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Right now, the default normal and hover hyperlink colors are a fixed RGB regardless of the system colors. This makes Eclipse Forms-based parts look bad when themes/system colors are not in the blue hue (for example, XP Olive). In contrast, open Windows XP folder window - note how hyperlinks in the area on the left pick the hue that matches the color theme. Eclipse should initialize hyperlink colors based on the system colors. Please work with visual designers on picking the right system color to use.
Linda has been tasked with finding appropriate constants for these two colors.
Great. Since Eclipse Forms are going to me much more theme-coordinated, it would be a shame to have everything nicely match except hyperlinks.
I know you don't care that much, but PDE uses hyperlinks all over the place and the color coordination should be viewed in the similar priority as for the rest of the platform UI. Otherwise, we should all just restore the old 2.1 look and not bother any more.
We do care that good colours are chosen. Your last statement seems a little strong<grin>. Please say what your problems are, I have a feeling that there is more here then just changing two colours. If so we would like to know. Linda, please let us know what colours to use here.
You know that line from 'Seinfeld': - There may be more to Neumann than meets the eye? - No, there's less :-). In this particular case, 'there is less'. We simply have these two colors exposed as colors to be used for hyperlinks throughout the workbench. The current choice was selected in 2.* days when the look was optimized for Win2k (i.e. dark blue and lighter blue for active). A more modern 'skinned' windowing systems like Windows XP pay more attention to color coordination. Ideally, what I would like achieved is what you have in the the area on the left in the XP folder (with sections like 'File and Folder Tasks', 'Other Places' etc.). Some of the text in this area is 'active' i.e. hyperlinks, and they change color depending on the color theme chosen. For example, if you choose Olive, they take on a green hue. I am not proposing that we dictate these colors at all - the user can always change them in the preferences. All I would like us to do is compute the defaults based on the system colors (the same way we compute other colors for the new look). It can either be a direct system color, or system color blended with another one). I went through this exercise with Linda for Eclipse Forms recently and the forms now work well with chosen color themes (either XP or old Windows classic like Desert, Plum etc.). The only glaring exception are hyperlink that stay dark blue all along.
We don't even need to work very hard here - we can pick colors that XP chose for the hyperlinks in folders (or something close).
Has there been any movement on this Linda?
Created attachment 10504 [details] universal system colours
oops looks like my comments got wiped out when I added attachment, will next add back in.
I spoke recently with MVM on this, and, taking into account issues re system colours cross-platform, he preferred to defer changing workbench links to post R3. See attachment "Universal System Colours". Normally we would specify one widget set for all platforms/themes, but note there isn't one set here that could provide decent link colors, or allow us to specify a universal blend to adjust (ie, the blend formula applies equally to all colours in the set). Alternative is to specify colour widgets separately by platform. For XP only, we can get easily get good link colours. For other platforms, notice how the colours shift to mostly grays. We would have to specify colours for each platform and try to find a way to blend gray values to a colour hue to produce good results. Bearing in mind that we can't detect themes (eg all the theme variations on Linux) so would need to find colour we felt confident would play well many scenarios, and test results. For these reasons, ie, no simple solution, MVM felt changing the Workbench links was lo priority, but on the understanding Dejan could independently code for Forms, and we could deal with consistency after R3. MVM - please say if I've misrepresented your thoughts. DEJAN - I can be available to work on link colours for Forms, noting the tricky stuff above. But let me know if you see simpler solution :)
With that in mind I'm going to mark this as later if there are no objections...
for DEJAN re Forms link colours: For XP and Windows, I think the #7 Title Background colours would work because the Forms background colour is always white, or black in hi contrast options. The WinClassic navy, similar to current Workbench links, isn't ideal for hi contrast black background, but user can change via preference. If easier, perhaps we could upgrade Forms links just for XP/Win and stay with Workbench-style link colour for other platforms.
Reopening for 3.1 consideration.
I have this item listed in 3.1 visual design plan items and will be reviewing with MVM.
Deferring
See also bug 89373.
Tod, what do you want to do with this? You were keen on color consolidation ...
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 163335 ***
