Low contrast on panel/dock/dash

[CorvetteCole]

Questioner Info

• Materia version: 20210322
• Distribution (and version): Arch Linux
• Desktop environment (and version): Gnome Shell 3.36
• Related application (and version): Dash to Panel

Description I really want to love this theme. Previously have been using Plata Theme, but the maintainer is pretty much MIA (and downright not open to any discussion) and I am about to move to Gnome 40.

The issue is, the panel has terrible contrast and the gray really clashes with white icons and text. This is a big enough annoyance that it makes me not want to use it. I know you can customize this text with the intructions provided in HACKING.md, but I really want to be able to just receive updates like normal and not think about it.

I'll attach some screenshots to see what you think. I think this contrast may not be a bug per se but should definitely be something that is thought about from a usability standpoint.

I would much rather have white icons and text on the dash. It would make things consistent and much more legible.

Thanks!

[CorvetteCole]

I swapped the 0.6 and 0.87 alpha values in gnome-shell.css for

#panel .panel-button #panel .panel-button:hover #panel .panel-button:active

This gave my desired effect as shown in the screenshot below while still reflecting interaction when hovered and pressed by switching to the original slightly darker color.

I'm not saying this is exactly what should be implemented, but from a usability viewpoint it would be nice to talk about modifying the contrast like this.

[nana-4]

Hi @CorvetteCole,

About the panel: Looks like you are customizing the panel background color to #343536 or something close, which is much lighter than our default #212121. You are free to customize the colors, but please do it at your own risk. For us it's impossible to support all customized colors on the upstream. (For example, someone can customize the panel color to white, but we will not change our panel text color to black for him/her, because it will be invisible on our dark panel. Every unsupported customization should be at your own risk.)

About the Openweather extension: I can reproduce the low contrast even with the upstream Default theme, so it's not our theme's issue, but the extension's issue :)

[CorvetteCole]

@nana-4 the panel background color is default, just a little transparent. I can capture a screenshot with it totally solid as well, but the problem is exactly the same. Particularly when next to colorful icons in Dash to Panel. I have attached some screenshots of the stock setup.

See for example the applications menu being an almost jarring grey compared to the bright colors and whites of the rest of the icons. This might be a somewhat unique issue to Dash to Panel, because other similar solutions don't tend to integrate status icons and application icons in to the same panel