White background screenshots!

[dkyriakis]

I know that screenshots with dark background look geeky, but they don't sell well .
I think for the first page you should use white insted of black (at least this is what I always heard from sales people)

[jps]

That's an interesting point... one if these days it'll be worth doing an AB test to see if there is any difference, but for the moment time is probably better invested improving the editor :)

Actually, is raises the larger question of whether Sublime Text itself should have an out of the box color scheme of dark-on-light or light-on-dark. Pre 1.03 it had a default color scheme with a white background, but has switched to the present dark background with the latest release (hence the screenshots reflecting this).

[jemi]

I very much like the dark theme. in fact it was the reason i gave this editor a try - it is "different".
I don't mind if the default is light or dark - as long as the user can choose which to use.

[SteveCooperOrg]

I associate black backgrounds with programmer's text editors (emacs, vim), and white with both word processing (Word) and IDES (Visual Studio, Eclipse.) Since I'm looking for an emacs replacement, I'm happy with the black background, and find it more comfortable on the eye. Whether or not it's the best marketing decision, I don't know. I suspect the answer depends on your market.

Lastly, the furniture of ST (window headers, scrollbars, etc) are all dark and unthemeable, so the dark panel contents works best. Unless the furniture can reacts to theme colours.

[jps]

Lastly, the furniture of ST (window headers, scrollbars, etc) are all dark and unthemeable, so the dark panel contents works best. Unless the furniture can reacts to theme colours.

The furniture (hey, the word beats chrome!) is in fact themeable, via a separate mechanism than the colour scheme - though there's only one theme atm, and I don't recommend anyone trying to make another quite yet, the system is due for an overhaul.

[adrian]

I know that screenshots with dark background look geeky, but they don't sell well

Would be interesting to see the research data for this, anything you can share or some links that go into more details?

Personally I think the market is already saturated with Text Editors that use white backgrounds. Benefits of using a darker backgrounds is it's much easier on the eyes (as mentioned by Steve) and I also think it helps Sublime to stand out from the rest. It gives a much more sophisticated feel to it - most TextMate screencasts I've watched are using a darker theme, so I think non-Mac Python, Ruby, etc devs will appreciate that Sublime is a text editor that supports darker themes well. Also, a nice syntax highlighting color on a darker background creates much more contrast, so great for screenshots and to create that good first impression.

Besides, the colorschemes can be easily changed anyway, but to cater for both, might be an idea to add some dark on light screenshots to the gallery in the future. But as Jon said, better focus this effort on the editor itself for the time being.

Just my 2cents

[eric1235711]

this is not about the colors but...

Sublime's website is so "clean" that looks like you're selling a a software for MacOS


and also, this forum is beautiful!

[jps]

Sublime's website is so "clean" that looks like you're selling a a software for MacOS

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? :)

Welcome to the forums Eric!

[katee]

Sublime's website is so "clean" that looks like you're selling a a software for MacOS

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Good thing! I'm hanging out for the Mac version (as you know) ...

[eric1235711]

Sublime's website is so "clean" that looks like you're selling a a software for MacOS

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Welcome to the forums Eric!

For sure it's good!!!

I don't know Apple's products very much, but I have the impression that the Apple's products (including third party software to MacOS) have a greater quality than Microsoft's.