FF should go dark - everyone's doing it

If the users have old "lamp" screens they save enegry, but if the users have flat panel screens, black will waste energy..

FF looks old fashion, nik colouring work well [ darker ], the choice would be great, Vlad has said it's getting a make over in the future

nik the second best plugin after FF and has one thing I wish FF had, you can brush on selectively the effects

Just looking at nik now. It looks very interesting. They have several products, which one do you use?
I can't find the nik dark button - it's too bright in there - like an ice-cream store.

Grey on grey text is really hard to read.

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Tsu Dho Nimh wrote: Grey on grey text is really hard to read.

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Carl wrote: True

I don't know, I spend all day working in gray on gray - I prefer it.

I think that that whole grey look in the UIs is just a trend and will eventualy be replaced by something else.. it looks nice because its different and youve seen some nice implementations of it.. but just because everybody is doing it doesnt mean everybody should do it.. in the end its really very subjective thing and even if FF changes if UI to grey, somebody wont like it cause he prefers the UIs to be.. lets say.. orange or something..

but would be nice to have a slider to adjust the overall brightness of the UI so that your ca adjust it acording to the filter/texture your working with/on..
but i probably wouldnt change it ever..

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angelboiii wrote: I think that that whole grey look in the UIs is just a trend and will eventualy be replaced by something else.

isn't that true for all graphic design?

If we could do our own skins for the ui, then everyone would be happy

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Figure I'd bump this

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Anyway, regarding skins: I've always been an opponent of arbitrary skins (I always prefer a well-crafted interface based on native platform GUI), and I'm not really into this entire "dark = professional" thing, but I'm warming up to them.

Here's why: when Apple finally decides to kill Carbon, we will be left without the Mac version, which produces a good chunk of our revenue. We'll have to rewrite the GUI to work under whatever GUI API is considered in vogue. But we won't. I'm sick and tired of native client GUI development and porting, so we'll probably go HTML / JS or perhaps QT, depending on its state at the moment.

And when we go non-native, we'll need a skin, and I can't see why we couldn't make it "dark and professional", like "all the cool kids are doing" .

As for re-skinning FF before Apple kills Carbon, well, I have better ideas on how to spend these two man-years.

Agreed on neutrality. BTW this is one of the reasons why I'm usually against skinning. My old fear about skins is that if you let the commerce department skin your interface, they'll turn it into a gaudy colorful mess that looks attractive on screenshots, but performs worse in longer term.

(Commercially, that might make sense! Release with two skins: the default one for screenshots, and another neutral one for actual work )

Regarding the darkness trend, I think it originated in photography software (e.g. Lightroom, Aperture), but I'm not a photographer so I don't know how exactly a dark interface could be useful to them. Any photographers care to comment?

I generally have my settings for these programs on dark since I just prefer the image to pop at me. And maybe it's just me, but it's easier on the eyes if I'm working long hours in any of these programs. I also typically focus on the work more than the tools... so it's nicer when the tool I clicked on highlights amongst the darkness rather than the other way around.

That's really just what I find good about the darker schemes. But I think being able to choose some tones is also nice too since images and situations differ for every picture.

Yeah that's much better Vlad.

One thing I like about dark interfaces is they're nicer to work with in a dark room. (Which is what I'm usually in of course)

Assuming were talking about this part...




I believe the background grid could be darkened a bit without too much jarring contrast.
(Maybe let users specificity a shade and get some feedback?)
Of course eventually you'd want to re-skin the components for a thorough dark look.


I feel that the area outlined almost a separate environment. It has it's own look that is already distinct from other areas of the program. Thus even if this section remains unchanged it won't necessarily feel inconsistent with newly darker elements.

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Uh-huh. For every skin.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you just saying its a lot of work?

haha who turned off the lights in FilterForge?

With a slightly less black dark part, and with a darker grid that mockup would look fine Vlad. I'd use it.

+1 on Dilla's comment

+1 on Dilla commentary too

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I think Adobe LR's implementation of dark UI is gorgeous.

Never used LR. Could you post a screenshot for us to ascertain the gorgeousness?

This is a good and nice suggestion and want to know if this is considered for FF 4.0, or are other more important priorities better than this?

I really do not care much if this is going to be changed or not, and if FF will go dark, as I do not have a problem with FF 3.0 as it is, BUT is true that from the professional software point of view, I agree that most other software companies and even some websites are changing to a dark interface that makes it look more "professional" and this is because if you are dealing and working with colorful images and photos, the grey and white from the interface can be distracting and you can´t see well the real colors in the same way as you can with a dark background, and is easier to work with and better for the eyes, ALTHOUGH it depends of the definition of DARK and HOW is done it.

For example from my personal point of view I like this screenshot better with the light grey background of the filter editor



than this one below with the darker background as this for me is too dark and not as good looking and pleasant as the one above here



Because the important part here that needs to be dark or black is only the one corresponding to the result image preview and not inside the filter editor background, although as said this is my personal way to like it.



I also like this dark mock-up of the filter manager that looks good to me and the thumbnails looks better.

I agree to have the dark interface if this could be possible and not something difficult to make, although as said before, this is not for me something priority and would be good and better to have others things instead IF you have to choose.

A full re-write? If all you are doing in a skin is changing colors (everything else remains the same), that should be as easy as adjusting certain parameters. Imagine the GUI as a filter, and the skins are just presets! Why isn't it like that?

If you do end up making skins, please keep the current scheme (or something similarly light) as an option.