A way to change the "look" of DPX9's interface?

[mwenz]

That might help in the darkness/lightness department, but we'd still be stuck with the hideous dark UI icons.

AI's change tone with the slider move.

[JET]

What isn't subjective is the human perception of colour and shape, which changes according to the environment and the brain's interpretation.

The highly adaptive nature of human vision is exactly why dark backgrounds is a bad idea. The fact that glowing monitors already cause artwork to appear more brilliant than the reflective printed results is exacerbated by viewing your page against a highly-contrasting dark background as you work.

There's good reason why it's LONG been industry practice in graphic arts to set up environments of 50% or lighter neutral gray surroundings for evaluating color before committing to press. Viewing in a harsh, high-contrast field of vision misleads the ever-compensating human eye to see more brilliance than will actually result. It's the same reason it's bad practice to create digital artwork in a dimly-lit (let alone dark) room; it very often leads to disappointing--or even disasterous--results in loss of shadow tone detail.

This dark background thing is nothing but a gratuitous interface fad and has no place in a serious design environment unless it can be turned off. It should never be the default in a serious graphics program.

JET

[steve.ledger]

I disagree with you completely.

[Big Frank]

actually i agree with him completely
the dark ui is a fad

It should never be the default in a serious graphics program.

i would go further and say It should never be the default in any serious program

[pauland]

I think that the dark backround does highlight content in a way that lighter grey doesn't. In practice the black is only around the content, so it doesn't cause the contrast issues that would exist where black and colour are mixed.

so +1 to your -1 BF!

[Big Frank]

[Rik]

Surely, surroundings have an effect on what you see or perceive?!

Take at look at the attached image.
Both squares with black dots are EXACTLY the same colour.

[Boy]

So, there you go, some very strongly opposing views. Fortunately Xara accommodates both groups and, hopefully, will continue to do so.

Isn't Rik's picture amazing in how our eyes can be fooled? Would it not be possible that the impact of strong differences in contrast may affect people differently? I can imagine that a number of factors can influence perception, such as the monitor setup, one's eyesight, ambient lighting, preferences etc.

[Big Frank]

So, there you go, some very strongly opposing views. Fortunately Xara accommodates both groups and, hopefully, will continue to do so.

unfortunately that's not the case
the light grey user interface is deprecated
it's like one of those tweaks that's not in the manual nor supported
afaik there's no plan to reinstate it as an official feature
i think that's why those people who hate the dark ui are upset

the thing that gets me is that there's a company who is probably the world's leading ui expert
apple
their desktop ui is and always has been light grey
im certainly no apple fanboi
but on this point i agree with them

[Boy]

unfortunately that's not the case
the light grey user interface is deprecated

Well, yes, but Xara did design new buttons for the new functions in DPX9 and this allows us to continue to use the light gray interface.