Audacity Manual Contents

In all cases the focus border has been brightened from standard.

Votes:

Pink 1: Bill -1, Peter -1, Ed +1, Gale -0.5, James -1 Current -2.5
Pink 2: Bill -1, Peter -1, Ed +1, Gale +0.75, James -1 Current -1.25
Green 1: Bill -1, Peter 0, Ed +0.5, Gale +0.25, James -1 Current -1.25
Green 2: Bill -1, Peter 0, Ed +0.5, Gale +0.5, James -1 Current -1
Green 3: Bill +0.5 Peter +0.75, Gale +1 James +0.5 Current +2.75 (only Gale's vote is on basis of current Green 3, in situ).
Green 3 with black numbers: Bill -1 Peter -1, Gale +0.25, James -1 Current -2.75
Orange 1: Bill +1, Peter +0.5, Ed -1, Gale -0.5, James +1 Current +1
Orange 2: Bill +1, Peter +1, Ed -1, Gale +0.5, James +1 Current +2.5
Orange 3 as now presented with border style Gale +0.5
- for border style on track: Gale +1, Bill +1 Current +2
- for smaller numbers: Gale -0.5, Peter -1 Current -1.5
Brown: Bill 0, Peter +0.5, Ed ?, Gale -0.5, James +1 Current +1

Gale:01Jun12: Thanks, Bill. I pasted in the current brown for comparison. All are an improvement to me in looking cheerier and distinguishing the track focus better; the oranges are least good at dealing with the track focus. Steve has not voted yet but I think we can discount Pink 1, Green 1 and Orange 1. Would Bill be appeased by a darker, less fluorescent green? And will the colour of the numbers make a difference? I could see black working better than the blue we have now, especially with a green.

Bill 01Jun12: Added Green 3, which I could live with.

Gale 02Jun12: I prefer Green 3 to Green 2, so downgraded my vote for Green 2. I would like to see Green 3 with black numbers, as I think that might push me to +1 on it (I'm not +1 on any of these yet). In many ways Orange 2 is still better, but focus border clash looks bad to me. Did we ever try a bolder grey or black for the border colour? A bright number colour could still cheer it up enough with a black/grey. Fine tuning shades of blue/green/red may never be convincing.
Bill 04Jun12:
- I don't see the focus border "clash" with orange 2.
  - Gale I see it quite strongly with any colours that are similar but try to have a defined border (I am slightly colour blind). It might look better if it looked like an orange border as the toolbars, not an orange and black border.
    - Bill I deliberately left the black track border outside the coloured highlight so there'd be some definition of and separation from the focus highlight. All options were done this way. I've added Orange 3 with no black between the track highlight and the focus highlight. It also shows smaller numbers as requested by Ed.
    - Gale I think this will probably swing my vote to orange 3. This is much less painful to look at for me. It also removes the problem that the border to right of vertical scale looks brighter than the border inside the track focus. Can we please also do this for the bottom of the Timeline, then if most think this is better, do this also for green 3 so we can have a final comparison of those two.
      - Bill: New Orange 3 image with orange border covering the black line at the bottom of the timeline.
    - The other minor problem I see with all the images is that everything above the track focus looks "on top" of the rest because the track focus looks less wide. Would it not look better if we made the track focus to be the same width as the border above? We are already faking focus brightness. In real life there is almost no background to left/right of the track focus, but in this image there is. This change would make the focus distinction clearer too.
      - Bill: I don't quite follow what you're asking. "In real life" there is a 4 pixel grey "border" around or between all tracks, as well as a 1 pixel black drop shadow effect. The "real" focus highlight is 3 pixels wide and shades from bright yellow to yellow-grey. My "brightening" effect as to change it to 2 pixels wide bright yellow and not touch the 3rd pixel. So to my mind the track focus in these images is 2 pixels wide, the same as the highlight borders. Are you asking to move the track + focus border up two pixels so the yellow focus highlight touches the orange border of the timeline? Or are you asking that the track and focus highlight be moved 2 pixels left so the focus highlight lines up with the orange borders? I don't know if we want to engage in that kind of fakery. Brightening the focus highlight is one thing, changing the location and appearance of a track is another.
      - Gale: I would argue the extra black border was "fakery" and was responsible for making the images look dull and fuelling the demands for "neon" and black numbers. If we wanted the border, it should have been a much subtler grey. I would like to see the black border removed (or made more "subtle") in green 3 to make a "green 4" to compare with orange 3.
        Bill: There is no "extra" black border added in photoshop. The 1 pixel black border around the track and the extra 1 pixel black drop shadow are already there. I put the section highlight borders inside the existing black borders. I agree it looks better with the black borders covered up. I think it's one thing to cover interface graphics with highlight borders and another to change their size or appearance. The brightening of the focus highlight is subtle and not likely to be noticed.
        Here is a 400% detail of the upper right of the track in the image without any additions.
      - Gale: Bill, I obviously don't know what you do in Photoshop, but the black "looks" to be "extra" or "un-naturally emphasized" when next to the section highlight. We agree it is better (I would say "much cleaner and brighter") if the highlight covers the black. So could we now do that for Green 3?
      - Because the track focus has no border, it appears less wide, so the suggestion was that the focus highlight be extended left so the focus highlight lines up with the border colour (or less gap than now).
      - Gale: I use Audacity maximised normally and had not noticed that when you resize the window down, the track no longer fills the horizontal space but leaves a piece of the background at the side. That's unfortunate when we are trying to make an attractive image that can't have a border round the track focus. But as I now agree Audacity has this behaviour in real life, I also agree that we have little choice but to live with it even if it "might" look better to extend the focus border.
- I prefer the blue numbers as they are clearly not part of the interface.
- Orange 2 graphic now updated to show the numbers.
- Removed pink 1 and 2, green 1, and orange 1 since these are negative.
- Added Green 3 with black numbers
Bill 06Jun12:
- New Green 3 with track section highlight covering the black
- Mew Orange 3 with Track Control Panel section highlight covering black line between vert scale and track
- Removed options with negative votes - we appear to be down to Green 3 or Orange 3
- I will be away and out of touch until June 11.

Gale 07Jun12: Looking at Green 3 and Orange 3 in page context I have gone to +1 for Green 3 and dropped to +0.5 for Orange 2, but I could easily live with Orange 2 with or without smaller numbers (though I prefer larger). I could also live with a slightly more neon green (but not much more) if Ed still feels really disappointed.

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Green 3

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Orange 3

No black between orange border on track and focus highlight
Smaller numbers for comparison