[Bf-funboard] selected/active/colours/etc.

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

> I personally (along
> with at least a few others that I know of) think the ugly looking pink  
> and
> yellow could and should be changed into something better. Another silly
> idiosyncracy that goes along with this and should definitely be fixed  
> is
> that the colours for selected/deselected are reversed between object  
> mode
> and edit mode! It's totally inconsistent and disrupts any opportunity  
> to
> create a nice semiotic language for representing selection states.

That's not true. Apart from whether the color is ugly or not, the  
choice was made to visualize a relationshop with the selected Object,  
and the level deeper you go in Editmode.

Maybe unconsciously, but you see this happening:

- black  (cold)
- purple (warmer)
- yellow (hot)

The selected object wire color transfers to unselected vertices, which  
then can be made selected too. Try it, with more complex selected  
objects that go into editmode, it feels very natural, and establishes a  
visual relationship. Instead of visualizing select/unselect it  
(especially) visualizes mode here.

Strict semiotic languages for colors is something heavily overrated  
BTW. (Yes, I've been reading Raskin!)

Nevertheless, especially when it comes to colors people's personal  
taste plays a role, even the season plays a role, and your mood or the  
project you work on...

Best would be the devise a coherent proposal for the abstractions we  
prefer to visualize, this including solid drawing, modes, transparant  
drawing, vertex shapes, help-boxes, center points or not... and based  
on that give users an option to choose a color (range) that fits with  
their needs best.
And we still have the fraction who want custom colors, or colors per  
object type... can we also offer this?


> I thought about
> perhaps using a transparent bounding box to mark the active object as  
> well,
> but that may get a bit annoying if it appears every time you select a  
> single
> object. Here's a quick mockup:
> http://reblended.com/www/broken/interface/colours/orange_bounds.png

Maybe we should do that by default for solid drawn objects...

> and how much of an improvement it
> could be to draw the wires:
> http://reblended.com/www/broken/interface/colours/wireselected.jpg

Agree, can be used as well. We suffer a little bit from cheaper gfx  
cards though, that don't support such drawing well (wires will  
dissappear partially).

> As for the centre points, I think they could use some improvements too,
> though I'm not sure how. Perhaps you could change the centre point  
> shape for
> the active object (a triangle or something?)

Or just not draw it in editmode?

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org