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Standard palette designations?
DHawthorne
Posts: 4,584
I could have sworn I once saw a document that specified recommended palette indices for particular page/button elements. Was I dreaming, or can someone point me to it?
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Is this the animal you're thinking of?
http://www.amx.com/LITERATURE/StyleGuide.pdf
Joe
Where I'm going with this, by the way, is generating my own set of templates that have all the features and paradigms that are company standard. Right now, it's a major hassle for me to switch a color sceme becasue when TPD4 came out, I got in the bad habit of using either RGB values or the "color name" list instead of palettes. I thought to simply switch over to the pre-built templates in PanelBuilder , but after working with it a bit, I have come to the conclusion the results just need too much editing to meet my needs to do it on a regular basis. I don't mind a lot of initial work on a new design, but I sure as heck don't want to repeat it every job.
All that said, if I use a standard palette indexing scheme, I can import palettes that more graphically talented people have developed with just some minor tweaking, and then have a selection of overall designs to work with.
Let me know how you PanelBuilder templet goes. I've tried to build one for our company with no luck. I think that PanelBuilder is a wonderful program but building the templets seems to be pretty complex.....
I did something like this back in the day of VP Express. Our first projects were generated with that tool until we learned our way around finer coding techniques, then I made a few "templates" based on those designs so that all of our jobs had a similar look-and-feel. I still use those boilerplate files for old Viewpoint panels, and all my salesmen and installers can walk into a job they have never seen before and know how to use the system. Of course, the graphics were far more limited, and I have to make concessions now for different designs, but I want the logic to be consistent with my old paradigms as much as possible.
This is one of the major issues with tools made to simplify the design of complex systems. Of necessity, the tools must follow a strict framework, and they often add quite a bit of "bloat" to maintain that framework. Once a designer gets familiar with the results, they can tweak it and streamline it. That's what I'm doing - adapting the product of this tool to suit my own use, trim the fat, and make personal adjustments. Chances are, every one here would have different ideas of how this ought to be done, and wouldn't be happy with my methods...and that is the other flaw in overarching design tools. You can't really please everyone, and the harder you try, the more you please no one. But they can provide a good starting point that a competent designer can then make their own.