Has anyone else had difficulty with the new gray highlight colors in the IDE for Xojo 2019r1?
When a class, method, property, or other entry is selected in the left pane, the entry is displayed with black letters on a dark gray background. Same is true of the un-selected tabs beneath the tool bar. With my limited vision these are exceedingly difficult to read.
I also find the choice of highlight colors in the find listing at the bottom of the screen disturbing as well. The lines are display with an alternate white and light-gray background to simplify reading the multiple-line entries – which it does. Occasionally, when I click on these find entries I get what I expect: White letters on top of my choice of highlight colors selected in the General System Preferences. However more often than not, as soon as I let up on the mouse when clicking the highlight reverts to black letters on a light gray background that is almost the same shade as that used for alternate lines; making it difficult to tell which line is actually selected.
The left hand navigator highlights in one of two colors
When the navigator HAS focus you get the normal white text on blue
When it does not then you get black text on a grey back ground
This is more or less consistent with the Finders presentation (the grey background might be a tad dark)
The find area at the bottom does much the same
At least thats what I see going on here in 2019r1.1 (which I would suggest you update to if you havent already)
Glad to hear it is working well for you. I upgraded from 2019r1 to 2019r1.1 and that fixed the highlight colors in the find area. Regrettably it has not fixed the black letters on dark gray background problem in the navigator selections or the tabs. If it showed the same thing as the finder does, I would be delighted; but that is not what I see. What I see in Mojave 10.14.4 on the mac is shown here:
Although the window does show black text on light-gray background in the navigator when the window is not selected – just like the finder; The UNSELECTED tab sill show as Dark Black on Dark Gray, as shown here:
The highlight color (in your case purple) is from the Hightlight color you chose in System Preferences…
so if you don’t like purple, go there and change it… It is not an option controled by Xojo, but by macOS itself
The white on purple is quite visible to me, and is what I expect. The black on dark gray on the tabs and navigator is not. My Finder windows don’t look like that, nor does any other application on my Mac.
I understand and agree that Mojave system colors aren’t the same as earlier systems. My concern is that Xojo doesn’t use the Mojave System colors. The snapshot below shows:
The dark background used by Xojo &c7A7A7A is 63% darker than the highlight color used by Mojave &cDCDCDC for the darker highlight color – if I did my math correctly.
The Window tabs in Xojo use bold characters, where the Finder uses plain characters – if anything this should mean that the Xojo tabs should be more readable, but to my eye they are not. If anyone can find any app running under Mojave that also uses the excessively dark color scheme being used by Xojo in Light mode, I would very much appreciate seeing a screenshot of it.
Ed… don’t you think that if this were the “fault” of Xojo that EVERY macOS/Xojo user would be experienceing the exact same thing and complaining about it as well? But that is not the case. I have been using Xojo for many years, and 2019R1.1 renders the IDE in precisely the correct manner.
Hey Norman and Dave; I appreciate your great feedback. My initial inquiry was to discover if anyone else was seeing the same problem. I’ll consider the matter addressed, submit that bug report, and move on. If anyone can think of Mojave tuning I might try, it would be appreciated; but otherwise I’ll consider the matter closed.
@Ed Kleban
Im assuming from your screenshots that you have transparency disabled in the macOS Accessibility settings. Could you supply a screenshot of how you have the other options in that panel set?
Thanks Greg, I was wondering why my attempts at inserting an image were mis-behaving.
Actually, Transparency was checked, but grayed out. “Increase contrast” above it was checked however. When I uncheck “increase contrast” it does make the brown highlighting orange, (my selected color now is Yellow) but the rest of the interface tends to have whiter lines around window frames rather than black, making it more difficult to read the screen.
I also spent some time in the color panel to select a different Color Display Profile from among the couple dozen I have. I did find one that was the least-worst, and am now using that; although it has no real affect on the concerns I noted above. I also tried adjusting the monitor’s built-in contrast and sharpness to no avail. I still believe the difference I’m seeing is not in the color profile but rather some distinct aspect of Xojo; but welcome all suggestions of things to try.
[quote=440723:@Ed Kleban]Thanks Greg, I was wondering why my attempts at inserting an image were mis-behaving.
Actually, Transparency was checked, but grayed out. “Increase contrast” above it was checked however. When I uncheck “increase contrast” it does make the brown highlighting orange, (my selected color now is Yellow) but the rest of the interface tends to have whiter lines around window frames rather than black, making it more difficult to read the screen.
I also spent some time in the color panel to select a different Color Display Profile from among the couple dozen I have. I did find one that was the least-worst, and am now using that; although it has no real affect on the concerns I noted above. I also tried adjusting the monitor’s built-in contrast and sharpness to no avail. I still believe the difference I’m seeing is not in the color profile but rather some distinct aspect of Xojo; but welcome all suggestions of things to try.[/quote]
Could you also show what you have in the top section of the General preferences tab? I’m specifically interested in your Accent Color and what you have selected for Highlight color.
Ah! Now I see what you’re seeing. Ok, I’ll put together a bug report for this. I think our algorithm for selecting text color against that particular shade of gray is just getting it wrong.
I think the code tried to pick the foreground text color based on overall luminosity of the navigator
But given how things are composited with visual effect views etc the color its testing may not be the overall blended color given the various layers involved
[quote=440729:@Norman Palardy]I think the code tried to pick the foreground text color based on overall luminosity of the navigator
But given how things are composited with visual effect views etc the color its testing may not be the overall blended color given the various layers involved[/quote]
Yeah, it’s unfortunately not that. I thought the same thing when I started looking at it.
The problem is that the Navigator is trying to convey the selection"state" with the different colored backgrounds. If you were to look at a Finder Sidebar, there is no difference in background color if you’ve selected an item in the Sidebar or the Sidebar’s contents. Unfortunately for us, that state does matter when it comes to clipboard operations like Cut, Copy and Paste.
Excellent. I disabled “Increase Contrast” in the Accessibility Display panel and things look great now. I also didn’t realize that you had to Quit Xojo and restart it to see any changes. I’ve dialed in a decent Color Profile and Xojo looks super.
