Accent Colors: A Proposal for GNOME ⋅ Cassidy James Blaede

What? This crazyness is coming over from Windows?

All colours are and should be under the full control of the user, as it always has been so. So called "accent colours" removed critical functionality from Windows as well as breaking the UI since windows 8.

As a software tester of 10 years and a CS Degree holder, I certainly would have never passed software that didn't meet these usability tests.

I'm colourblind. I must have full and unhindered colour modification options, the GUI will look the way I decide based on what I want and how my eyes perceive it. This especially means I must have full control over titlebar colours and any other colours that used to differ based on window focus.

At work in Win 10 I have chosen an "accent colour" which seems to me a massive limitation, having had used superior GUI's since Win 3.1 where the user is able to chose and adjust anything from the colour of title bars when focused or unfocused to the font used on numerous UI elements and widgets.

The problem is simple. Windows 10 grants (I say that in a sarcastic way) the user have the option to chose a so called "accent colour". This however fails to do two things. Firstly it forces the design choices of the development team onto every user, something that is clearly wrong for Linux as history shows it was a plus over windows. Secondly, the accent colour fails to address several UI modal changes, completely obliterating them yet the modal elements remain part of the UI!!!

How in windows 10 can I tell if a window has focus or not? In Win 3.1 to 7 and anything running on Linux it was easy: the title bar colour was different. But since Win 8 that was dropped, windows still have focus and modal dialogs but you, the user, can not determine which has what and when.

Now, like I said I'm colour blind which means maybe there is a difference but I can't see it. So what do I do? Well I randomly start typing commands into the wrong powershell window, or I want to control the browser using the keyboard only to discover that Outlook has focus and has started doing things in response to me banging keys. I have two monitors at work and focus moves between them and windows gives me no indication what has focus at all. Nothing I can see, out of the corner of my eye that is.

Thing is there is just one difference, the focused window might have a bold titlebar text or not. Note I bolded that. But I can't see this difference without pixel peeping.

Every day I have to put up with this in the windows world and it annoys the hell out of me because the essential functionality was always there and has been removed because someone tossed a coin*. Maybe GNOME won't fall into the trap of preventing full customisation of the UI, I hope so, user accessibility needs require it. I moved away from GNOME when they moved away from the desktop metaphor as I thought the alternative was terrible, and it still is, so this won't affect me but it will affect loads of new colourblind users from the start.

The user has the last say and should be able to override anything.

HCI (Human Computer Interaction) rules exist for a good reason, stop chucking them away and make them options if needed.

And finally, take it from an actual colourblind computer users and electronics geek. Colour blindness accessibility filters DO NOT WORK. They simply don't because everyone has a different kind/degree/combination of colour blindness. Normal visioned people are easy to demonstrate to as all we have to do is apply such a filter in reverse and they are like "Whoa what the hell" yet they fail to see (pun intended) that it's a simulation that barely represents our individual colour ranges. Windows 10 has a colourblind mode, does nothing. Android has one, which has me try and sort colours to determine my specific adjustments, works better but still barely is used by myself.

The only fix is to give the user full control over all colours because then they, they can adjust the UI for the way they see the universe.

Here is an example from the linked blog. See this GUI. Which window has focus? The one on top? Well if GNOME prevents windows from always remaining above others regardless of focus, yes that would be the case. But if GNOME does allow focus to windows beneath others, well, which has focus? I cant tell.

I had intended on uploading images but that seems to not be working with this post/lemmy instance at the moment. Basically if you look at the blog there are examples. First of all the "pink" example, well that shades of grey to my eyes as pink rarely is a colour I can notice, most pinks are grey. Further down are examples of a stop clock application. Looking at the image I see most of the clocks digits are disabled, thats what grey means, disabled elements. However it turns out that they may be pink? Only the seconds are enabled, this is highly confusing as why would anyone be allowed to think a clock has digits disabled? It makes no sense and has me figure out the answer, which is bad UI design from the start. All the digits should be the same colour. It's basic HCI rules there.

Further down you see the screenshots of the entire desktop with a window above another. In none of those examples can I tell which has focus. I can not assume its the one on top, plenty of UI's have "keep on top" functionality, if I'm coming from something else why would I assume GNOME to be different?

Accent colours are bad. They force users to use static themes and UI choices made by other people, that is bad UI design, really bad. Windows 10 is lambasted for it often. If you are going to do it, do it right. The "accent" feature should be part of a simple customisation mode, but it all gets overridden by the advanced tickbox.

It looks beautiful, Cassidy worked on elementaryOS so he knows a thing or two about good GUI design. I wish that project could get more funding since it's one of the best looking distros but it simply gets so lagged behind due to slow development.