[Qt-creator] Qt Creator flat style UI design + new Light theme

Portale Alessandro Alessandro.Portale at theqtcompany.com
Wed Feb 11 11:00:23 CET 2015


Hi,

A perhaps not so well known feature of Qt Creator is the possibility to change the tint of the UI color to other values than gray. That can be either done in the Options/Preferences dialog under "Environment/General/User Interface" or vie "-color" command line parameter when launching Qt Creator.

Qt Creator added theming support in Qt Creator 3.3. That theming support allows to override the gradients from the "Manhattan" style with full, flat colors. However, the full flat colors mode does not support the tinting.

I think Tobias means that and also the fact that the proposed flat icons might be less tolerant against changing background colors than the current ones.

Now, let's define a few things here to make less people unhappy than needed. The reactions in the Blog showed that a part of the users wants to keep the old style. We want to respect that. These two new themes here will be integrated without changing anything in the current two "default" and "dark" themes. All icons will be theme specific, which means if you switch the theme, the icons will change along with the colors.

I also suggest not just calling the new themes "default" and "light" because the current theme is already called "default". Maybe we should even give all of the themes proper names like "Flat dark", "Flat light", "Very dark" and "Classic" (or "Manhattan" or whatever).

Which theme should be the default when a user launches Qt Creator for the first time? Time will tell, I would say. My suggestion is to keep the current one with gradients (aka "Manhattan", "default") the default for at least one Qt Creator version after the new themes are included and until issues are ironed out. Then we should be able to find a consensus.
Is that a plan?

Br,
Alessandro
________________________________
Von: qt-creator-bounces+alessandro.portale=theqtcompany.com at qt-project.org <qt-creator-bounces+alessandro.portale=theqtcompany.com at qt-project.org> im Auftrag von de Sousa Diana <diana.desousa at theqtcompany.com>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Februar 2015 10:09
An: Hunger Tobias
Cc: qt-creator at qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] Qt Creator flat style UI design + new Light theme

Hi Tobias, thanks for bringing this issue up!

To fully answer your question we would need to have Thomas and Alessandro's input as well.

But from all the feedback we have gotten about this topic, I'm now more inclined to keep the Manhattan style as an option (along with its color scheme) and continue to develop the new flat themes towards a Light and a fully low-contrast Dark option as well. It seems to me that most people are in favour of either a Light or a Dark theme option, but many seem to dislike the current Manhattan because it has too much contrast. Although Manhattan has some advantages, as you mentioned.

So once we have the flat styles ready, we would either set the Light or Dark as default themes, and Manhattan would be available as an option.

About the icons, yes, we have been talking about having only one set of icons and set their color by code, according to a stylesheet for each theme... again, Thomas and Alessandro could give you the technical details on how this is done :)

Br,
Diana



On Feb 10, 2015, at 3:38 PM, Tobias Hunger <tobias.hunger at theqtcompany.com<mailto:tobias.hunger at theqtcompany.com>> wrote:


Hi Diana,

I personally like your designs, but the flat style has one severe limitation: It does not support the color tinting that the manhattan style supports. Try the tinting by changing the color in Tools>Options>Environment>General>Color or wherever the settings are on Mac), and note that the color is saved as part of the session state.

I use different colors for all my sessions. This enables me to see at a glance which session I have currently open, which is important to me since I do leave creator running all the time and switch between sessions a lot.

In fact my wife is joking that the only way for her to tell whether I work or play on my computer at home is by looking at the color of the interface in front of me:-) The flat mode does not support color tinting at all at this time, so that will take some work to make it useful to me.

I am a bit afraid that this feature is going to get lost with your designs. Both themes appear to assume a certain background color for the UI elements. The flat and uni-colored icons will also make it much harder to change the color and keep the icons visible. Maybe we can just draw the icons in the same color we use for the font. We have code that picks a font color with a good contrast to the background color. That would also reduce the need to ship two sets of icons for the two themes.

Best Regards,
Tobias

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Tobias Hunger, Senior Software Engineer | The Qt Company

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On Mo, Feb 9, 2015 at 5:09 , de Sousa Diana <diana.desousa at theqtcompany.com<mailto:diana.desousa at theqtcompany.com>> wrote:

Hi,
What do you think about the idea of updating the Qt Creator GUI with a more contemporary flat style design, simplifying and unifying all UI icons? And adding a Light theme in addition to the current Default and Dark themes?
I have published to Qt Blog examples of what these new designs could look like. They are an early stage concept, so it would be great to get useful feedback from the community to take this forward! Please take a look at them at:
http://blog.qt.io/blog/2015/02/09/qt-creator-flat-style-ui-design-new-light-theme/
Cheers,
Diana
--
Diana de Sousa
Senior Graphic Designer - The Qt Company


--
Diana de Sousa
Senior Graphic Designer

The Qt Company
Email: diana.desousa at theqtcompany.com<mailto:diana.desousa at theqtcompany.com>
Gsm: +358 452 752 677

About The Qt Company:

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