." and the status line at the bottom --- though buttons like Go! will have white text since they are SynthEyes specials. Like I said, OS X really doesn't want to let you change some stuff...

[LFGabel]

Russ, you could also write your own custom GUI and escape from both M$ and Apple!

[ccirelli]

[ssontech]

Mac image is at http://www.ssontech.com/images/grayuiMac.jpg

[LFGabel]

That looks nice. I like the way the primary colors are slightly muted. Can we do this on the PC version, like for the red, blue & green, etc.?

[ccirelli]

[ssontech]

Lee-

Some of the colors look to have been beaten down a bit by compression and the mac screen capture seems to run in CMYK space and has to be converted back. The colors for a lot of things are (and have been) customizable from the preferences panel.

[bonsak]

Hi
I wonder what the entery for the interface backgound color is called in the preference dropdown meny.
I can find everything else but not the general background color.

Regards
Bonsak
(2006.0.1005)

[ccirelli]

[bonsak]

I see, thanks.

Regards
Bonsak

[ssontech]

Just to confirm, back in the lab here, I have a version that lets you change the colors of the background and text and a bunch of other new such color controls so that you can achieve the dark-look user interface --- A on a mac, and B on a PC without changing the overall system preferences. When you do a reset preferences, this new build gives you the option to select a set of dark-UI default colors, or the current light-UI default colors. Of course you can change the colors individually too if you like.

This feature will appear when the next "build" is released. I don't have a particular release schedule for this; it will include other riffraff as well (Lobby if you like.)

PC users can achieve a dark UI (as Karl did in the tutorial) by changing their system preferences, though of course that affects all programs on their system, and some may not be too happy about it.

[ccirelli]

Thanks Russ! This is really great, especially since it gives everyone a choice. VERY cool.

I'll be picking up the full / non-demo version this week!