To All Devs: please cater to BIG SCREENS!!!

[Teksonik]

Finally found a place to upload screenshots again.



You can see how the Mixer Strip Name washes out using certain colors (I would never use that color just picked it as an example)

As you can see if I name the tracks like K I C K they can be seen a little better but I'd love to have either black test or a much lighter text on unselected tracks.

[tony tony chopper]

You can see how the Mixer Strip Name washes out using certain colors

I well understand, this is the kind of color (that bright cyan) that will be forbidden (clipped) in FL9. (it's clearly an abuse of the feature, you're not supposed to pick colors that you know will be ugly)

[aciddose]

draw black text offset (1,1), then draw the white text. problem solved.

test if (luma > 0.5) text.luma *= -1.0;

problem solved.

[mystran]

draw black text offset (1,1), then draw the white text. problem solved.

That'd actually work, but it also tends to emphasize the text quite a bit, so I guess the other solution (making text dark-on-bright when the background is bright) would work better in this particular case.

Anyway, personally I get annoyed by never managing to pick colors that aren't too bright, too light, too dark, or too gray.. so I'd love to have a selector that only had hue control (with saturation and brightness fixed at some sensible values).

[Teksonik]

You can see how the Mixer Strip Name washes out using certain colors

I well understand, this is the kind of color (that bright cyan) that will be forbidden (clipped) in FL9. (it's clearly an abuse of the feature, you're not supposed to pick colors that you know will be ugly)

Yes but who's definition of Ugly? That blue might be someone else's favorite color. If we could just turn the Text Black it would be a God send. If FL 9 adds nothing more than that I'd be a very happy camper.

[Teksonik]

test if (luma > 0.5) text.luma *= -1.0;

I have no clue what that means but it sounds like a good idea.

[tony tony chopper]

draw black text offset (1,1), then draw the white text

The problem is not the text (& a poorman's shadow wouldn't change anything, the text on white would just need to be black, that's all), it's the fact the greyscale bitmap will be oversaturated (look at the pic, it's basically just a plain rectangle) if you recolor it in a too bright color. It's just not designed for that. I mean, it's just like clipping with audio.

Yes but who's definition of Ugly?

mine
plus, you play with skins too (& what you posted looks like broken). I wouldn't like to have to lock skins too because I get complaints when they're abused.

That blue might be someone else's favorite color

then make it darker

[androidlove]

it's clearly an abuse of the feature

[Teksonik]

Yes but who's definition of Ugly?

mine
plus, you play with skins too (& what you posted looks like broken). I wouldn't like to have to lock skins too because I get complaints when they're abused.

Excuse me? Nothing in the skin I'm using is broken but the parts you won't let anyone else change. Abuse? Who other than yourself complains about user skins? I've seen more complaints about your default gui than I have any other skin made by a user. You're so worred about how Fl looks to others then you put a stupid kiddie toy dancer in there that makes it look like a pre-school program.

Look at Reaper. Almost every part of the GUI can be customized. Yes there are some butt ugly eye searing themes out there but guess what... People Like Them. The app should conform to the user's preferences not the developer's.

You've got such piss poor color sense that you should be the last person allowed to choose colors for other people.

That blue might be someone else's favorite color

then make it darker

Or find an app that lets you make it look the way you want. People stare at an app's User Interface for hours it should please their eyes not yours.

[koalaboy]

You can see how the Mixer Strip Name washes out using certain colors

I well understand, this is the kind of color (that bright cyan) that will be forbidden (clipped) in FL9. (it's clearly an abuse of the feature, you're not supposed to pick colors that you know will be ugly)

I can understand limiting the colours they can use to a pre-selected palette, but letting them choose any colour then clipping it is just bad design. You should never give the user a sense of choice that they don't actually have - that's for the marketing folks to bullshit about.

As mentioned, it's very easy to do a luminance check and contrast the labels (it gets a bit tricky around mids, but is doable) and it gives the (idiot*) user what they want. Otherwise, just give them a preset selection of colours and be done with it.

*Before people get too worked up, the first rule of GUI design is to assume your user is an idiot. Lowest Common Denominator and all that. Whether this applies even moreso to VST design, I couldn't say

[james0tucson]

I've got Midi controllers with lots of knobs and sliders and I've never tried to automate more than one synth at a time. Is that even possible in FL in realtime?

Sort of, but you have to run FLS as a VST, and you also have to setup your controller so it talks on separate channels. It's a royal pain and takes FLS down a few notches for live performance, in my opinion. I really like FLS, but one of the main things I want to do is have multiple controllers, on multiple interfaces, directed at multiple VST targets, and I want it to be easy to setup. FLS is not the host for this, and I'm told that the developer actually is opposed to the idea of what I need to do.

[tonAP]

I can understand limiting the colours they can use to a pre-selected palette, but letting them choose any colour then clipping it is just bad design. You should never give the user a sense of choice that they don't actually have - that's for the marketing folks to bullshit about.

I'm not sure, but it could be necessary also for backwards compatibility(?)
if you load an old file containing those (ugly indeed) colors..
then how should it behaves? Kinda:
[Error n° xxx - FL9 detected ugly colors]

[koalaboy]

I can understand limiting the colours they can use to a pre-selected palette, but letting them choose any colour then clipping it is just bad design. You should never give the user a sense of choice that they don't actually have - that's for the marketing folks to bullshit about.

I'm not sure, but it could be necessary also for backwards compatibility(?)
if you load an old file containing those (ugly indeed) colors..
then how should it behaves? Kinda:
[Error n° xxx - FL9 detected ugly colors]

Another rule of GUI design is not to take out what's already in, unless you improve it and it's backwards compatible. If you make stupid design decisions at the start, you have to live with them.

[tony tony chopper]

Excuse me? Nothing in the skin I'm using is broken but the parts you won't let anyone else change.

We don't support third-party skinning *at all*. There aren't "parts that we don't let anyone change", we don't support anyone changing anything (we were, until 8 years ago I think).
So using a third party skin would even by definition disable the tech support until you get back to one of the default skins (we don't want to waste our time doing support for third-party skins).

I've said many times that we don't support third-party skins. The only reason you use a third-party skin is that it still works. And when I say that I may have to lock third-party skin loading, you whine. Sorry but it's our application so it's our decisions.

This is the line all those who wanted to skin FL have been seeing since 8 years ago before doing any skin:
!!! WARNING : SKINNING IS NOT SUPPORTED ANYMORE !!!
..but you still don't want to accept it.

(on top of this, that part of the mixer in the screenshot is not broken for any other reason that it's badly done. There's some kind of ugly rectangle on the master track that doesn't make any sense, and you don't even seem to care)

Or find an app that lets you make it look the way you want.

exactly

I can understand limiting the colours they can use to a pre-selected palette, but letting them choose any colour then clipping it is just bad design

It's not. We're not talking about the color of a flat panel here, we're talking about the color of objects. If you select 'pure black', how can an object be pure black? If it's pure black, then it becomes plain color.

And yes, I'm talking about a pre-selected palette. Except that the user can still press a button (the + one) & get to the standard color box where they can type-in RGB or HLS numbers.

I don't want to remove that feature too just because some users think it's a bug if they select pure white in that dialog, and it makes the object silver. Do you all have to be babysitted?

I mean, there's software for noobs, semi-pro's & pro's.
If I open my compiler, I can write down harmful code. This because it's a pro app and we don't need such protections. If it's an app for noobs, you'd be presented a palette of 10 colors and that's all, because someone who bought that kind of app doesn't want to think too much, just to have fun a little.
Here let's say it's semi-pro to pro, you're presented a couple of colors that behave well with others & with the design, you're even presented a random color, and a history of past colors (to color 2 objects the same). That's the easy part, but you STILL can go further & type in numbers in the standard Windows color dialog. I'm sorry but if you abuse it to pick a plain white color, don't complain if the object doesn't become a flat white rectangle, but is colored silver.

If you make stupid design decisions at the start, you have to live with them.

While I agree (and it's great that Microsoft agrees too), it's weird that you want this as a user, especially for non-critical features (a different color won't make your old song project sound different). If an app can't evolve because of past design mistakes, the victim is the user too.

[Teksonik]

Sorry but it's our application so it's our decisions.

Well, I just made a decision...................never to spend another dollar on ImageLine software. Too bad you don't allow license transfers.