XnView MP 1.12.0: Improve readability of the "Action" dialog

[xnviewfriend]

I love the new look of XnView that comes with the switch from Qt5 to Qt 6. Thank you for the update.
For a lot of dialogs the readability has improved considerably, which makes it easier to comprehend dialogs with lots of details.

Except for the Batch converter "Action" dialog, where the title bars of the addable actions are hard to read now. See the comparison screenshot below showing the "Actions" dialog of XnView v1.11.7 on the left and XnView v1.12.0 on the right.

Could you please adjust the action title bars accordingly?
 

[xnview]

Which theme do you use?

[xnviewfriend]

Your question made me re-investigate. Here's what I found:

1. It appears there is no config dialog to change or modify the UI theme. The only time you can choose one out of four themes (default, light, dark, black) is when you install XnViewMP for the first time.

EDIT:

As a workaround, renaming/removing xnview.ini and starting XnViewMP.exe triggers the installation dialog, where you can choose one out of four themes. I used this workaround today when investigating which theme I have installed, and how XnViewMP notes it down. It's stored to the ini-flag "style" in the [Start] section of xnview.ini:

xnview.ini:

Code: Select all

[Start]
style=0 : default theme (white UI)
style=-1 : light theme (light grey UI)
style=-2 : dark theme (dark grey UI)
style=-3 : black theme (black UI)
style=1 : "unofficial?" light theme (light grey UI)

/EDIT
 

Suggestion:
It would be great if you could add configuration dialog to change the UI theme and the coloring of an existing installation. For example, there is dialog to adjust the background color of the thumbnails. If you could expand on this to also allow altering of the background color of the browser, the thumbnail panel, the toolbar and status bar, that would be awesome.
 

2. When using the light theme (style=0), the progress bar resembles the look of the Windows 10/11 progress bar. It shows a green bar with a spotlight repeatedly wandering through the bar from left to right during the progress build up. Using any other theme (style=-1, -2, -3), the progress bar is colored in blue without the wandering spotlight.

I tried to get the green progress bar with the wandering spotlight working in the dark theme. Editing the file Style_Sheet.qss, section "QProgressBar::chunk", had not effect.

Then I found out, that if you edit xnview.ini and set the flag "style=1" (without the leading minus!), XnViewMP uses a different "unofficial?" light theme. And if you place a copy of the file Style_Sheet.qss, with the "QProgressBar::chunk" definition commented out, in XnViewMP's main folder, you get the Windows 10/11 green progress bar instead of the blue one. I used this workaround for many years, up to XnViewMP 1.11.7. The action title bars on the batch conversion dialog where still readable, despite the light coloring.

This workaround does not work like this anymore in XnViewMP 1.12.0/Qt6. However, when setting the flag "style=1", I can still place a copy of Style_Sheet.qss and at least change the color definition of the progress bar. But this has the disadvantage of having to rely on the light theme, which shows light title bars for the actions in the batch converter dialog, as I showed in the comparison screenshot above.

Suggestion:
Please add configuration dialog for the progress bar, so that you can set its color and choose the green progress bar, that is used in the default (white) theme.
 

3. I made comparison screenshots of XnViewMP 1.12.0 with the light theme (style=-1), the dark theme (style=-2), and the "unofficial?" light theme (style=1).

The panel background color of the "unofficial?" light theme (style=1) is lighter, which makes black text more readable compared to the light theme (style=-1) and dark theme (style=-2).

Furthermore, the "unofficial?" light theme uses different styling elements for the subfolder indicator arrow, the scroll bar, the progress bar, the radio button.

The disadvantage of the light and the "unofficial?" light theme is, that the background color of certain elements is to bright. Like the title bars of the addable actions in the batch conversion dialog, which made me open this thread initially.

Suggestion:
Could you add this "unofficial?" theme to the official selection of themes to be used for XnViewMP for Windows? Ideally also as a dark theme variant?
 

[xnview]

if you use a custom theme (qss), you can change the color of title in 'Batch convert'

Code: Select all

ActionPanelItem{\
	background: #252525; \
}

[xnviewfriend]

if you use a custom theme (qss), you can change the color of title in 'Batch convert'

Code: Select all

ActionPanelItem{\
	background: #252525; \
}

Ok, thanks, I will try that. How do I tell XnViewMP to use a custom QSS theme? Where does the custom QSS theme needs to be located?

You didn't respond to my post in more detail. I understand that your time for answering every post is limited and and thus is a precious resource. Can you at least respond whether you will pick up any of the suggestions I made?

Thank you.