Freeway Pro 6 adds RGB slider controls to new colors… I almost thought it was RGBa color, I was so excited. But then I noticed the missing “a” and my heart sank just a little. Ah, well - always something to look forward to.
Later, I thought to myself “why rgb at all?” – seriously, the ability to add rgb color through the system color picker has been around so long that I can’t recall when that ability did not exist.
Additionally, I find that I can no longer paste hex values from my favorite color-creation apps into this window… actually, none of the fields in this window support simple cut-and-paste commands that previous versions did. Unbelievable, to be reduced to manually writing them down and typing them in… Needs. More. Thought.
Hopefully these revisions are somehow part of an intermediary step, and are leading to more valuable native features like rgba color controls and improved interface design. Until then, I simply find it a mystery.
Hi Ernie,
The inability to paste into this dialog is a bug. You’ll notice that if you try and paste into the New Color dialog from the Edit > Colors menu then the paste will fail. However if you open up the dialog from the Styles & Colors palette (click on the gear icon and select New Color…) then Freeway will happily accept the paste.
I seem to recall there was an open bug on this but i’ll check.
As for RGBA support, well I hope that’ll make it in soon as well as allowing users to choose how the colours should be defined in the code; HEX, RGB, RGBA (obviously for colours that contain transparency values).
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Feb 2013, at 08:20, The Big Erns wrote:
Additionally, I find that I can no longer paste hex values from my favorite color-creation apps into this window… actually, none of the fields in this window support simple cut-and-paste commands that previous versions did. Unbelievable, to be reduced to manually writing them down and typing them in… Needs. More. Thought.
Hi Ernie,
In addition to this I just found out that you can currently right-click on the text fields in the Edit > Colors dialog and paste the values in OK.
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Feb 2013, at 09:41, Tim Plumb wrote:
I seem to recall there was an open bug on this but i’ll check.
Tim - thanks for tracking down this workaround – now I can also tweet my
favorite hex color values! Seriously, good tip.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
Hi Ernie,
In addition to this I just found out that you can currently right-click on
the text fields in the Edit > Colors dialog and paste the values in OK.
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Feb 2013, at 09:41, Tim Plumb wrote:
I seem to recall there was an open bug on this but i’ll check.
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:41 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
As for RGBA support, well I hope that’ll make it in soon as well as
allowing users to choose how the colours should be defined in the code;
HEX, RGB, RGBA (obviously for colours that contain transparency values).
That’s a great point which I completely missed – FWP still outputs hex
color values only, and that will have to change in order for a more
advanced color control.
Tim, given that there are no real gains with this new color window do you
know why this part of the interface was visited at all?
A lot has happened under the hood in Freeway 6 (a LOT more than just the new features) and as part of that work some of the interface had to be recreated. The team have done an amazing job of replicating Freeway 5’s user interface so you just wouldn’t know anything has changed. With the Edit Colors dialog and the need for web safe colours falling away the dialog got an update. Personally other than the copy/paste issues I find it a lot faster to use as I never really used the web safe colours anyway.
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Feb 2013, at 14:32, Ernie Simpson wrote:
Tim, given that there are no real gains with this new color window do you
know why this part of the interface was visited at all?
Okay, so it’s a step forward under-the-hood despite the half-step
appearance on the surface. Fair enough.
For sure, the software steps involved between the way-things-were and the
way-they’re-heading are beyond my expertise – but an interesting story to
help understand where we are now.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
A lot has happened under the hood in Freeway 6 (a LOT more than just the
new features) and as part of that work some of the interface had to be
recreated. The team have done an amazing job of replicating Freeway 5’s
user interface so you just wouldn’t know anything has changed. With the
Edit Colors dialog and the need for web safe colours falling away the
dialog got an update. Personally other than the copy/paste issues I find it
a lot faster to use as I never really used the web safe colours anyway.
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Feb 2013, at 14:32, Ernie Simpson wrote:
Tim, given that there are no real gains with this new color window do you
know why this part of the interface was visited at all?
Sorry, I meant in the Inspector. Now I get RGB sliders instead of the hex color squares and eyedropper/color picker option. That was so convenient to change text colors or box colors/borders on the fly. I really don’t want to stop, go to Edit, create a new color and then go back to my text box, find the color and change it. I am an avid Freeway devotee but this is driving me buggy.
I don’t get what you mean… If I want to color something from the inspector
it’s just the same as I showed you. Choose Other from the list of available
colors, up pops the same new color dialog, click the color tile and use the
Apple Picker’s eyedropper tool, if that’s what you want.
Otherwise, I don’t get it.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:40 PM, madcomposter email@hidden wrote:
Sorry, I meant in the Inspector. Now I get RGB sliders instead of the hex
color squares and eyedropper/color picker option. That was so convenient to
change text colors or box colors/borders on the fly. I really don’t want to
stop, go to Edit, create a new color and then go back to my text box, find
the color and change it. I am an avid Freeway devotee but this is driving
me buggy.
Click on Gear icon in upper right, then choose Color Picker…
Should you want to choose New Color instead in Step3 above, note the word “Hex” in the dialog that appears. Then click on the box to the far right of the Hex field. Doing that will give you the Color Picker and magnifying glass.
Solved.
What I personally would like to see is a new option that would display HEX color values when in the “Document Colors” tab of the Colors palette, displaying them to the far right of each color.
If I want to change a text color, for example: I used to be able to highlight the text, go to the Inspector, click on the Aa icon or the paintbrush icon and use the color dropdown to choose Other, which would bring up the hex color squares and eyedropper. Now it’s bringing up RGB sliders. I don’t want to have to go through 4 additional steps to accomplish the same thing I used to be able to do in 1 step.
Look, I’m the first in line to point out the Color UI is in severe distress
but it is far from useless.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:32 AM, madcomposter email@hidden wrote:
If I want to change a text color, for example: I used to be able to
highlight the text, go to the Inspector, click on the Aa icon or the
paintbrush icon and use the color dropdown to choose Other, which would
bring up the hex color squares and eyedropper. Now it’s bringing up RGB
sliders. I don’t want to have to go through 4 additional steps to
accomplish the same thing I used to be able to do in 1 step.
Because the old way didn’t require Step 3. For heavy users, that becomes a time-waster. I never said it was useless; it is an inconvenience for users like me. The previous UI was more efficient and easier. Why is it bad to want that back??
Look, I’m the first in line to point out the Color UI is in severe distress
but it is far from useless.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:32 AM, madcomposter email@hidden wrote:
If I want to change a text color, for example: I used to be able to
highlight the text, go to the Inspector, click on the Aa icon or the
paintbrush icon and use the color dropdown to choose Other, which would
bring up the hex color squares and eyedropper. Now it’s bringing up RGB
sliders. I don’t want to have to go through 4 additional steps to
accomplish the same thing I used to be able to do in 1 step.
Yes I noticed that now when I want to choose a colour from the background or border color drop down menu in the inspector panel and click on ‘other’ I get the Hex option. When I then click on the colour the colour palette pops up but all the icons at the top are greyed out. It would be great if these icons could be active again.
Thanks for the alternative JDW but I think it would be good to have both options.