Use alpha for less bold bullet in CTabFolderRenderer.drawDirtyIndicator

[merks]

Fixes #3520

[merks]

It's subjective know what's best for the alpha.

The following after comment below two show how it looks before this PR's change.

The unselected alpha 140 -> 120 and selected alpha from <I'm not sure what> -> 170.

[iloveeclipse]

Could you provide before/after pictures please? I honestly don't see the difference.

[github-actions]

Test Results

  212 files  ±0    212 suites  ±0   28m 21s ⏱️ - 1m 1s
4 898 tests ±0  4 874 ✅ ±0   24 💤 ±0  0 ❌ ±0 
7 074 runs  ±0  6 906 ✅ ±0  168 💤 ±0  0 ❌ ±0 

Results for commit dbc9e7e. ± Comparison against base commit 3db6f5d.

♻️ This comment has been updated with latest results.

[laeubi]

Maybe one should make these magic numbers fields that can be set from the outside (e.g. to support CSS styling)

[vogella]

I think it is better to make first the SWT default correct.

[vogella]

Thanks @merks for starting to work on this, I have more time today so I will also look at this.

[vogella]

Tested under Windows and I have no strong opinion here. New look and ok look both look fine to me. Maybe the dimmed version is a little bit less "here I am" than the old version which is equally good and bad.

@azoitl brought that idea up so I leave it to you and Alois to decide.

[azoitl]

I find it calmer, which is for me good. I would go with it.

[HeikoKlare]

I agree that a less bold bullet is a good idea. But the general design feels a bit inconsistent to me. I wonder what concept we should follow for the bullet coloring rather than defining specific values. When looking at the proposal, first thing I notice is that the bullet in non-active tabs in dark theme becomes hardly visible. This is because the background color of non-active tabs in dark theme is lighter than the one of active tabs and the different between active/non-active background color is more significant than on light theme.

When looking further, I see that the text color is different between active/non-active tabs in dark theme, while it is the same for both in light theme. Shouldn't that be a guiding factor? When taking a look at VS Code, that's actually what they seem to do: the bullet color is exactly the text color. In VS Code, there are more differences in text color (e.g., between active/non-active tabs), but having consistent coloring of text and bullet may still feel more consistent to users than adding further values that will produce inconsistent appearance in one case or the other?

[merks]

I created this pr primarily as a prototype and to test that a pr is not affected by a pde baseline problem. So please feel free to close this in favor of a better implementation!

[vogella]

I agree that a less bold bullet is a good idea. But the general design feels a bit inconsistent to me. I wonder what concept we should follow for the bullet coloring rather than defining specific values. When looking at the proposal, first thing I notice is that the bullet in non-active tabs in dark theme becomes hardly visible. This is because the background color of non-active tabs in dark theme is lighter than the one of active tabs and the different between active/non-active background color is more significant than on light theme.

When looking further, I see that the text color is different between active/non-active tabs in dark theme, while it is the same for both in light theme. Shouldn't that be a guiding factor? When taking a look at VS Code, that's actually what they seem to do: the bullet color is exactly the text color. In VS Code, there are more differences in text color (e.g., between active/non-active tabs), but having consistent coloring of text and bullet may still feel more consistent to users than adding further values that will produce inconsistent appearance in one case or the other?

Something for the next release? The current implementation has been used, tested, voted on and selected so bigger changes should IMHO moved to a new release not shortly before the final release.

Tweaking the alpha value is IMHO fine for now but different implementations should be done in the next release.

[HeikoKlare]

Sure, nothing that should be done for this release. But I thought it might be valuable consideration for how to move forward with the indicator coloring in general, as I don't think this should be the final solution for the indicator UX.

And I would be careful with such a last minute change as the current version of the indicator has been tested by many people for months, while this change will only have the attention of few people and once the others notice, it's too late for any further changes for the upcoming release.
Maybe as a defensive option for now, we could focus on the actual concern: in my understanding it was the indicator being too heavy for selected tabs but probably not so much for unselected tab. Maybe the ones who raised the concerns about the indicator being too heavy can confirm or correct this assumption. My concern above was about contrast for unselected tabs. So we may just make it a bit less heavy for the selected case, such as gc.setAlpha(selected ? 190 : 140)?

[merks]

I’m happy with any action that tones down the loudness especially of the selected tab. We are making this the new default so 1000 times more people will soon see this new improved look.

[azoitl]

@HeikoKlare yes my feedback was for the loudness of the selected tab. So having an improvement there alone would be great. I also wanted to clarify that this is not only an observation from me but several people from my team told me that without me pointing them to the problem.

I think the inactive tab is fine.

I also now see the problem of the unchanged text of background tabs in light mode. It would be great to have a similar appearance as in the dark mode. But I guess this is something for the next release.

[vogella]

Sounds like an agreement, @merks please update the PR to change only the selected tab indicator.

[merks]

I believe these are @HeikoKlare's suggested values..

[vogella]

Sorry for being so demanding but could you add updated screehshots? I will give my +1 based on these.