Why the heck is Lovelace state_color off by default?

Archive Month of "What the heck?!" (2020)
1

It should be on by default so that all binary entities change color with state.

2

Maybe you could configure it manually for domains and entities instead of by cards.

3

Because from a UI perspective having the yellow and blue (default) colors all over the place and not uniform was not a good look. It is easily changed but I we should have the toggle on the entities card

4

I have no idea what you mean by this:

I have laboriously enabled state color in every card and it looks fine.

How about a global setting for people who don’t agree?

6 Likes
5

If we had a setting for everytime someone didn’t agree then we would have toggles everywhere. The toggle on the UI editor of the card is an easy fix and YAML users just need to add one line when they create the card. Sure it may look fine on your set up but over all having uniform icon colors is better visually as the Yellow or On/active color draws attention to parts of the UI that may not be that important

6

Then minority that don’t like it can configure it card by card.

5 Likes
7

How do you know you are the Majority? Because you and 15 others in the forum said so? There are a ton of users out there. We make decision based on the community (even though everyone thinks otherwise) and based on what we think is the best for new users and users who don’t contribute to the forums

8

By reading the forum.

8 Likes
9

dont recall seeing a poll on this subject though. As Tom says, is not expected to be a close call in favor of state_color on by default. At least for the on/off domains. Which frontend doesnt use colors to distinguish between on and off? Won’t be many.

I mean how much trouble can it be to make this customization:

homeassistant:

##########################################################################################
# Domain
##########################################################################################
  customize_domain:

    automation:
      templates: &state_color
        icon_color: >
          if (state == 'on') return 'gold';
          return 'steelblue';

    binary_sensor:
      templates:
        <<: *state_color

    input_boolean:
      templates:
        <<: *state_color

    switch:
      templates:
        icon: >
          if (state == 'on') return 'mdi:toggle-switch';
          return 'mdi:toggle-switch-off';
        <<: *state_color

into modern days Lovelace?

3 Likes
10

We made it very simple for users to turn on State Color. Its a boolean field on the card. By default the icons are all the same and the State that is shown (“On”) shows the state so the icon doesnt need to

11

agreed. that’s better than it was before. Still, there are many cards that need this possibly. Would be even better if an option was added to do it globally. You didn’t create this functionality for only 15 people either did you :wink:

Our guess would be these users would very much welcome the additional global option.
(talking about the icon_color here, ignore my settings on the icon: please, which I only pasted in to show how easy this could be)
Colors are even more dominant in UX than the icon, why not use that.

2 Likes
12

Zack, just appreciate that you got this wrong and change the default otherwise this whole ‘month of what the heck’ is going to be completely pointless, may as well call it month of banging your head against a brick wall :roll_eyes:

9 Likes
13

This is not the Month of “Do everything that users say in the forum”

3 Likes
14

No, but surely the point is to understand what users want and act on it rather than stubbornly saying “I’m right” when clearly everyone expects the default behaviour to be that the icon reflects the state. That’s the reason why it was like that in the first place, and that’s the reason it should still be the default (with the option to turn it off for the small percentage of people who didn’t like it)

BTW - This post has only been up for an hour and already, 7 people have voted for it, and the only person against it is you, which is exactly the evidence you asked for about whether @tom_l was the majority or not.

3 Likes
15

Appealing to the silent “majority” comes across as lazy and stubborn.
Obviously this is not “Do everything that users say in the forum” month, but it also shouldn’t be “invalidate and avoid any opinions I don’t agree with” month.

4 Likes
16

Let’s not get too rowdy. If you like it, you can vote. If you don’t like it, don’t vote. If you have a reason why, say your reason.

3 Likes
17

I am not trying to invalidate your opinions. I am simply saying that the forum doesn’t include every user. My opinion (and I didn’t even have anything to do with the change we are discussing) is that what we have now is by default the best visually. And we made it easy to change that on a per card basis. If cards dont have this ability then we have been updating them. Again adding a global option for everything will not be good. If we did that then we would have a hundred global options and thats impossible to maintain. This topic is up and if others want to weigh in then go for it. But HA relies on devs to actually implement these changes. and if no dev wants to change it then :man_shrugging:.

18

Can you elaborate on who is this “community” that was consulted?

And how can the users of this forum become part of that community?

5 Likes
19

This discussion on who to blame, who was consulted and who not, stops right here and right now.

Thanks for the suggestion at this point, let’s move forward and see what others think.

11 Likes
21

I would appreciate the ability to turn it on globally. I have it turned on manually on almost every card now.

I don’t understand the reasoning that the color information makes the UI less usable. That makes no sense at all to me, from my perspective it makes it explicitly more communicative, intuitive and clear. I respect that others may feel differently, hence a global option would be nice.

3 Likes