New status colours

Discuss suggestions and ideas for the forums, site, software.

Would you agree with the color scheme proposed in the description?

Yes
26
44%
No
7
12%
Yes, with modifications (comment below)
26
44%
 
Total votes: 59

null

Re: New status colours

Post by null »

Error: Red
Paused: Grey
Queued:LightBlue
Downloading: Black
Seeding: Green
Stopped: Orange

now i agree
hazardass

Re: New status colours

Post by hazardass »

[quote="sledgehammer_999"]

These will be the new colors: http://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topi ... l#msg14715
[/quote]

Hey Sledge,

I know you've said you're not planning to implement a user settings to change colors, but the 'hack' that you posted with the text file works great for customizing the colors.  Would it be possible to keep that hack enabled in the future releases of qB? 

Thanks for considering.
Last edited by hazardass on Fri Mar 27, 2015 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
sledgehammer_999
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Re: New status colours

Post by sledgehammer_999 »

The new color scheme is in v3.2.0 now. Windows users can try it: http://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topi ... l#msg16116
Rangi

Re: New status colours

Post by Rangi »

I think stalled uploads/downloads should be colored differently from regular ones. I tend to have a few stalled downloads sitting around in hopes that a seeder will appear, and it's nice to distinguish them from active downloads.

Also, paused and queued torrents should be distinguishable. What about purple for paused torrents? It's unobtrusive, but doesn't have connotations in a positive (green/blue) or negative (red/orange) direction. (If you add a stopped/paused distinction, maybe use purple for stopped and orange/brown for paused? I would think of "paused" as a temporary state that should call attention to itself, and "stopped" as a long-term state where the user wants to keep the torrent around for some reason but isn't actively using it.)

And please go with a dark enough blue for seeding torrents that it can be easily read on the white background.

Ideally these would be configurable, but if they must be hard-coded, these are fine choices.
sledgehammer_999
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Re: New status colours

Post by sledgehammer_999 »

The changes have been made already. You should try v3.2.0 RC1: index.php/topic,3421.0.html
cynicist

Re: New status colours

Post by cynicist »

I am really not a fan of the new color scheme. I'm not asking for you to make a change, I'm just going to give my opinion on why I think it's a downgrade over the old color scheme. Firstly, the people hating on gray or recommending strong colors for every status to make the text more distinct from the white background are clearly not designers. (or don't make use of the queueing feature) Let's take a look at the UI of this application to see my point more clearly.

http://cubeupload.com/im/cynicist/colorpalette.png

Notice how most of the color used outside of torrent list is fairly sparse? It's pretty much isolated to the icons. The text and background colors are indeed quite boring (read: neutral). The reason for this is that color is used to draw attention to part of the UI, and the stronger the color, the more your eyes are drawn to that particular element. To keep people's eyes from jumping all over the place, you must take care not to use too much of it. So if we apply this logic (that color should be used sparingly to distinguish items of importance) to the torrent list: Torrents with the most common status (inactive / queued) should be muted so that your eyes are drawn to the more interesting active torrents (downloading / uploading). Giving every status a strong color just to distinguish it from the background makes it harder for your eyes to know what's important because now, everything is important!

I'm sure many people will disagree with me and prefer the new palette, judging by how many disliked the older one. That's fine and in fact I'm glad the client is more usable for you. Personally though, the change is too jarring for me. (Am I the only one who liked the old colors? lol)
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Nemo
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Re: New status colours

Post by Nemo »

Of course you're very welcome to share your opinion mate :).

I did like the old colors, but I also like the new colors. You see, im getting used to it quite fast. I don't really use the queue feature so can't really share my color opinion about that. But I can understand you.
ciaobaby

Re: New status colours

Post by ciaobaby »

I'm just glad that "Outlandish Orange" has gone 'cause it saves me from changing it before compiling every time I update.
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Peter
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Re: New status colours

Post by Peter »

Colors are also very gtk-qt theme dependent.
(In case the Qt app takes up the Gtk looks, see the screenshot.)
janot

Re: New status colours

Post by janot »

[quote="cynicist"]
Torrents with the most common status (inactive / queued) should be muted so that your eyes are drawn to the more interesting active torrents (downloading / uploading). Giving every status a strong color just to distinguish it from the background makes it harder for your eyes to know what's important because now, everything is important!
[/quote]
+1
I think it's not a matter of color preferences but a design flaw. Even submitted it as github issue before trying to find this topic
https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/2995
Attachments
Screenshot from 2015-05-13 14:14:02.png
skribb

Re: New status colours

Post by skribb »

[quote="null"]
Error: Red
Paused: Grey
Queued:LightBlue
Downloading: Black
Seeding: Green
Stopped: Orange

now i agree
[/quote]

This is pretty much how it should be, I just don't understand Sledge's design.

On top of the unorthodox colors we have really confusing icons where seeding status has an orange icon, that's sometimes grey?? so with a seeding torrent you get blue text and an orange icon... kind of an eyesore. Now i''m still gonna stick with qbt because I wanted to stop using utorrent seeing as they sold out to bittorrent years ago, but I'd love for the status symbols and colors to be changed.... or why not just make them customizable? That way Sledge can be happy with their color choice, while at the same time allowing for all users to make their own color coding system and perhaps even use custom icons for the statuses.

My own personal 2 cents in this "color war" would be:

Error: Red text (red is the classic color of warning), red icon
Paused: Grey text and grey icon, which i'm drawing from the term "greyed out"
Queued:teal text might work, and then a teal icon for queed download, and green icon for queued seed (green to me means "done/completed/downloaded")
Downloading: Black, because this is the most normal color for GUI text and downloading is the "most common" activity. icon should be blue
Seeding: Green text, green icon
Stopped: Orange text and icon, or black text with orange icon

Does anyone agree that these would be simpler-to-understand color codes?
Quixote

Re: New status colours

Post by Quixote »

No one will ever agree fully to a colour scheme; everyone has their own taste. The fact of the matter here is that you are not trying to design a car. Even if you were selling cars, the most important issue here is performance. The colours, interior, added features, etc. are options that each individual specifies. One person may see something listed in a red font and consider it to be a warning where as his brother could consider it to indicate a stoppage.

The bottom line is that if the builders of this software hope to appease the masses that have adopted their software (insofar as aesthetics go), they will have to allow us to create and use "skins". The appeal of "skinning" has been proven time and time again -- I remember looking for the perfect skin for my Winamp installation something like 15 years ago and I still heavily customize the appearance of everything from my Windows OS to my phone OS. Browse the Android Playstore and you will see that it is swamped with apps geared towards customization and skinning, with an equally impressive amount of offerings by artistic people looking for a creative outlet.

The main reason I ended up here is because I recently adopted qBittorrent over Utorrent after recently losing trust in that group. I found that qBittorent was exactly what I am looking for without all the crap: adware and virus-like nonsense. Unfortunately -- and I'm not sure if it's because of the skinning I've done on my system -- the UI is absolutely unusable for me. The menus use grey text on a grey background which make it very frustrating and flat out angering for me. (Like I said, it's probably something I effected). Either way, it would be nice to choose and create different skins just like other applications enable us to -- just look at deviantart or wincustomize and you'll see how many have gone that route.

Thanks for your consideration.

-D
skribb

Re: New status colours

Post by skribb »

Skinning would be awesome, but it doesn't look like sledge is interested in implementing that.

I'd rather use qb than utorrent but I agree, the UI of qb is ghastly.
ciaobaby

Re: New status colours

Post by ciaobaby »

I'd rather use qb than utorrent but I agree, the UI of qb is ghastly.
It is functional not 'pretty', and if it was 'pretty', qbittorrent would become JUST as bloated as uTorrent is!

And it is only the QT interface on Windows that is fairly spartan, it looks and works just fine on Linux.
skribb

Re: New status colours

Post by skribb »

I don't like bloated interfaces, so no, I do not agree.

It does look a lot better on *nix

Mostly what I'm referring to is the grey progress bars and the ugly icons. The actual chrome has more to do with the version of windows you're using, and the visual style currently in use
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