Any option to make entire PP UI a dark theme?

[narco]

Is there any full dark theme, either hidden in the options somewhere, or installable? I'm not talking about the option to pick the background color for account/message list. I mean like a proper, complete dark UI theme.

Pop Peeper is so customizable in terms of functionality, but there seems to be no option to make the UI anything but blinding white. Am I just not figuring it out? I saw some themes you provide, but they look like they just add background images.

[spc3rd]

Hi narco and welcome to the Esumsoft Forums.

I modified the topic title to better reflect the nature of your inquiry.

In response to your question, I am not aware of any option to make the entire POP Peeper UI a dark theme. At the esumsoft.com website, the "Themes" shown there are for use with the Aeris Calendar.

Jeff and other members of the The Esumsoft Team should be dropping-by later and provide additional feedback for you. In the interim, as a new member of the Forums, we ask that you please review the following:

Information for new users and forum members

Do let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments.

Thank you and welcome aboard!

[Jeff]

No, POP Peeper doesn't support this natively. But you can change Windows settings that will affect POP Peeper (and everything else) -- "High contrast" is one way. I found a pretty extensive write-up on the subject here:
https://glarminy.com/2016/07/29/change- ... indows-10/

[narco]

Yeah, Windows high-contrast options are pretty terrible, ugly, and buggy (unreadable text and whatnot). Could you not incorporate GTK+? Dark themes have become pretty standard, so much so, that a lot of programs default to it, but there should at least be an option. Practically all popular email clients have one.

I drastically prefer the functionality/customizability of PP over any other that I've tried, but man do I miss the type of polished looking dark theme which most others provide. I'll probably stick with PP because it works better than others, but I cringe a little at the blinding white most times I open it. I really hope you'll reconsider incorporating a native dark theme.

[Jeff]

Yeah, Windows high-contrast options are pretty terrible, ugly, and buggy (unreadable text and whatnot).

I've used it on a number of times for one reason or another, and my initial response is to get out as soon as possible. To be fair, I suspect that most to all of the "bugs" are simply because the developer didn't account for the different color scheme. fwiw, I recently noticed that some of the text in nsis is invisible when using high-contrast, so I suspect a lot of users that rely on it get used to some of its drawbacks (it's intended for funcationality, not aesthetics, after all). However, you can change some of the colors, so I wonder if that would help...?

Could you not incorporate GTK+?

Very unlikely. POP Peeper does a lot of UI customization that you may not realize and I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement gtk+, even if I had any experience with it. I may take a look at it someday, but I can't imagine that it would be a very simple conversion. It might be easy(er) for new apps, but POP Peeper has literally hundreds of windows.

I've always had a function over form policy with POP Peeper. That being said, I think that a small face-lift by means of color wouldn't conflict with that policy and wouldn't take the 100's of hours of using a new GUI API; and I think it might even be fun to add. I think that I would have a short goal like only the major windows would be modified (main, view-message, compose-message), so we'll see...

[narco]

I appreciate you considering it. Starting with the main window and incorporating others incrementally would be great. Thanks Jeff.

[narco]

Optimistic about this feature request after reading one of the v5 "sneak peeps", even though it's a bit cryptic. Is there any ballpark ETA on v5?

[spc3rd]

Is there any ballpark ETA on v5?

Hello narco,

Your question is one that has come up before.

In answer to it, (and for other members info as well), Jeff's past response to another person with the same question, can be seen at the following link (in the last paragraph):

viewtopic.php?p=30856#p30856

Cheers!

[narco]

An "entering into beta soon" comment from five months ago doesn't tell me much, so I guess "I never provide an ETA" is the real answer. Hopefully sooner than later. Appreciate the response anyway, so thanks.

[spc3rd]

Yes, that's correct - Jeff never gives an ETA.

Regards,

[mjs]

Hi there narco, I can see that you're understandably anxiously waiting on optional themes for POP Peeper. So I'll stick-my-neck-out and say that in my opinion it is very likely that optional POP Peeper themes will be incorporated into one of the later stage releases of v5 alpha relatively soon, perhaps within the next 30 days. Please do not consider this an "official" ETA -- however based on where I perceive Jeff to currently be at with the v5 optional PP themes, it is (barring the unforeseen as of this time) my best ETA guess (FWIW).

[Jeff]

Well, that "short goal" experiment proved to be even more interesting than I expected

https://www.esumsoft.com/blog/pop-peepe ... ep-themes/

[narco]

So glad you followed through on this. Can't wait!

[narco]

Been a year and half since the sneak peep. Is v5 ever gonna happen?

[spc3rd]

Hello narco,

I know it's not what you would like to hear, but shown below is Jeff's response to another member's similar inquiry.

by Jeff » Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:58 pm

"Ah, the dreaded "release date?" question The only answer I'm able to give you is: when it's ready. The imminent plan is that the v5 beta will be announced and accessible to anyone with a Pro license. v5 will be officially released once I feel comfortable with how that goes".

* - Also, if you are interested in being a Beta Tester for the POP Peeper program, please send an email to Jeff at: support at esumsoft dot com.

Best regards & stay tuned.

[mjs]

Is there any full dark theme, either hidden in the options somewhere, or installable? I'm not talking about the option to pick the background color for account/message list. I mean like a proper, complete dark UI theme.

Pop Peeper is so customizable in terms of functionality, but there seems to be no option to make the UI anything but blinding white. Am I just not figuring it out? I saw some themes you provide, but they look like they just add background images.

Do you mean something like this? (Accounts and parts of messages redacted for privacy reasons).