Ardour Looks, part 197.2

From a discussion on http://cdm.link about FL Studio:

For those who wonder why I tend to ignore/discount "Ardour needs to look better" comments, this is a great introduction :)

Thanks for putting substance over style. Not that Ardour’s visual style is bad, just no unnecessary flashiness.
Sorry, bit of a shaggy-dog story here: first time I build from git after the “colour themes” had been implemented, it came up with a way-out weird look, bit like the Windows 3’s “hot-dog stand” theme only less subtle. It went away as soon as I opened the “themes” tab and I’ve never seen it since, bit of a shame really because it was funny!

@Seb: it’s called harlequin debugging. When Ardour cannot find a color-definition for some widget, a random color is chosen every time the widget is re-displayed. That makes it pretty obvious if developers miss to define some color. it can be funky indeed.

There was a transition period Ardour-git 4 -> 5 where the theme-names were changed. That phenomena you experienced was a “ardour4 user-config, old theme-name” but already upcoming ardour5 themes… if you want a flashback. edit ~/.config/ardour5/ui_config and set “color-file” to something random invalid.

Should late 60s psychedelic fashion come back in style… Ardour is prepared :slight_smile:

It has SO much to do with individual habits: when I switched from Samplitude to Ardour years ago I found Ardour’s look a strange thing. But I got accustomed rather fast. Today Ardour is totally normal for me ;-). I must say that in general I like these warm and dark colours (like Ardour uses them) very much. Much more than those cold and bright colours of Samplitude.

I find Ardour’ layout and design very pleasant. One of the best out there. An editor/mixer Re@p%r style layout could be useful. The DAW is so spot on and robust, you couldn’t ask for anymore. Thanks for the great work.

I agree with most that the colors are great but I think that there are too many places where dark grey (or even black) check boxes are placed on black background and it is difficult or impossible to see where the check box is located. Please note, I do not need glasses so I have fairly good visual skills :slight_smile:

Mixer -> Show Strip
Mixer -> Show Group
Editor -> Editor List -> Tracks & Busses
Ardour Preferences -> Midi Ports

are some examples where the standard theme is sub optimal and some of the alternate themes are better.
I have filed a maintis ticket but it seems I am fairly alone in this matter

/Anders