Can we have an option to change selection color instead of green?
The selection color for things like data grid, tabs, button bar, list, etc is mint green. In a mono gray mockup (which I prefer), this tends to stand out too strong. Would be great to specify somewhere a default color for this to override the minty green.


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Inappropriate?Hey Michael, sorry this slipped through the cracks. So, help me understand, is the problem that the mint green is too loud or something else? If it's just my choice of color, we could tone it down for everybody...perhaps a milder, less saturated green?
Are there any designers who really know colors in the house? I'd like to stick with green for contenuity...
If the problem is something else, what is it?
I’m fanatical about not giving users options unless they really really need them
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Inappropriate?Yes - its too striking. And at times I would prefer it to be gray. I would really prefer the ability to control the color per mockup, or preference.
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Inappropriate?Michael agrees with Michael. The current green is so saturated and intense that it tends to draw attention from the rest of the mockup. If that value is hard-wired, it'd be nice to dial it down a notch. Even better would be setting the value as an application preference.
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Inappropriate?Ok I hear you. Can you guys tell me why you'd like to be able to set the value? In other words, what problem would that solve exactly? That'd help us decide if the setting should be per app or per mockup
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Inappropriate?The problem is its too distracting. When I show a mockup as a proposal, peoples eyes are drawn to the green. Everything is mostly black and white, but the green just stands out way too much. Many times I only have one selected UI component, so its the only color in my whole mockup.
What I have had to do in the past is edit the image in photoshop and convert it all to grayscale. -
Ok, so a more subdued green (borderline gray) would solve this, without the need of an option, right? -
Inappropriate?Not for me, no.
I fully agree that color should not be important in a mockup.
The problem is that any color will stand out so much So the users with whom I discuss the mockups and even more so people responsible for the styleguide/corporate design will immediately focus on that color rather on the important design issues.
I am afraid for me nothing but orange will do (see www.lufthansa-technik.com and the selection highlight in the menu).
A global setting would be fine - no need to have this per mockup.
Currently whenever I use a mockup for the concept documentation I export to clipboard and use Paint.NET to replace green with orange. Quite tedious. -
Inappropriate?I tend to just overlap a transparent grey rectangle over the top.
But yeah, a per app mapping is fine, I'm not fussed if I don't have control on a per mockup basis.
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?So how about we do this in two steps?
Step 1: tone down the green so that it's not so "loud". Can anyone come up with a good grayish-green that says "selected" without screaming it at you? Let's get a few together and I'll run a poll on my blog, how's that? :)
Step 2: provide an application-wide setting for the exact color
Step 1 is easy for me to implement, step 2 is considerably harder.
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Inappropriate?Hm, reflecting on how I used to do mockups with pencil and eraser:
Another option would be to show highlight not using a color, but hatched.
But I guess that's not so easy to implement, either :-( -
Thanks Michael, I'd like to keep it green-ish, for continuity. So 0xCCEECC is my favorite of these two. :) -
Inappropriate?OK - So I am not a fan of Green or yellow and wish it was just a darker shade of gray.
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way to find something that's an additional order of magnitude harder to implement than my step 2 above Stephen! :) -
huh? -
All jokes aside, I think that's too big of a change to push to over 1100 customers "just like that"...couldn't we find just a more subdued green as a starting point? Pretty please? -
Well, the subdued green is a little step forward.
I still would have to explain that the green is just an artifact of the tool I use, and yes of course it won't be green for real. And I would probably still have to shop the screenshots for the concept documentation.
The application wide setting would be "ok".
The hatched (do you call it that way in english?) version would be the the optimal solution. Just keep colors out of sketches. However as a developer I can see the effort that the implementation costs. But maybe if the gray of the strokes is light enough you can simply paint the font on top of it - without worrying about drawing the text on a white-non-hatched background. At least in Java 2D it really isn't any difference if I paint the background with a solid color or with pattern. -
Inappropriate?OMG - I love it!!!
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Inappropriate?Could there be a switch in the view menu called "Gray Scale" that changes the colors to the closest matching gray color?
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Inappropriate?Ok in the latest version I switched all selection color to #CCEECC. I like how much less saturated it is, but I'm afraid it might become invisible (i.e. washed out) when Mockups is used with a projector. Not the end of the world, but perhaps something a little more green might be best?
Before:

After:

Try it here: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mock...
BTW, it took me 10 minutes to go through and change the color everywhere (it's a manual task in Flash, not a programmatic one...yet).
I’m eager to hear your feedback on the new color
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Inappropriate?Peldi, I see your point about the potential washout. How about a just a little bit darker, with just a touch more saturation. The top swatch show below uses 0xcceecc, while the one below it uses 0xaaeebb:

The second one -- 0xaaeebb -- looks like it might stand up better, and is even a little more attractive. Worth another ten-minute try?
I’m cautiously optimistic.
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Yup, definitely better, based on those gallery shots. Let's go with this unless/until someone comes up with a better option. -
Inappropriate?Count me in as a user who would like to see an option to, at the very least, use a grey colour instead of a green one. Any obvious colour really does stand out too much for my stakeholders - they always get caught up in talking about what the colour should be...
Peldi, given that you already provide "background" colour and/or "text colour" choices for several controls, how difficult would it be to add a "selection colour" option to those controls that display selections? I realize that it means a user who wants anything other than the default green would have to manually set it for each relevant control, but wouldn't that be easier to implement than adding a feature to support a global highlight colour?
Another method of showing "selection" without using colour, by the way, would be to make the border for selected items thicker or placing a second border inside the line of the selected item (see the image below):

My guess would be that implementing this might work in a similar way to how a "selected" checkbox or radio button gains a new shape within the old. I don't really know, of course, and it may be just as hard as trying to do a hatched background. Either way, I thought it was worth mentioning.
I’m okay with the current method but would be happier if I could get rid of the green
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Inappropriate?Now that the colour has been removed from the tabs, I find it really hard to tell which tab is selected (even with the most recent improvements). Any chance that you can put colour back for the tabs, but make it a user selected option?
I’m wishing I had the option to colout my tabs.
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Hi Carol, try the latest and greatest here: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mock... - let me know what you think!
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