[Framers] FM 2017 Feature Request: Restore color and scaling to menu icons

[Frank Stearns]

There's perhaps an easy solution to this that as far as I know has not 
been mentioned.

Adobe could take a lesson from Avid's "Protools" product, arguably 
the recording industry standard for high-end, high-track count audio 
recording and mixing (and these days you can even toss in video 
clips).

There is a HUGE amount of information presented on the Protools 
desktop, much of it real-time. To run it well takes a minimum of two 
large-format monitors (I use three). Waveforms, channel strips, 
processing plug-ins, input/output matrices, level meters, et al -- 
lots of stuff to look at, and much of it in motion.

So, of course, color is an important element in helping the user 
manage all these visual elements and not create chaos. (They've done a 
masterful job by the way; you're not even aware how good it is or just 
how much information you can take in until you're forced to use some 
other tool that's not as good.)

But here's the brilliant addition that came in a few years ago. The 
color control panel (where the user can assign colors to various 
things) now includes variable brightness and saturation controls. You 
can make color items cartoonishly saturated, or take them all the way 
down to monochrome -- and **every point between**.

This could likely be done with the FM icons and thus please everybody.

And, I'd even suggest an enhancement that I wish Avid would look into. 
Give us the ability to create "color groups" within the UI (rather 
than just one overall group). Then, to each group, let us assign 
various screen elements or groups of elements as we please so that we 
can control the visuals of each group independently of other visual 
groups.

Within the panel for each group might be color assignment options, but 
most importantly would be those variable saturation and brightness 
controls. We could set what we want for the entire thing. Want dim 
icons but bright pods? Fine. Want the opposite? That's fine too. Want 
the whole thing bright or dim, saturated or sepia? You got it.

Clean, simple, and extremely user-eye friendly.

Frank Stearns

Frank Stearns Associates | makers of IXgen(tm) for FrameMaker(r)
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