Default focus is very subtle in empty editor groups, not many options for themes

[Tyriar]

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.24.0-insider (41a7c49, 2018-05-29T06:09:34.618Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.16299

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#50458

For custom themes, I notice that editorGroup.activeEmptyBackground is available but that doesn't really seem to fit very well:

vs:

Something that could work is to be able to specify the background of active and non-active editor groups. That way themes could make the non-active editor slightly darker than the rest to make it much more obvious.

[bpasero]

@Tyriar but there are two colors: editorGroup.activeEmptyBackground and editorGroup.emptyBackground for that purpose, did you try?

One idea for empty grids was to keep the visual impact as little as possible to not draw too much attention. I am currently dimming inactive groups 50%. @isidorn already stated that he found that change too subtle too. I am open for other ideas (@joaomoreno maybe)?

[Tyriar]

@bpasero yeah I did try that (see second screenshot), it only applies to empty groups though so focus is really in your face for empty groups only.

One idea for empty grids was to keep the visual impact as little as possible to not draw too much attention. I am currently dimming inactive groups 50%.

How do you do the dimming? This is what I couldn't find, I was expecting a editor.activeBackground to go along with editor.background.

[Tyriar]

Also the darker the background on dark theme the harder it is to see:

[bpasero]

@Tyriar

@bpasero yeah I did try that (see second screenshot), it only applies to empty groups though so focus is really in your face for empty groups only.

I thought this issue was about making empty groups easier to see, or did I miss something?

How do you do the dimming? This is what I couldn't find, I was expecting a editor.activeBackground to go along with editor.background.

It does, if the color is not defined it will inherit the editor color. The dimming is done currently via CSS and not within theme control, but if I think about it, maybe all of this should be themable so that a theme can also opt in to changing the dimming...

[Tyriar]

I thought this issue was about making empty groups easier to see, or did I miss something?

Easier to see while also fitting the aesthetic of the theme. This is very easy to see, but it doesn't fit with the theme as no where else has such a large area filled with the "focus color" (even after dimming it to 25% opacity):

One way to make it fit with the rest of the these would be to use a darker color for all inactive editor backgrounds (both empty and non-empty) like this:

"editor.background": "#800000",
"editor.activeBackground": "#FF0000"

But the latter setting doesn't exist:

[bpasero]

@Tyriar I am still not sure I understand the need for more colors. Given editorGroup.activeEmptyBackground for the background of an empty group when the group is active and editorGroup.emptyBackground when the empty group is inactive, can you not do whatever you want as theme author?

[bpasero]

@Tyriar I see where you are going: you actually want to be able to change the background color of active vs. inactive editor groups independent if they are empty or not. I am not 100% sure this is the right way forward though. So far we did not allow to change the background color of the editor based on being active or not.

I have talked to Steven about this and we might want to revisit the notion of active editors vs inactive in general.

If you agree I would mark this a duplicate of #2352

[bpasero]

I actually think this works quite nicely with e.g. a theme setting of:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editorGroup.emptyBackground": "#333333"
}

Video (quality is bad, the watermark looks gone but it is not):

[Tyriar]

Sure, let's close as duplicate of #2352