the new experimental theme improvements

[abhijit-chikane]

Would like to have the border to the right and left of the tab with some minimal border radius which will give an effect of merging the tab into the editor area just like what we have in chromium-based browsers.

And the color of the sidebar looks too dark. It's impacting the readability and also not something feel good to the eyes.

[vscodenpa]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[daviddossett]

I don't think continuing the border around to the L/R sides makes visual sense in this context.

I'll keep monitoring feedback on the base workbench color (which applies to the sidebar).

[illia-piskurov]

I don't know where to properly leave feedback on the new themes, but I want to say that they are great!

[ffxsam]

I definitely am having issues with the low contrast between active tab & inactive tabs.

And no doubt, people with vision impairment would have a really tough time with this. Compare this to the current Dark+ theme, which makes it a lot easier to pick out the active tab:

[daviddossett]

@ffxsam looks like a regression. Fixed via https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/174991

[ffxsam]

@daviddossett Awesome! Will this change come through a regular VS Code update, I assume?

[daviddossett]

Yep. We'll be releasing sometime next week.

[AnrDaemon]

Sill not released? I have this same issue of low contrast active tab in Dark+ V2 theme in 1.76.2. I faintly recall there was a way to color the top edge of the tab to give it a better visibility, but I can't find the right incantation.

[daviddossett]

@AnrDaemon can you post a screenshot? Does not it not look like what I shared here?

@ffxsam looks like a regression. Fixed via #174991

[AnrDaemon]

That's nearly indistinguishable. And looks even worse when there are multiple changed files next to each other.

[daviddossett]

@AnrDaemon that looks like Dark+, not Dark+ V2.

[AnrDaemon]

Well, this one is V2, checked. It looks a tad better on screenshot, but on real screen it is extremely hard to pinpoint the active tab.

[ffxsam]

Ok, even this is a big improvement:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "[Default Dark+ Experimental]": {
    "tab.activeBorder": "#fff",
    "tab.activeBorderTop": "#181818",
    "tab.activeBackground": "#181818",
    "tab.inactiveBackground": "#343434"
  }
}

I inverted the bg colors. Lighter grey tends to communicate a "disabled" or "inactive" state, usually.

[AnrDaemon]

Thank you @ffxsam, I tried your setup. That looks much better. And now I know the right incantation to play with later.

[ffxsam]

I say this partly in jest, but I hope someone on the team making these themes is consulting with people aged 45+. 😆 People's vision starts changing at 40'ish, and I feel like I need more contrast these days to notice differences.

[ffxsam]

Disappointing to see that everyone's concerns were swept under the rug with the release of the new Dark Modern theme.

[daviddossett]

@ffxsam A couple of things:

• We're not trying to sweep anything under the rug—I'll be doing another round of updates to these themes now that they are released for more feedback.
• Your settings override above ("tab.activeBorderTop": "#181818") overrides the blue border that indicates the active tab. Was that on purpose? With that change, I agree that it would be harder to tell which one is active.

@AnrDaemon I'm not sure what I'm seeing in your screenshot. It looks like there are multiple active tabs re: the multiple blue borders on the top. Can you give me more details there? There should only be one blue border.

[ffxsam]

@daviddossett I commented out my theme overrides to give the new dark theme a fair shot. I don't know why the blue border didn't show up before, but I see it now:

It's still not very visible, especially if someone has a color theme that sets the VS Code frame to blue (using the Peacock extension).

I appreciate the ongoing work on this theme!

[daviddossett]

Ah, that titlebar color definitely presents some challenges—thanks for the example. I'll explore some options here and report back 👍

[AnrDaemon]

@AnrDaemon I'm not sure what I'm seeing in your screenshot. It looks like there are multiple active tabs re: the multiple blue borders on the top.

There are multiple unsaved tabs (note the difference in color tone). Look at the tab background rather. It is indistinguishable from inactive tabs.

[marcin-zajac]

Please note the border of the scroll bar. In the new Dark Modern theme it is black, it seems to me that I should have a different color, it is the only such element and it does not match. I don't know if it was intended. Maybe it's a system issue (macos), you can also see it in the screenshot @AnrDaemon from 21 Mar. I personally use the this setting "editor.overviewRulerBorder": false, to turn it off.

[AnrDaemon]

I think the color is the right one. In my case, it adds clear distinction between scrollbar and minimap.

[marcin-zajac]

The ruler border is great, it suggests that its color should be different, the same as other dividers (similar to the light version of this theme - Light Modern)

[tysiachnyi]

The new 'Dark Modern' looks like it needs to be a little updated, for example, "Dark+" Is more readable when it's sun outside And for example, Light+ And Light Modern change only "Status Bar" And "Activity Bar" in Dark Modern changes all things. How about using in Editor tab's background color which using in Dark+

[daviddossett]

@marcin-zajac @tysiachnyi please open individual issues for these. Thanks!