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Author Topic: Change background of (SplitView) Tab bar background?  (Read 3851 times)

BlackPlatypus

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Change background of (SplitView) Tab bar background?
« on: March 16, 2022, 02:07:44 pm »

Hi!
I've almost managed to change the appearance to my satisfaction, using Alex Lamas's Pearl (OMG, the accessories download page is even worse than it looks! o_o Can I write you a better one, please? 😅 I wanted to link to the skin, because that's what you do. But no such luck for that awful page) as a base.
However, I haven't yet found a way to change the background of the (SplitView?) Tab bar for an inactive SplitView panel.
I can see it gets its color from blending FRAME/Colors[Face3D] with another, which looks to be close to white for inactive tab containers (and with something else for an active container which suits the rest just fine).
To illustrate, I have set FRAME/Colors[Face3D] to FF0000 in the first picture, and to 111111 in the second. (See attachments)

It seems like there is no specific color definition for this control?
1: It would be cool if there was
2: In the mean time, it would be good to know which color definitions it uses to blend together

If it's an undefined background image, defaulting to white (I've seen this happen with the Tags panel: As none of the components were defined, the background all defaulted to white. Adding definitions for TAGWINDOW/Entry[Name="Group"], TAGWINDOW/Entry[Name="FieldLabel"], TAGWINDOW/Entry[Name="Field"] fixed the issue), I haven't found out where to insert it.

All in all, I have tried adding color definitions using variations of combinations of "Inactive", "Back" and "Face3D"; Dataproperties with the same names followed by "Color" to different elements, as well as inserting entries like "Background" with empty "Bitmap" properties.
So far, no luck.

Does anyone know how to address this?

Thank you!
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HPBEME

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Re: Change background of (SplitView) Tab bar background?
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2023, 01:54:40 pm »

This post is almost a year old now, so perhaps you have solved this yourself. But in the event you haven't...

The Pearl skin pre-dates the addition of a new XML section that is included with more recent skins (any of the Modern Cards skin variations are usually a good reference for a starting point).  Try adding the section below to the Pearl XML file:

   <VIEWHEADER>   
        <Colors   HeaderText="0080FF" ActiveTabText="FFFFFF" HotText="FFFFFF" HeaderBackground="000020" Text="0080FF" Background="000020" />
   </VIEWHEADER>

The first 4 inputs:  HeaderText="0080FF" ActiveTabText="FFFFFF" HotText="FFFFFF" HeaderBackground="000020"   set colors for: Tab text (default color, the active tab, and mouse-over color) and Link text color and the Tab-bar Background color

The last 2 inputs:  Text="0080FF" Background="000020"  set colors for: Playlist Header Text color and Playlist Header Background color  ...and completely un-intuitively...  the Text input also sets the Tab-bar Background color for the inactive split pane when using split views!  If all that is not confusing enough, the Tab & Tab-bar Background color inputs are designated as Header, while the Playlist Header color inputs are generically labeled Text and Background.  Grrrrrr......

FYI... all hex colors above are from my Dream in Blue skin, so substitute as needed for your desired colors.  That said, finding a text color that also looks good as the inactive tab background color can be tricky, and ultimately you may have to compromise on the color you choose.

When I created the above skin, I did my best to document how and where every single hex color is used in MC's skin XML file.  If you want to dig into that, go here for more info: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,128460.0.html.  The 1st post where I "announce" the new skin will explain how to find and use the "main+comments.xml" file.

Hope you find all this useful.
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BlackPlatypus

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Re: Change background of (SplitView) Tab bar background?
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2023, 02:01:38 am »

[...]
   <VIEWHEADER>   
        <Colors   HeaderText="0080FF" ActiveTabText="FFFFFF" HotText="FFFFFF" HeaderBackground="000020" Text="0080FF" Background="000020" />
   </VIEWHEADER>
[...]

Oh, thank you!
I didn't see your reply until now :/
So far, using a dark Text color for the dark theme doesn't seem to clash, be the header bar active or not. Seems like the text (and buttons) for my use of tabs/views is only using HeaderText and ActiveTabText. The names "Text" and "Background" make it sound like this is for editable controls, like maybe renaming tabs inline? I haven't run into needing to do that so far; I think I'm good using a dark "Text" color for now. Just in case, I've set the "Background" color to something bright. So far, I haven't spotted it  ;D
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