Themes

Processing 4 has a new set of colors and overall design. This work is still in progress. We're testing things out as we go, but you can track progress of the UI design and other theming improvements here.

The 4.0 beta 3 release includes a new theme engine that makes it possible to select interface colors from a set of options, as well as more control over choosing your own schemes. Check out Tools → Theme Selector for the magic.

Some notes about how it works:

• There are sixteen default themes available. Using “Theme Selector” will create a theme.txt file in your sketchbook that sets the interface colors.

• If you make changes to the theme.txt file in your sketchbook, you can select Tools → Update Theme to see those changes reflected in the interface. If there's no theme.txt file in your sketchbook, it will create a theme.txt file in your sketchbook, which you can edit. After you've saved your changes, select “Update Theme” again to see the updates.

• When selecting a new theme, Processing will resave your theme.txt file under a new name (theme.001, theme.002, etc.)

• As of beta 3, we're using custom scrollbar widgets in the Editor so that it can better match the rest of the interface. This work is incomplete: not all the widgets are handled (the console scroll bar is still the default), and not all windows are supported (for example, the Contributions Manager). Still working on it.

• Also starting in beta 3, toolbar and tab icons are generated from SVG files based on theme colors.

• Implement automatic update for changes to theme.txt in the sketchbook.

• Starting with 4.0 alpha 6, all colors (and most fonts) are specified in the theme.txt file. This is a shift from Processing 3, which had some entries stored in preferences.txt and others in theme.txt.