FreeCAD looks for a new default background color

[Mikhail222]

that would be relative to the author.

Only sort of. The final decision is of course subjective, but there is a lot just to be worked through to create a full color set where e.g. all the colors in sketcher are visible. If you have followed the previous discussion about uwestoehrs premature color change then you see that that was a problem.

I read through, so the main question is about the default theme.
Ok, It implies ONE theme, so it should be decided light or dark in the first place, right?
IMO light is better, and that is AFAIK most systems use by default. Is it already decided?
If so then just some light gray background and black lines would be the way to start with, can't do much wrong here.
Look e.g. into recent Inventor videos.

[chrisb]

Look e.g. into recent Inventor videos.

Let me put it like this: if I wanted to use Inventor, I would use Inventor. One way to go would be the development of an install wizard where you can among others choose a color set. There was recently work presented here on the forum.

[Mikhail222]

One way to go would be the development of an install wizard where you can among others choose a color set. There was recently work presented here on the forum.

Well I am interested in creating a theme and I'm a designer. But from the first glance I see not so many UI elements can be changed at least from the prefs menu or config.
Most notably, e.g. line thickness/styles in Sketcher and some colors are fixed. Using varios line thickness or dotted lines for e.g. construction geometry could improve the look and legibility a lot. I guess more can be done via Python API. So more than just a passer-by interest is needed.

Common practice for themes is an editable text config file in some common format like json, so the devs don't have to create or change dedicated menus for these configuration, so it is a good compromize for all.

[chrisb]

Most notably, e.g. line thickness/styles in Sketcher and some colors are fixed. Using varios line thickness or dotted lines for e.g. construction geometry could improve the look and legibility a lot. I guess more can be done via Python API. So more than just a passer-by interest is needed.

It's a known feature request. Sadly, your guess is wrong, you can only change the thickness of all together. So for now you should create color sets which
- transport the information they should, e.g. green for ok, red for not ok
- are distinguishable in front of the background
- are distinguishable in the appropriate context from each other,

Common practice for themes is an editable text config file

It's all there: it's the preference packs mentioned in the other topic.

[bombillazo]

I'm a fan of the Blender dark background:

[maxwxyz]

I think it's not mainly the background color/gradient but moreover the overall look of icons, borders and titles. The Blender remake indeed was a huge benefit and increased the user base (and consequently developer base plus funding) like never seen before.
I am also a fan of the Blender UI.

[Hologram]

@Hologram did you modify a pre-existing stylesheet? There is Blender stylesheet https://github.com/pgilfernandez/FreeCA ... stylesheet perhaps you'd be open to maintaining it ?

@Kunda1 No sorry, I don't have any Qt knowledge, so I don't think I will be able to maintain any of this. I have only ever done keyboard shortcut modifications and the UI colours and haven't even used FreeCAD yet...

That said, I did make a start on modifying the UI colours as I very much disliked the presets. This is what I currently have:

UI theme.png (242.8 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

Not really satisfied with the greens that were there from the Darker-Green preset, maybe I'll end up changing it later. I would have liked a darker background colour than this, but seeing as how the background colour is so omni-present in the interface, it gets too much.

I do need to figure out all the colour assignments and what they do. I have added some notes for myself alongside the colour codes.

UI theme codes.png (123.74 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

What other settings are also easily modifiable for the user?
I.e. it would be nice if you could get a gradient on the toolbars like this:

Toolbar gradient.png (40.72 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

Or add roundness to UI items:

Roundness.gif (249.93 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

[Hologram]

Also, small tip, get Microsoft Powertools. It has a colour picker you can use to distil a colour theme from another piece of software you may like (e.g. there are many great Blender themes out there).

[Hologram]

Also, please get rid of the purple colour background in recent files and the gradient background in the thumbnails. Those look very archaic to me.
For the recent files, the hexcode (#4F5874) is nowhere to be found in the style sheet.
E: Found it. It's in the preferences > start > fonts and colours

Recent files background.png (134.71 KiB) Viewed 998 times

[onekk]

That said, I did make a start on modifying the UI colours as I very much disliked the presets. This is what I currently have:
UI theme.png
Not really satisfied with the greens that were there from the Darker-Green preset, maybe I'll end up changing it later. I would have liked a darker background colour than this, but seeing as how the background colour is so omni-present in the interface, it gets too much.

I do need to figure out all the colour assignments and what they do. I have added some notes for myself alongside the colour codes.
UI theme codes.png

Main problem here is that colors have some "meaning" on some WB, so it is not a matter of like or "not like", it is a matter of functionality and signaling things, in the UI.

There are some colors that have some meaning, as green as example for a "full constrained" sketch or orange for a "redudant constraints", and some other that have less importance.

So it is more to do a tuning knowing some "background meanings" as many users are used to see some sort colors as "signals" that something is done "good" or "bad".

I agree that some tuning is advisable, but as example for some colors, if you want to follow a tutorials it is hard to follow if you have changed some colors and they don't reflect anymore these meanings.

So probably some "guidelines should be written" to change UI colors for FreeCAD due to this fact.

Some colors are not even (yet) modificable as they are hardcoded in the code (bad wording I know) so developers are discussion on how to change these colors and on if and eventually how to make them customizable as due to these "meanings" it is probably to avoid a profliferations of "custom styles".

IMHO a dark them and a light theme, maybe with some eye to "colour blindness" people will suffice, eventually make some customizations on the "gradient side", ie a green is always a green eventually you could tune this color among some "shades of green" (in case of a light theme" or maybe some "shades of the color chosen for a dark theme", at least for the "functional part" if you want the windows decorations in a way or another it is not a problem you may choose pink on orange for what it matter but the drawing window must have functionality as the first requisite, every consideration about "modern UI" and "modern color palettes" should be placed in second place in favour of "consistency and functionality", as probably you will spend hour on "drafting" on FreeCAD and for sure "bell and whistles" could "tire the eye". Some choices should be dictated by ergonomy and not by "artistic considerations".

Kind Regards

Carlo D.