[Bug] Default theme has poor usability

[sliptonic]

Forums discussion

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=72672

Version

0.21 (Development)
Affects all versions

Issue description

FreeCAD now has theme packs that allow users to change the appearance of the application easily and consistently. This is a great feature to allow customization and to meet a wide variety of use-cases.

The first experience with FreeCAD that new users have, however, is the default theme. This default, including background gradient and color selection in several key workbenches has problems that adversely affect adoption, learning curve, and usability. A new default theme should be created that meets at least the following four objectives.

1. It should be broadly usable in all default workbenches.
2. It should be usable by a wide range of users including those with the most common forms of color-blindness
3. It should reproduce reasonably well in grayscale images so that print documentation accurately reflects the FreeCAD interface.
4. It should be attractive and inviting.

[sliptonic]

The existing default theme will continue to be included with future versions as "FreeCAD Classic"

[adrianinsaval]

The existing default theme will continue to be included with future versions as "FreeCAD Classic"

are we talking style sheet or background/wb colors (preference pack)? the current default style sheet is no style sheet and it should remain with that name, the default look is very different depending on the platform so the term "classic" is only appropriate for the windows theme IMO as it is the one that looks outdated on it's environment (win 11 native apps look nothing like it and even on win 10 it looks out of place if you are using the dark mode). On linux freecad picks up the system qt theme which could be anything and on macOS the theme still matches the native look AFAIK.

[chennes]

I figured "Classic" would mean "go back to the old way," so the current "FreeCAD Classic" preference pack sets it to "No stylesheet" and all the original colors. What exactly that looks like will then depend on your system setup, just like it does out of the box right now.

[adrianinsaval]

another issue with the default colors: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?p=635039#p635039

I want to make a PR to change these defaults and while almost anything would be better than the current defaults it would be nice to know if for the defaults we should prioritize dark themes or light themes, IMO we should make a poll to decide if our default theme should be dark or light so we can begin work on this type of things. I prefer dark themes and the abundance of dark theme variants suggest other people (that are actually working on theming) also prefer it, it also seems to be in fashion.
Of course the new default should be at least readable on both variants, but the choice of a darker or lighter color tone depends on what would be our default. The colors I want to propose are readable on both but IMO they don't look as good in the light theme as in the dark theme:

Perhaps the current built-in themes should use plain black/white for three view text too instead of some gray so that it's easier to achieve contrast on both at the same time

[luzpaz]

Ticket opened for this #11270

[chennes]

Just as a point of technical reference, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines go into quite a lot of detail about how to ensure usability and accessibility (in a generic sense) for both light and dark color schemes: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/foundations/accessibility. They include guidance for both average and vision-impaired users. Obviously there is a lot of Apple-specific implementation detail in there, but they've clearly done some research into this area.

[Glitchy-Tozier]

Of course the new default should be at least readable on both variants, but the choice of a darker or lighter color tone depends on what would be our default.

There probably will never be a great solution if we stick with one default.
It seems more productive to use a system that predefines colors for each theme individually (= which combines highlights & themes).

[MisterMakerNL]

Of course the new default should be at least readable on both variants, but the choice of a darker or lighter color tone depends on what would be our default.

There probably will never be a great solution if we stick with one default. It seems more productive to use a system that predefines colors for each theme individually (= which combines highlights & themes).

You are right, I also tried a color that is readable on white and black text. But it breaks already when the text is gray. And it's just a tiny improvement not really worth doing it.
Best fix is too link stylesheets too preference packs so we don't get in situations like this.

[sliptonic]

I haven't tried this again in a couple years but it's useful for evaluating colors:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=2914#p22402

[adrianinsaval]

I'm not saying we should stick with a single default but that is what is technically feasible right now, IMO it is better to solve that now and then improve on it when the other changes being discussed are implemented.
IMO it is wrong to say "a better solution will come soon^TM, so we should do nothing now" because it may very well be that the wait would be eternal...

[MisterMakerNL]

I haven't tried this again in a couple years but it's useful for evaluating colors:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=2914#p22402

Gimp won't run nice on my windows machine but I thought well there is probably a website for that...And off-course there is.
https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
And soon I realized the icons are the real issue here. Although I also have a solution for that but it's still requires a lot of work to finish the icon theming.

[obelisk79]

First off, if the intent is for only a single set of default colors, we should first discuss and decide on a light vs dark theme before going to far down the rabbit hole with colors, and color theory and analysis of the current state of such in FreeCAD.

[obelisk79]

An interesting albeit slightly biased analysis in favor of a dark theme:
https://www.venturus.org.br/en/darkmode-and-the-benefits-for-the-user-experience/

Multiple sources also indicate that dark UI trends dominate in preference polls with ranges between 85%-92%. That's actually a lot higher than I expected to see.

That being said, ui/ux aesthetics is a deep and nuanced subject.

I would sum up light vs dark as such:
Light Theme
Pros:
-More professional looking. Industry software is
almost universally shipped with light default themes
-Light themes tend to look better in brightly lit
environments compared to dark.

Cons:

• Light themes are less versatile and cause eye strain
  in low light settings. (ie. a home office in the evening)
• Blue light from light themes can be disruptive to the
  circadian rhythm when exposed at night.

Dark Theme
Pros:
-Very trendy right now among users and UI/UX
designers
-Reduces eye strain during long work sessions

• More versatile in varied lighting conditions

Cons:

• elegant but not necessarily 'professional' looking
  -Does not perform quite as well in will lit settings as light themes
• may be more challenging to find a suitable color palette to meet FreeCAD's needs.

[obelisk79]

In terms of tools for designing around contrast, color and vision impairment a simple tool/test one can do is take your sample colors and load them into image editor of choice. Photoshop, gimp or Pixlr and then completely desaturate the image. If there is still a high contrast ratio then you are good. If not, further adjustment is necessary.

[obelisk79]

@MisterMakerNL in response to your comment regarding the icons, I would agree. I believe that contrast and usability particularly across a broad audience (ie color impaired) could explain why you see simplified and flat icons in a lot of professional software across multiple industries. I believe a good example of simple yet effective can be seen here:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=46633&start=40

st_phan's composition on the sketcher icons is phenomenal. They convey the same information more clearly, with less colors and they scale extremely well even to pretty small sizes. The analysis and process comments by him at the end of the thread are also highly valuable imo.

[MisterMakerNL]

I have my own icons, and I really like too work with them too. But the project needs some more work.
https://github.com/MisterMakerNL/Linkstage_icons

[Intuos5]

I don't even know what you mean by this, are these work arounds for old Qt bugs?

We discussed this earlier thst there are various resets, resize to 0 and such to resolve Qt bugs. I don't know much about Qt, so it wpuld be a manual delete and see how it goes check for a default theme. That or have @MisterMaker's fixes and backport the default themes to his template.

[MisterMakerNL]

I also started with the default ProDark theme files, but man that was annoying. I even dumped a lot of work into it, but I still got so frustrated that it took so much time figuring out what went wrong that I dumped it and started from scratch. (which was easier anyway :) )
I am just going to make some different versions of my theme file, maybe I can utilize Qpalletes.

[Intuos5]

@MisterMakerNL Sooner or later, I will try to update my theme based on your latest template. Maybe we could have a chat then, seeing that you are learning Qt to talk about these things.

[tcurdt]

Color and contrast will always have a personal bias.
But given all the research and guidelines out there it seems rather obvious this need some love in FreeCAD.

I personally just cannot use the classic/default theme - and I am not joking.
Especially the Sketcher WB is almost unusable for me.

I am happy to provide more feedback if someone wants to take a stab at a better theme.
Or at least there is a willingness to fix this usability problem.

[MisterMakerNL]

@tcurdt I actually spend some time today and yesterday on updating the old theme's to my updated theme layout. It has a ton of fixes and also removes a ton of not used fixes, and it optimizes screen space by a lot.
https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=78431

[tcurdt]

@MisterMakerNL looking good. But I am more concerned about things like this:

The cursor position:

Everything red is super hard to read:

The vertices, the constraints, the dimensions.

[luzpaz]

Are folks able to track the discussion in this ticket? It's hard to follow. Any ideas on how to make it easier to approach ?

[tcurdt]

@luzpaz you mean you are not sure how to approach fixing this?

Would you want links to best practices? Or how can we help?

A good start to reading https://venngage.com/blog/accessible-colors/
And there is also the DaltonLens to install as tray application https://github.com/DaltonLens/DaltonLens
Or for a quick check available via web https://daltonlens.org/colorblindness-simulator

I think just saying "yes, we want to fix this" would go a long way. If the FreeCAD team signals willingness to fix this there might also be people helping by working on a new theme.

[MisterMakerNL]

@luzpaz Yeah, this still on going. I doubt there will be a release party. We just keep going untill the bugs are gone! And there also a ton of devs doing great things too the ui!
I do think the bug tag isn't right, it's more a goal(s) too work too.

[luzpaz]

Thanks for the responses. I think it would be helpful to hide/resolve issues brought up in this ticket, that way it would be easier to read.

[tcurdt]

@luzpaz I have hard time understanding how hiding information is helping. What comments would you want to hide?
It's not like this is a long ticket.

[obelisk79]

There is a problem with this ticket. It is poorly defined and doesn't target a specific deficiency. Instead it's gone around in several directions. I think several other recent issues both open and closed, much better encompass the spirit of this one collectively and are much more specific with better discussion focus.

By specific deficiency I mean with more specificity than 'default theme is bad'

[luzpaz]

Agreed @obelisk79
I'm all for the discussion but it's just not conducive for comprehending progress being made.

This ticket should be transferred to a discussion. Please respond with 👍 or 👎 if you agree/disagree

[luzpaz]

Ticket was transferred to discussion

[arkadesOrg]

okay I finally found how to install themes. And OpenDark looks readable so far. would be great if there was a default mechanism adapting to the system theme. Just to not turn newcomers off too quickly.

[maxwxyz]

Related issue: #12424