On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 8:20 PM, <fons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 07:55:09PM +0400, alex stone wrote: > >> > Not being agressive is important. You should be able to look at a >> > screen full of these for hours, without eye strain or getting >> > nervous. >> >> Correct. And as a user, it might be fair to say i spend, and have >> spent, more time looking at apps for prolonged periods than most devs. >> Saturated colours might seem a good idea at the time, but in my humble >> experience, it's a sure fire recipe for headaches, feelings of ill >> intent, bleeding eyes, the urge to decapitate something, monitor >> destruction, etc, when used for any length of time on a regular >> basis. > > :-) Also, any attempt to base the colors for a non-trivial audio > app on desktop themes is likely to produce something horrible. > Getting layout and colors right is IMHO part of designing the app, > and after that nothing should interfere with it. > > Having the choice between a 'dark' and 'light' version does make > sense. But I find it quite difficult to get any light one right, > and e.g. Ardour's light theme doesn't work at all or me. > > What do you (Alex) prefer ? > > Ciao, > > -- > FA > > There are three of them, and Alleline. > > I think you've got it about right for the rev1 background. It's neutral, and doesn't "draw the eye" away from the controls. Dark themes generally, imho, suffer from the same thing. In order to make the controls, or other visual components, stand out on a dark theme, devs seem to favour the complete opposite, with garish colours, each one competing with the next for the user's "eye". In other words, very little middle ground. The light theme in Ardour doesn't work for me at all, as it's all of the same thing, lighter upon lighter. My benchmark is eye strain, and headaches. The Ardour light theme gave me both after extended use. (And i hasten to say, this is not restricted to Ardour. ) I'm cautious by experience with recommending a particular app as an example, but there are some that definitely don't fit the bill for extended use, imho. Sawstudio, Ableton live, early Sequoia and Samplitude all fail in my view as they're built on extremes, with garish colours, or conversely all nearly the same colour in sections inhibiting any intent of relaxed use. I've never liked Logic's "mission brown" background, but it doesn't induce eyestrain or headaches for me with extended use, to be fair. Cubase and nuendo are fairly neutral, but have had versions that swayed from one extreme to another. Like using every instrument in an orchestra at once, it only takes a short time for the ear to dull, and for unique sound colours to disappear in to the wall of "grey". I think the same thing applies to visual design, and elegant restraint serves for a better foundation. I would say that from a power user perspective, neutral to mildly dark backgrounds are most conducive to extended use, and both elegant and restrained use of colour seems to be the most pleasant user experience. Anything stronger in intensity, or saturation, wears the eyes out pretty quickly. I'd also say that if a dev finds himself having to intensify the colour of a knob or button to make it "stand out", then something's wrong with the base colour in the first place. My views are my own, of course, and others will disagree on what constitutes a good appearance use case for them. -- www.openoctave.org midi-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx development-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
