blog: dark mode listview controls

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
https://www.zabkat.com/blog/darkmode-listview.htm

[pj]

During all the modifying of themes and such, I ask you to NOT implement one "feeture" that has popped up in recent versions of programs:
- DISAPPEARING SCROLL BARS

The Devil himself must have requested that function. I will "sacrifice" the small column of screen space on my multiple 24" displays to easily know just where I am in a webpage, file list, document, etc.

Please, please! I ask so little of you.

-------------------------
PJ in (sunny but not so warm - 44°F this morning!) FL

[nikos]

is this affecting your xplorer2? i don't think so!?

[pj]

is this affecting your xplorer2? i don't think so!?

This "feeture" shows up in browsers, Office programs like Word, and other places that are not as user friendly as x2.

Just wanted to voice my approval of x2's current handling of scroll bars, and let you know some are not impressed with that bit of "progress".

--------------------------------
PJ (happy x2 user for 18 years!) in FL

[Kilmatead]

Not directly related to listviews, but I discovered an odd side effect in this darkmode pursuit of yours. I don't know what method you used to colour the backgrounds of context-menus, but I was working on an update for another plugin of mine (that has its own GUI) when I right-clicked in an editing field and I discovered that a stock call to TrackPopupMenu (which even in Windows own darkmode results in a white background), instead looked like this:



(It's a little blurry because I scaled it down, but you get the idea.)

Basically, my own gui needed a mommy-window to hold hands with, and x2 was the logical choice. Instead of going through all the usual nonsense to get a handle, I just used the one given from the DLL entry-point,

Code: Select all

BOOL APIENTRY DllMain(HINSTANCE hinstDLL, ...)

...and supplied it in the .hInstance member of my own window's WNDCLASSEXW definition: et voilà, I piggyback on your process and you give me cooties!

I've made no effort to convert anything else to darkmode myself as a kind of "let them eat cake/I'm lazy" sort of protest thing, but this was just too weird.

Speaking of darkmode and you not being lazy and not eating cake (see what I did there, buttering you up?), what's the deal with this atrocity?



I mean, yes, I regularly roll around one the floor and claw my eyes out when viewing the internet these days, but I don't expect such oversights in my file manager! Happens in (overflowing) user-commands and well... surely there's a work-around logic that suggests truncating the list (to retain a single column) and forcing the "Organise" option in there somewhere, so people can retain their sanity. No?

And while I'm at it , is there any chance of downgrading the default colour of selected items in the inactive pane? Right now it seems to default to F0F0F0 which while being slightly off-white, it's not off-white enough for this multiracial world of ours. This doesn't matter much for a few items, but say you select everything then go to the opposite pane to navigate to a folder to copy it all into, and again, the world explodes into super-bright-F0F0F0 and brings back all those nasty alien-abduction/anal-probing memories I'd rather forget.

Maybe (this is just another blurry mockup), a little darker grey background (even with black-text it's ok), like 8F9297 or something...



Just an idea to make our poor beleaguered involuntarily-contracting irises last a little longer.

[pj]

Kilmatead?

Are you really back?

--------------
PJ in (SHOCK) FL

[CrossX]

Kilmatead.... let me just log in and tell you "welcome back!"

PS
even if I don't know you let me just say we missed you
Have a look at this thread
viewtopic.php?t=11568
and give us some updates

PPS
Just saw that your first post "back from the dead", and giving nikos some useful hints (I don't know how much he appreciated them anyway ) was here
viewtopic.php?p=77090#p77090

[Kilmatead]

Have a look at this thread [...] and give us some updates

Well, "Updates" is such a strong word, and one unlikely to indicate the actual nutritional values of what it says on the tin.

As per the thread, though, it's a little disturbing the lengths people will go through to increase the valence of one's chosen curio-etymology - especially within the confines of a milieu so intentionally effaced and infused of/with/from doubt and misdirect. It's probably why some people build really high walls around themselves. With gun-towers. And rottweilers. And words. Just sayin'. Snipers in the trees, lads, snipers in the trees.

Curiously, just last year we mourned the passing of a certain Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, wherein

Unbeknownst to him for decades, his music grew extremely successful and influential in South Africa, where he is believed to have sold more records than Elvis Presley. Information about him was scarce, and it was incorrectly rumored there that he had died by suicide shortly after releasing his second album.

And, I must say, given (as you posted) the other far more significant, pertinent, and important thread I made a few weeks ago indicates I would be forgiven for doubting the perspicacity of the populace as despite over 500 "views", apparently no one noticed I had been resurrected (aside from Nikos, who studies these things - resurrections, that is, not the comings and goings of his much maligned minions). Or perhaps that was Nikos Kazantzakis, his literarily mononymous doppelgänger? It was, after all, posited within that thread that we were the same person (he and I, not Kazantzakis), though anyone with experience of the disorderly dissociative arts would know that split personality is a difficult thing to maintain intact (or fractured?) for any length of time, so I'm not surprised he retired my [his?] non-de-plume. Or did he? Did I? It's a curious thing, being the personification of an other's personality... though, I must say, the freedoms allowed to pseudo-imaginary characters are much greater than that of ordinary immortals. Caliban, cabrón.

In that other, more important thread, I began by saying...

So there I was, riding through Paris in a sportscar with the warm wind in my hair, when Thanos snapped his fingers... and... poof...

...which, if true, would indicate that I have very little memory of the last few years, and I, for one, as a figmented fragment of Nikos' current personification, find that strangely comforting. They made a movie about that event (though with more special-effects than the real thing), so I can't be the only one whose absence was maligned, regretted, lambasted, afflicted.

That is, after all, the essence of absence. Even Proust knew it wasn't romantic - it just... is.

I will say, though, that one thing that's been on my mind for the last few years is: Why does every saxophone player in the world seem to think they are God's gift to Free Jazz? I mean, yeah, Ornette Coleman's ghost, sure, but all that squeaking and squawking... don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of free-jazz, but more of the classic piano-trio variety. Less squawking.

These are important questions. And, like all dark-modes, are deserving of darker and more modelic answers.

[pj]

And thus we are told, in a thousand words or so, "mind your own business".

-------------------------
PJ

[Kilmatead]

That would be just a tad over 500 words, I'll have you know; Like all things in life, I did say the nutritional value might be less than the label suggests. Resurrection is not pretty. It is not delightful. It is not celebratory. Like all things internet-related, curiosity is not well rewarded by the lab-rat himself, as his experience under scrutiny is not a boon. No biology class ever studies whether or not lab-rats enjoy bubble baths. Instead it's always poking here, prodding there, and hints that there's some cheese at the end of the maze. But there's not, there's only the trap.

The lab-rat does, however, do it with humour, even if misunderstood. Forgive me my... faults.

[nikos]

dark mode black magic basics:
https://github.com/ysc3839/win32-darkmo ... DarkMode.h

ps wrt your bugs and observations, it's hard to see them along the chaff, the inactive intense colors can be fixed in the upcoming v6 changing the theme of the listview (but then scrollers get white, see the blog article itself). Menus with a horizontal break paint white, don't know why...

btw anyone wants to participate in v6 development send me an email and I will give you the current alpha/beta

[Kilmatead]

dark mode black magic basics... (but then scrollers get white)

Always a nice sign when there's an explicit void FixDarkScrollBar(), to suggest the void is indeed a void.

Menus with a horizontal break paint white, don't know why...

Which is why amongst the chaff, I suggested something about truncating lists before that happens and just living with the regrets a civilised society celebrates. By the time the menu displays and the "Organise" option is available, it's too late to avoid blowing out your retinal implants. The only workaround would be a toolbar button as a direct link to the Organise demesnes, which is easy enough to do, but a silly waste of space. Just castrate the menu instead. The brothel of the blind would thank you.

[nikos]

you can limit how many bookmarks appear in the menu... but then you won't have icons for all of them if you add them on toolbars

[Kilmatead]

you can limit how many bookmarks appear in the menu... but then you won't have icons for all of them if you add them on toolbars

Ah, sōdesu ka, Nikos-san. Who would ever think to look for something called "Menu Column Break"? I mean, really... Should have been called "Super Trans-Galactic Maginot Line Break Delimiter", which would have been so much more clear. Always over-complicating things, you are.

Icons, schmi-cons. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put it, L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. (What’s essential is invisible to the eye.)

Danke

[nikos]

talking about glitches, check the crumb-bar menu in dark mode WINDOWS explorer... yikes!