New Splash Screen For Lazarus 4

[silvestre]

Totally agree with all the points you describe, aesthetics is important , we should not subtract its potential.
Of course, we all know the enormous effort put under the trunk by those who are developing this product, like Martin and the rest of developers, but that perception is not so for new users. The first thing they look at is the surface and novelty aspects of the image. I know, it's a bit superficial but that's how things work.
Nowadays almost all IDEs use a dark environment, which besides being interesting for visual fatigue gives a modern look to the tools. It would be nice if the Lazarus IDE when installed would give the option to choose between a dark or light theme, as minimum options, something that already exists as an integration possibility.
As for the presentation image, it is good to renew and you can keep the original philosophy, respect the principles that are key, but it is good to update these things.

<Shrug>. Change for the sake of change. IMO, keep the current splash screen... it already contains version information.

It's not about information right? It's the very first thing anyone using Lazarus sees. It will shape the expectations of whatever comes afterwards. If it's ugly or looks old timey, people will go into using the IDE already considering it old or outdated.
If you want people to pick up Lazarus, make it look worth picking up.

Design is probably the single most important aspect for the decision of someone to use or not use something. It can have all the functionalities you could ever wish for, if it looks like straight out of an IBM commercial from the 80s, no one is going to pick it up. Simultaniously, you can have something with very bad and limited functionality, but if it looks inticing, people are going to give it a try.

It's why I think dark theme, docked mode, editor color schemes, etc. should be chosable in the very beginning. I've seen more than often enough when Lazarus pops up cleanly, undocked, with bright colors (or even worse on linux using the dark system style, but the editor having a bright theme), that people ask "what the hell this is" (literally the wors a friend of mine said when I finally got him to install Lazarus).

[Warfley]

Nowadays almost all IDEs use a dark environment, which besides being interesting for visual fatigue gives a modern look to the tools. It would be nice if the Lazarus IDE when installed would give the option to choose between a dark or light theme, as minimum options, something that already exists as an integration possibility.
As for the presentation image, it is good to renew and you can keep the original philosophy, respect the principles that are key, but it is good to update these things.

The thing is you can setup Lazarus in a way it looks (except the iconography) great and modern, but it takes some time and knowledge. I recently recorded my own setup of Lazarus 3.6 on my Windows. When you know what to do it doesn't take that long only like 10 minutes, but it takes a lot of experience with what to find where

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPWtWtlmE8

[Martin_fr]

but that perception is not so for new users. The first thing they look at is the surface and novelty aspects of the image. I know, it's a bit superficial but that's how things work.
Nowadays almost all IDEs use a dark environment, which besides being interesting for visual fatigue gives a modern look to the tools. It would be nice if the Lazarus IDE when installed would give the option to choose between a dark or light theme, as minimum options, something that already exists as an integration possibility.
As for the presentation image, it is good to renew and you can keep the original philosophy, respect the principles that are key, but it is good to update these things.

Replied at: https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=69192

[essence-ciel]

La version H a ma préférence.

[acidbytes]

I think the D2 is, IMO, the best splash screen.
   May be the team can use the E for beta versions and F for RC and the D2 for stable final release.

[kupferstecher]

My first impression when I saw the proposal in the initial post was that it looks much more modern than the existing splash screen. And in my opinion there are two reasons for that, one is (as was already said) the photo-parts in the existing one. It is nothing one would expect nowadays. And the other is the aggressive blue color with the strong gradients. And in that regard, version D2 is in my opinion even worse than the existing one. A more aggressive blue and the aggressive color results in (felt) strong gradients.

In the center I recognised something like an eclipse, is this intentional, is it appropriate?

About the 0s and 1s, an alternative could be some informative text, e.g.:

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. FREEPASCAL
2. COMPILER
3.  
4. LAZARUS
5. INTEGRATED
6. DEVELOPMENT
7. ENVIRONMENT
8.  
9. FREEPASCAL
10. COMPONENT
11. LIBRARY
12.  
13. LAZARUS
14. COMPONENT
15. LIBRARY

[LBox]

My first impression when I saw the proposal in the initial post was that it looks much more modern than the existing splash screen. And in my opinion there are two reasons for that, one is (as was already said) the photo-parts in the existing one. It is nothing one would expect nowadays. And the other is the aggressive blue color with the strong gradients. And in that regard, version D2 is in my opinion even worse than the existing one. A more aggressive blue and the aggressive color results in (felt) strong gradients.

In the center I recognised something like an eclipse, is this intentional, is it appropriate?

About the 0s and 1s, an alternative could be some informative text, e.g.:

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. FREEPASCAL
2. COMPILER
3.  
4. LAZARUS
5. INTEGRATED
6. DEVELOPMENT
7. ENVIRONMENT
8.  
9. FREEPASCAL
10. COMPONENT
11. LIBRARY
12.  
13. LAZARUS
14. COMPONENT
15. LIBRARY

Thanks for the comment
The brightness of the color can be dimmed, for example, like in version "H".

As for the binary decorative text, as you understood, it is not just zeros and ones, but the full name of the creator of the Pascal language as a tribute.

Of course, you can add the informative text that you mentioned, but I am sure that novice users of Lazarus will find this information from the first pages of the documentation

[Ñuño_Martínez]

Really nice splash screens.  I like all except the more saturated one, and I prefer the warm ones but I understand that Lazarus tends to be bluish.

[LBox]

Reduced color saturation, finished drawing the cheetah's body and added a column to preserve the heredity of the current splash screen 
I hope you like it 
Version "J"

[LBox]

Version "K"

[LBox]

Version "L"

[Awkward]

Did you try to make picture with indexed colors to change it's color by applying external palette? (just crazy idea, sorry)

[wp]

I am not sure whether the "official" logo will be changed. But for all those who would like to replace the logo in their own copy of Lazarus, just follow these instructions:

• Go to the folder "tools" and compile the program "lazres" if you had not done this earlier.
• Go to the "images" directory in your Lazarus installation
• Rename the file "splash_logo.png" to "splash_logo_original.png" (just to be able to restore the old splash image)
• Download the image that you want to check from this forum thread and save it in the "images" folder as file "splash_logo.png"
• Windows users: execute the batch file "splash_logo.bat". Linux users: Write a shell script which does the same as the windows batch file and execute it. This will create a new resource "splash_logo.res".
• Open the IDE.
• Go to "Tools" > "Configure Build Lazarus". Imporant: Check "Clean all" and "Switch after building to automatically". Then click "Build"
• After a while the IDE will restart with the new logo. You see it in the opening splash screen and in the About box ("Help" > "About Lazarus")

I used version "J" for my test, and it turns out that the bottom blue bar does not give a nice background for the version number in the splash screen (sorry, I cannot take a snapshot in this short time), and that the center text (version numbers etc) in the About box has a low contrast to the background and is hardly legible.

[LBox]

I am not sure whether the "official" logo will be changed. But for all those who would like to replace the logo in their own copy of Lazarus, just follow these instructions:

• Go to the folder "tools" and compile the program "lazres" if you had not done this earlier.
• Go to the "images" directory in your Lazarus installation
• Rename the file "splash_logo.png" to "splash_logo_original.png" (just to be able to restore the old splash image)
• Download the image that you want to check from this forum thread and save it in the "images" folder as file "splash_logo.png"
• Windows users: execute the batch file "splash_logo.bat". Linux users: Write a shell script which does the same as the windows batch file and execute it. This will create a new resource "splash_logo.res".
• Open the IDE.
• Go to "Tools" > "Configure Build Lazarus". Imporant: Check "Clean all" and "Switch after building to automatically". Then click "Build"
• After a while the IDE will restart with the new logo. You see it in the opening splash screen and in the About box ("Help" > "About Lazarus")

I used version "J" for my test, and it turns out that the bottom blue bar does not give a nice background for the version number in the splash screen (sorry, I cannot take a snapshot in this short time), and that the center text (version numbers etc) in the About box has a low contrast to the background and is hardly legible.

Thanks for testing and I knew it would be like this because the new screen requires some changes in the code responsible for the colors and locations of the texts on the splash screen and about screen. That is, simply replacing the pictures will not give us full integration 

On the splash screen, the color of the version text should be changed to white, and on the about screen, in addition to changing the color to white, the text also needs to be moved to the left where a special place was left for it.

If the above changes to the text are not so easy to make in the code, then to get full integration by simply replacing the picture, I can recompose the new screen taking into account the color and location of the text on the current screen 

[LBox]

Did you try to make picture with indexed colors to change it's color by applying external palette? (just crazy idea, sorry)

I didn't know that color indexing allows you to change the colors of an image by applying an external palette to it.
I'm very sorry, but I don't even know how it works so I'll have to study the topic 
Probably, when exporting, this option is available in any graphic design program 
By the way, I googled it and perhaps you said it like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indexed_color#:~:text=In%20computing%2C%20indexed%20color%20is,form%20of%20vector%20quantization%20compression.