LDMdesign

I am using fixed colors in my device, and yet when I change the Live theme, it changes the fixed colors. Light theme is forces light grey elements to black. 

I would expect dynamic colors to change, but not fixed colors.

Also, when I shared my device with a friend (both using Live 11), the off-white elements turned to black when he is using a dark theme, thus making it unreadable.

I am using fixed colors in my device, and yet when I change the Live theme, it changes the fixed colors. Light theme is forces light grey...

theme-changing-fixed-colors

You may want to see these threads to see if they're applicable to what you're seeing:

https://cycling74.com/forums/how-is-the-new-themes-stuff-supposed-to-work-in-max-86

https://cycling74.com/forums/max-86-live-color-theme-issues-lockedbgcolor-with-dynamic-color

Thanks, this looks confusing and unintuitive

@LDMDESIGN, happy to answer any questions, fire away!

Ok I was a bit confused, but after reading through the explanations by Joshua here- 

 I think the issue is not that it's confusing, it's that as I described, it's not working correctly.

As I said, I always use fixed colors, and now I find when I change the theme, the colors are changing. This is using the latest Live11 and Max.  Surely using fixed colors, they should not change.

Also as I said when I sent the m4l device to my friend who is running the latest Live11 but with the current max version that is bundled with Live, specifically a comment box had black text for him, when I had clearly set it to have light gray text using Fixed color.

Got it. As mentioned on that thread, we would be interested in taking a look at any patch where setting fixed colors explicitly isn't working as expected.

Ok well interestingly, I had changed the color to Dynamic and sent it to my friend to see if that displayed correctly for him, and it did display correctly. So I went back into the device and switched it back to Fixed in order to send it to you, but what I found was after I had switched it back to how it was before, it was no longer changing with the Theme. So I checked this attached earlier version, and it is as I described. The text color of the comment box which displays the swing amount is set to Fixed and an off white color, and it is changing as if it is dynamic.

When I look at this comment box's json, I see that it has not been modified, and the color is not set:

If the color is not set, it will by default be affected by any Theme change. If you wish to have this set to a specific color, just make a slight change to the text color and save the patch/device.

Oh that's interesting. Also explains why after switching it to dynamic and then back it now really is fixed. And I guess that color was default in relation to the theme I was using which is Mid Dark.

When I look in the inspector, the Fixed tab is highlighted as if Fixed is the default or that I've set it as Fixed. 

Maybe then the Dynamic tab should be highlighted by default?

Though it still doesn't explain why the text was black when I sent it to me friend, and he's using a dark theme too. Or was the default Fixed in the earlier Max version? 

It is a little ambiguous what should happen if you click on 'dynamic' and then back to 'fixed' without resetting the object to it's default, but we can take a look at this.

Anyway thanks for clearing up the confusion

This didn't clear up the confusion for me at all...

Why on Earth do 'fixed' colors get changed by Ableton themes? There's really no excuse for that type of behavior. What is the point of having 'dynamic' colors at all if the fixed colors change with themes anyways? Isn't that what dynamic colors are meant to do instead? 

I'm sure this is the fault of Ableton and not C74, but in either case it gets really annoying when people act like this is remotely acceptable. It's one of the most frustrating behaviors I've ever encountered in a creative platform before. The only fix I've found is that you have to use colors that are NOT default...i.e., instead of using black as '0. 0. 0. 1.' use '.01 .01 .01 1.'   it's annoying as hell but at least doing it this way 

 colors don't change. Seriously baffling.

There was a new reply here, it's gone but I will try to clarify anyway. 

The case here was that when I looked in the Inspector, I saw Fixed selected, so I assumed the color was fixed, but instead I had never actually specified any color, so the object actually had undefined color, and so defaulted to the Dynamic color. I think. 

I guess if someone selects Fixed but then doesn't select any actual color, then the inspector should probably not be displaying Fixed when the color is still dynamic. 

I also researched this and posted at discord 2 days ago. I wanted fixed colors for live.* UI objects and noticed that switching the colors to fixed is not excluding the objects from Live theme changes

Only when you make a change to the color it's finally accepting the fixed color and also the json data of the object reflects that.

And when I see this reply by Ben Bracken:

this behavior seems to be intentional. But given the number of color attributes of Live UI objects, this is not acceptable to click every color to fixed and also make a slight change for the simple requirement of having a fixed design for a device.

I'm not a click worker and sit here for half an hour to change 50+ UI elements each with 10 color values. At least the change to "fixed" should be enough to achieve this goal, ideally this should be reduced to a single checkbox in the inspector: "dynamic colors on/off"   

As mentioned in the note above, we are looking at this, and hope to improve this interaction.

Alright, thanks. Sorry if this was sounding rude in some way. What about the "dynamiccolor" key in the toppatcher obex. Can I manipulate something there to disable it for the complete device?

Theme changing fixed colors