Preferences updates

[spr]

Hi,

I have been looking at a few minor alterations to the preferences screen to make it a bit clearer to noobs like myself! Here is the first...

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r22581
- All reset buttons now appear under Troubleshooting section.
- Increased visibility of Troubleshooting section by moving to the top of the preferences screen.
- Added confirmation dialogs to all reset buttons.


Cheers,
Steve

[spr]

Some more updates to preferences...

Code: Select all

...r22587
- Converted Skins list to themed combo and added to new Visual Themes section.
- Converted AI Profile list to themed combo and moved to top of GamePlay section.
- New Visual Themes setting to hide or show background image on match screen. Default show.


Cheers,
Steve

[Chris H.]

Some of the themes are using a white colored font for text and it is hard to read the text in the combo box.

The old style list boxes also highlighted the currently in use option. Hmm, I guess that this had not changed but when we select the combo box it appears that it highlights the top choice?
 

[spr]

Hi Chris,

Some of the themes are using a white colored font for text and it is hard to read the text in the combo box.

Do have a link to the theme?

The old style list boxes also highlighted the currently in use option.

The combobox should show the currently active theme. Do you have an example of where it is not doing this?

What OS are the screenshots from?

Cheers,
Steve

[Chris H.]

Hi Chris,

Some of the themes are using a white colored font for text and it is hard to read the text in the combo box.

Do have a link to the theme?

The old style list boxes also highlighted the currently in use option.

The combobox should show the currently active theme. Do you have an example of where it is not doing this?

Cheers,
Steve

 
The "Default" theme uses a white colored font. I am using Mac OS X and this may be an OS related issue, not sure at this time.

Oh, I also edited my original message and I now think that the combo box is acting differently, could not tell originally as I could not easily see the white colored text.

[spr]

The old style list boxes also highlighted the currently in use option.

I think this is because the UI_SKIN setting was being stored as "default" instead of "Default" (r22580) prior to the combobox update. The combo is less forgiving than the original list when it comes to theme naming so I will take a look. In the meantime, switching to another theme then back again should resolve this.

I think the coloring issue is related to focus. In Windows, using the dDefault theme, when the combo does not have focus -

and when it gets the focus -

That highlight color is pain since I was unable to alter it but whereas it is a slight irritation in Windows it is obviously more pronounced on the Mac. I will take another look to see if I can get it to behave properly in keeping with the current theme. Otherwise, I can make the combobox unfocusable which means if (in Windows) you use the TAB key to move between settings the combobox will be skipped. The only way to select it would be with the mouse.

Can you confirm that the drop-down coloring in OSX is readable?

Cheers,
Steve

[spr]

Chris, could you also check the comboboxes as used on the New/Load Quest screen -

These have yet to be given the theme treatment but notice that the highlighting color is the same so I would expect you to be having the same problem.

Cheers,
Steve

[Chris H.]

Can you confirm that the drop-down coloring in OSX is readable?

Cheers,
Steve

 
The drop down coloring is readable in Mac OS when using the Default theme.
 

[Chris H.]

Chris, could you also check the comboboxes as used on the New/Load Quest screen -

The attachment combocolorfail3.png is no longer available

These have yet to be given the theme treatment but notice that the highlighting color is the same so I would expect you to be having the same problem.

Cheers,
Steve

 
These old style combo boxes look OK under Mac OS using the default theme.
 

[spr]

[r22604] I have added a new "Themed ComboBox" setting to enable/disable themed combos should you be having readability problems with the new themed combo used in the preferences page. It seems to be only Mac OS so far. I develop on Windows 7 and have also tested using Linux Zorin with no obvious problems. Please let me know if you have similar color clashes which affect readability.

Cheers,
Steve

[spr]

[r22612] Fixed issue with combo box displaying "Dark Ascension" when active theme is "Default". For more info, please see http://www.cardforge.org/bugz/view.php?id=716.

Cheers,
Steve

[spr]

r22977
Just to make things interesting, the Forge look and feel (L&F) is dependent not only on the theme selected (Default, Journeyman, etc) but also the L&F associated with the Swing architecture which is responsible for how a JTextArea, JComboBox, etc is displayed (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/plaf.html).

Prior to r22977, Forge was not specifically setting the Swing L&F which meant it was leaving the decision to the OS. On Windows and Linux the default appears to be the standard "Metal" cross-platform L&F. However, on the Mac it uses a different L&F that displays GUI components using a native L&F.

The problem is that setting the properties of a GUI component in one L&F might not necessarily work in another. In this case, setting the background color of the JComboBox worked fine using the "Metal" L&F but had absolutely no effect on the Mac L&F.

Therefore, Forge now explicitly sets the L&F at startup to the cross-platform "Metal" scheme. How jarring this is will be dependent on your OS but considering that Forge is attempting a skinnable L&F I think this is acceptable.

Theorectically, this means that we can now use the UIManager to globally set the look of the various GUI components instead of hardcoding display characteristics. I say "theoretically" because the UIManager works fine 98% of the time but there can be irritating edge case properties which stubbonly refuse to conform.

UIManager TODO :
- Checkboxes
- Radio Buttons
- Modal dialogs
- Menus
- Lists
- Tables

While working on this I would like to mention the UIManager Defaults tool which is extremely useful for displaying the various properties that can be set for each GUI component using UIManager. Also, I would like to mention the Substance L&F which I think could be used to really polish the Forge interface - what do you think?

Finally, a big thanks to ChrisH for his help in resolving this issue.

Cheers,
Steve

[Chris H.]

Prior to DoubleStrike's GUI work on the themes/skins Forge included a number of different LAFs that we could choose from. Some of them were buggy and others were unfinished or unsupported.

I would tread carefully in this area as we do not want to recreate the LAF problems that we used to see so long ago.