Function/Usability review request: how to configure inactive/disabled colors

[Kenneth Wimer]

Hi,

On Wednesday 29 August 2007 18:21:16 Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> As boemann pointed out (attentive people will have seen the previous
> thread [1], also see relevant code changes made [2]), Oxygen requires
> Active and Inactive color palettes to be different. Since KDE4 is
> already trying to induce 'color choice overload', rather than allowing
> users to configure three separate palettes, I think it makes more sense
> to generate the other palettes from the base (Active) palette by making
> simple, but configurable changes to it, such as lightening/darkening,
> allowing the foreground elements to fade into the background, etc.
>
> To that end, I'm attaching a screenshot of the proposed GUI for
> configuring the secondary palette generation. There are two types of
> effects. "Global" effects are applied (first) to everything and are
> luma/chroma effects: darken (% closer to black), lighten (% closer to
> white), shade (adjust luma by absolute amount), and desaturate.
> Foreground/Decoration* effects are applied after global effects and are:
> fade (generic, linear blend) and tint (similar but tends to preserve
> luma; 'in' and 'out' switch if the foreground or background is most
> preserved).
>
> (* "decorations" are hover and focus effects; this is the API name but a
> better description for the config would be welcomed.)
>
> I'd like to get feedback on this. Does it look Usable/Accessible? Does
> it look like it will (be able to) produce satisfactory results?
>

Seems like an understandable interface. Whether or not it is really usable 
depends on the algorithms used and probably would simply need to be tested.

> Note: there is absolutely no API exposed by this, so I don't see why if
> we try it and hate it, (other than possibly annoying users) we can't
> throw the whole thing out and start over in KDE 4.1.
>
> [1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/44733
> [2] svn revisions 705482, 705931, and 705938