Dark Mode for Quicken for Windows (6 Merged Votes)

SQUATTINGBEAR

True dark mode, invert colours is not an option

dagwoodg

The color filter-inverted deal is good enough for me. Plus it reminds me of original "Outer Limits" special effects!

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jeffsh@

> @FlyerFran said:
> Really, all this stuff for Dark Mode? I, for one, don't like dark mode and have no interest in having Quicken spend any of its resources to add it to the program.  I suggest that we'd all be better off with Quicken's development time being spent in making the program better and better.   Like, let's fix the ongoing problems with BofA, Chase, Citi.  I suggest that the Q' team again compile a list of wants and allow us to rank the list in order of importance for us.  Maybe a better approach would be for Q' to provide a Draft List, allow us to add to it, and then send it out for ranking.  

If the Quicken Development Team was like most development teams there would be a separate GUI Team to work on the dark mode feature and thus would not interfere with other non GUI development and fixes. This feature request has been on the books for soooo long and in light of the fact of other GUI flaws exist that have been introduce with with past releases I am fast coming to the conclusion that Quicken is a pretty poorly written piece of software and implementation of dark mode must require an almost entire rewrite of the code. So, I am not holding my breath that we will ever see it.

jacobs

jeffsh@ said:

If the Quicken Development Team was like most development teams there would be a separate GUI Team to work on the dark mode feature and thus would not interfere with other non GUI development and fixes. 

And that's absolutely the case. Developers who work on user interface issues are different than those who work on database operational issues. Banking connectivity is another separate area, divided between some parts at Quicken and some parts at Intuit. So the development work on a feature like dark mode isn't competing for the same resources as fixing issues with online banking. 

And it's not that Quicken is a poorly written piece of software, it's that it's an unusually long-lived piece of software. Parts were written 10, 15, 20 or more years ago; some of those have been modernized or re-written over the years, but others have not. So you have an amalgamation of different eras of underlying technologies and programing tools in a fairly complex program, and that's why it's hard to modernize something like the display for dark mode, which requires touching every screen, dialog box and widget across the program. And why it's hard to add or change features without inadvertently breaking something  coded by long-departed developers.

Chris_QPW

I tend to agree with both what @jeffsh@ and @jacobs said but disagree on some of the details.

"I am fast coming to the conclusion that Quicken is a pretty poorly written piece of software"
"it's not that Quicken is a poorly written piece of software, it's that it's an unusually long-lived piece of software."

In large scale modern applications, it is assumed that the GUI will be quite separated from the rest of the program.
First off, I stated "large scale" because I think if you pull up a large amount of code done by just a few individuals you will find that the GUI isn't very well separated in most cases.  And as you go back in time, to different GUI APIs you will find that harder and harder to separate out the GUI code from the rest of the program.  But even if it was, there is more to this. GUI code is famously hard to merge branches of code, and there isn't any way all GUI development in Quicken would be stopped for the long period of time needed to hit all parts of Quicken's GUI that would have to be changed.

Quicken Windows started as a "small scale" program and has many different GUI APIs in it.

The bottom line is that at this point it isn't a "well written piece of software".  The reasons for that are many.  Some of which are technical, and some of which were driven by business decisions and such.  But that is where it is today.

Rocket J Squirrel

There are dozens of minor GUI bugs in QWin which would be trivial to fix, but they don't bother. I'm thinking of menu items which need an ellipsis "..." to indicate they will open dialogs; lack of underscore in Commands indicating Alt key access, forcing more keystrokes than necessary; text fields that are too narrow for their contents; that sort of thing. Given the relevant source code, I could fix those in one day. So I presume they don't care to do so.

Chris_QPW

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Given the relevant source code, I could fix those in one day. So I presume they don't care to do so.

I would bet that given the relevant source code you wouldn't be allowed to make those changes.

I was something of a rogue programmer, for most of my career I managed to arrange it so that I was the sole programmer on the projects I did, but not always.  And from one of those times comes my saying "Programming by committee."  And GUI development is the worst of the bunch.  EVERYONE has an opinion on how the GUI code should done, and even minor points get argued over endlessly.  Not to mention what one person believes is a priority another could care less about it.  So, it tends to come down to who has the greatest power in the meeting that such things are discussed.

Rocket J Squirrel

Chris_QPW said:

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Given the relevant source code, I could fix those in one day. So I presume they don't care to do so.

I would bet that given the relevant source code you wouldn't be allowed to make those changes.

My last position prior to retirement was GUI Manager. This empowered me to enforce the GUI rules which are well-known to us pros. This position seems to be absent in Q Dev.

Chris_QPW

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Chris_QPW said:

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Given the relevant source code, I could fix those in one day. So I presume they don't care to do so.

I would bet that given the relevant source code you wouldn't be allowed to make those changes.

My last position prior to retirement was GUI Manager. This empowered me to enforce the GUI rules which are well-known to us pros. This position seems to be absent in Q Dev.

Great if you are the one in charge.  Not so great if you aren't and disagree with the manager.  

In my opinion, one of the hallmarks of good engineering is attention to detail.  For whatever reason, Quicken Inc doesn't seem to have that.

Rocket J Squirrel

This Idea has status Planned, unfortunately.

I tremble at the thought of every display-related module being touched. A lot of stuff will end up broken. Some display code will inevitably be missed, leaving the program half-dark and half-light. It will be a mess.

jeffsh@

The Color Filiter/inverted is > @Rocket J Squirrel said:
> I've attempted to mention everyone who posted to this thread to see whether we can get a consensus. Obviously, it would be easier for everyone to use @Isomeme's solution than for the Quicken developers to have to go through every module to implement true Dark Mode. Personally, I'd rather have the devs work on getting the program to work right rather than spending a lot of time pursuing Dark Mode.
> So the question is: Is this "invert colors" solution, available now, good enough? Or do you insist on true Dark Mode, which will take much longer if, indeed, it ever gets implemented?
> @TTSGuy @Supermann @Chris_QPW @jacobs @billybeau1 @Snowman @ADA-DisabledUser @kstev99 @Isomeme @jandd661 @dagwoodg @drventure @UKR @jcgmc24 @henrib9029 @Loel.Garza @"Bob Uhi" @SQMRonnyC @Rob @rhobbs01 @gjhoban @JeffontheCliff @BryanK @tenacity @LRM777 @Nalgas @GRBuras @Terawatt @bcheong2000 @Greg_the_Geek @"penny pincher" @"Brian Biggs" @"Tea Leaf" @"Bill Meyer" @oldngrmpy1 @madeira @MHSwizzleStick @HVj @MartyMart @tirrellj @jaywbeardslee @Ducky3280 @vidsle @witzili @Mike6210 @FlyerFran @abb @BDavenport @rameyer @JerryG @Visionaire @TheFox3164 @tahomaWA @terrynconnaz @"Thomas Thompson" @DennisO @"Boltzmann LQ-088" @noam @Dragline37 @SQUATTINGBEAR @jburns @"James K. Steiner" @"Dominic Poirier" @Ricorguy @"Zorz Studios" @lsedhi @geezergeek @jwiegratz @flashb @KSlayton @gcummins @david16 @Nick6504 @VTAdam @Bankerone2003 @Mike650101 @Ps56k2 @clarkcabin @georgep03 @retird @"Michael Brown" @kstev99 @lroy @Ronv777 @Lupus63 @narrqchat @negropy @much1 @Psychmstr @jandd661 @Fletch200
>
> [EDIT: It appears that for an at-sign to turn into a mention, it must be typed from the keyboard. All the above at-signs were pasted in and I don't feel like overtyping all of them. Sigh.]


"Invert Colors" is usable but, is definitely not good enough. No, too much fooling around, especially when using dark mode and multiple screens.

jeffsh@

> @jacobs said:

> And it's not that Quicken is a poorly written piece of software, it's that it's an unusually long-lived piece of software. Parts were written 10, 15, 20 or more years ago; some of those have been modernized or re-written over the years, but others have not. So you have an amalgamation of different eras of underlying technologies and programing tools in a fairly complex program, and that's why it's hard to modernize something like the display for dark mode, which requires touching every screen, dialog box and widget across the program. And why it's hard to add or change features without inadvertently breaking something  coded by long-departed developers.

Sorry, poor choice of words, I agree whole heatedly with your take on Quicken being software written over many years before dark mode was even thought of. But, thanks for the support on the GUI development.

jeffsh@

> @Chris_QPW said:
> I tend to agree with both what @jeffsh@ and @jacobs said but disagree on some of the details.
>
> "I am fast coming to the conclusion that Quicken is a pretty poorly written piece of software"
> "it's not that Quicken is a poorly written piece of software, it's that it's an unusually long-lived piece of software."
>
> In large scale modern applications, it is assumed that the GUI will be quite separated from the rest of the program.
> First off, I stated "large scale" because I think if you pull up a large amount of code done by just a few individuals you will find that the GUI isn't very well separated in most cases.  And as you go back in time, to different GUI APIs you will find that harder and harder to separate out the GUI code from the rest of the program.  But even if it was, there is more to this. GUI code is famously hard to merge branches of code, and there isn't any way all GUI development in Quicken would be stopped for the long period of time needed to hit all parts of Quicken's GUI that would have to be changed.
>
> Quicken Windows started as a "small scale" program and has many different GUI APIs in it.
>
> The bottom line is that at this point it isn't a "well written piece of software".  The reasons for that are many.  Some of which are technical, and some of which were driven by business decisions and such.  But that is where it is today.


@jacobs response to me,
> And it's not that Quicken is a poorly written piece of software, it's that it's an unusually long-lived piece of software. Parts were written 10, 15, 20 or more years ago; some of those have been modernized or re-written over the years, but others have not. So you have an amalgamation of different eras of underlying technologies and programing tools in a fairly complex program, and that's why it's hard to modernize something like the display for dark mode, which requires touching every screen, dialog box and widget across the program. And why it's hard to add or change features without inadvertently breaking something coded by long-departed developers.


My (jeffsh@) return to him and you as well,

Sorry, poor choice of words, I agree whole heatedly with your take on Quicken being software written over many years before dark mode was even thought of. But, thanks for the support on the GUI development.

GeezerGeek

If the question is "should dark mode be implemented in a non-sustainable manner", the answer is no. However, it has been 5 years since Intuit sold Quicken and the business model was changed to a subscription service. One would expect that revenue would have been directed into creating a more sustainable software base rather than harvested as profit. Since Quicken is now privately owned, I don't know that is the case but what I do see is an end product, from my experience, that is deteriorating. For me, Quicken is crashing almost weekly, although the crashes have been resolved with a restart.
Quicken isn't the only legacy software with a long lifespan so that is a lame excuse for not being able to implement changes. What I want is for Quicken to commit the resources to get the problems fixed and get the features of the product up to what is expected, including dark mode.
So jeffsh@ , how many more years should we expect to wait for Quicken to fix the problems and implement dark mode?

ddochter

Should I expect it this year? or should I start to look for an alternative finance management platform?

Chris_QPW

ddochter said:

Should I expect it this year? or should I start to look for an alternative finance management platform?

The only thing anyone can give on that is an opinion.  My opinion is that it is never going to happen, not this year, not any year.

Ps56k2

ddochter said:

Should I expect it this year? or should I start to look for an alternative finance management platform?

I would rather the Quicken folks work on all the bugs currently found vs making the screen change…. 

Chris_QPW

@Ps56k2 I agree, and in fact if I could vote against this idea, I would.  If they attempt this, I see nothing but problems.  It would massively affect all parts of Quicken, and Quicken Inc Windows developers don't have a good record of being able to change things like this without breaking other things, let alone make all parts of Quicken look right in dark mode.

TTSguy

Chris is right!. Don't let the developers touch this idea! You will regret ever starting a push for this to happen. As a matter of fact it could turn out to be something that could break Quickens back in the long run. I only use it as a checkbook register as it is for $60 a year (x2)! The developers do not have the skills necessary to make it work. Look at past history!

TTSguy

As a US company, Quicken only makes changes IF it will make more money for them. On the other hand they will not make changes that won't make money for them. Makes sense, as they don't have stockholders to keep happy, but do have a C_E_O! 
It's nor secret that they are not a charityand aren't trying to give you as much as you. rather do what they must to bring in more $$$$!

jacobs

@TTSguy One of the keys to making money is to keep the product alive. Modernizing code so it continues to work on updated operating systems isn't sexy, but it's necessary and it keeps software developers in business. So if adding dark mode is requiring them to not only tweak windows and dialog boxes but update some older parts of the code, then it may not be a bad thing, and it may be a necessary thing to survive in the future. Of course, touching anything in a program as old and complex as Quicken carries with it the potential to break things, so it depends on the skill and care of the developers and the QA people to try to move the architecture forward without breaking the program. Perhaps that's why this has been under development for a long time.

I'm a Quicken Mac user. Quicken Mac has a much newer code base than Quicken Windows, but it still has the complexity of hundreds of screens, boxes, panes, widgets and other user interface elements which needed to be touched in order to enable dark mode on the Mac. It took them quite awhile, but they finally delivered it — and it didn't appear to break things. I'm not saying it will be the same with Quicken Windows... only that it is do-able with sufficient time and resources, and doesn't necessarily portend disaster.

Rocket J Squirrel

Perhaps we could get Quicken Inc. to supply these to users who want dark mode. They could even carry the Quicken logo.

TTSguy

@Jacobs Just watching the discussions, and results from them and not even being able to produce updates without problems, I see Quicken as an end-of- life product. I see Quicken squeezing Quicken like a chamois for every drop of revenue they can get, before it's death. Just look at the past history, multiple owners, incapable developers, subscription creation, lack of communication to all those paying the bills (you and me). What is there to not understand? It's writing on the wall that even the developers don't see, they just need their $100 a week to survive!

Chris_QPW

jacobs said:

@TTSguy One of the keys to making money is to keep the product alive. Modernizing code so it continues to work on updated operating systems isn't sexy, but it's necessary and it keeps software developers in business.

Frankly I believe that boat sailed long ago for Quicken Windows. From my experience it isn't all that uncommon for companies to "just maintain" software, and not "modernize" it.  What do I mean by that?  I mean, they fix things as they break, they don't necessarily make changes to as they go to make sure things don't go obsolete.  Windows is double edge sword with the fact that very old code still runs.  That means that you can have unsupported libraries and such in your product and it will still run.

You can see this affect in the way two different people approach things like this.
One person maintains their house a bit each day having just to do a little bit of work.
Another person puts it off for a year or more and has a ton of work to do.

The first person might in fact do more work than the second but might prevent some major problems by keeping things up to date.  And note that might not be the fault of Quicken Inc, most of the "history" of Quicken is actually what Intuit did.

This is why I dislike the expression: "If it ain't broke don't fix it.".  This is almost always used as an excuse for not properly maintain things. Someday some person is going to have to "pay the piper", but that certainly doesn't seem to be bother the people/companies that push that on to the next guy/company.

BTW Quicken Mac was in a special place that Quicken Windows will never find itself in.
Basically, Quicken Mac didn't make them any money for a decade or more.  The only reason Intuit would have allowed that is because Quicken Mac's users were quite a small percentage of the user base at the time, and they still had Quicken Windows bringing in money.

Of course, one might argue that they could have special side project to rewrite Quicken Windows while still maintaining the existing Quicken Windows, but I don't think there is the money/desire to do that.  This isn't a growing industry, if anything it is a dying one.  Making money doesn't only depend on what the program can and can't do, it depends on how many people want it and what they are willing to pay for it.

One of the things that strikes me is how little has been done in Simplify.  You can't even print reports, let alone try tracking investments in anything other than the number of shares/price/cash amounts.  They don't seem to be adding any real new features, and this supposedly the "platform for the future/young users".

jacobs

TTSguy said:

@Jacobs Just watching the discussions, and results from them and not even being able to produce updates without problems, I see Quicken as an end-of- life product. I see Quicken squeezing Quicken like a chamois for every drop of revenue they can get, before it's death.

I understand your thoughts, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Quicken was sold in 2021 to a new owner. This is not a company known to pick the remaining meat from the bones of a dying company, and there aren't visible signs that they have been firing staff and dismantling the company to wring remaining revenue out of it. So if they didn't buy it to kill it, I'd assume they bought it to continue to develop it. 

Now, I wish I had some insight into the master plan they're following. Quicken Mac is continuing its slow but steady evolution. Quicken Windows users seem increasingly unhappy with buggy updates. Quicken Cloud doesn't seem to have evolved much of late. Online bill payment still seems like a mess. FI connectivity seems to get worse, not better. Simplifi burst out of the gate a few years ago, but development seems to have slowed. So what's the game plan? I can't figure it out. Are they working on a multi-year re-write of Quicken Windows? Who knows; that seems as plausible to me as them piloting it to inevitable death. 

Chris_QPW said:

BTW Quicken Mac was in a special place that Quicken Windows will never find itself in.
Basically, Quicken Mac didn't make them any money for a decade or more.  The only reason Intuit would have allowed that is because Quicken Mac's users were quite a small percentage of the user base at the time, and they still had Quicken Windows bringing in money.

Yes, but when Intuit pulled the plug on Quicken 2007, their intention was to replace it with a new, modern very Mac-like program which was not a direct re-write of the old program. They missed the mark so much that the replacement never made it out of beta testing. Then they reversed course and tried to create a modern Quicken Mac, but didn't give it the resources needed, so it was very late and very under-featured. Then they stopped work. Then they started again with a development team of only a (literal) handful of developers. (Intuit's missteps would probably make a good case study for Harvard Business Review — not quite "New Coke", but nearly as inept.) But the point is that it is possible to re-write a legacy program. And they should have learned something about doing so with the Mac re-creation project.

The pronouncements from CEO Eric Dunn since Quicken became independent have stated that the company is doing well. Here's some of what he said when Quicken was sold to its current owner in late 2021: Active users are “significantly higher” than when it was spun off from Intuit. He said company is profitable and has seen a 50% increase in annual sales volume over the five-year period, which is double-digit annual growth.
“We’re strongly profitable and have been consistently profitable since the time of the spinoff. We’re a very successful company, revenue-wise — far above what it ever was in the Intuit years." So… was he lying? Maybe to us, but not to the company which bought Quicken. The president of the new parent company said "I am confident in the growth trajectory ahead." So I have to believe they do have a path forward which is not milking the flagship product until it crashes and dies. 

Chris_QPW

@jacobs maybe I'm just being too pessimistic, I tend to do that like a lot of people when there isn't a lot of transparency.

I will say one thing, about the starting and stopping of the new Quicken Mac development.  I would argue that it can't be used as "If they were to rewrite Quicken Windows, they just wouldn't do that and so they would get done sooner" kind of argument.

To me these are "nature forces".  There are the technical forces, and the business ones.

On the technical side a lot of people scream for rewriting believing that a rewrite will bring better "code"/a better program.  Not to mention just like any person, developers would rather work on "new" instead of old.  But when a project is going to take years and you have a large turnover, you tend to build the "same thing" when looking back at it in the future.  I have been around long enough that I remember the "mini computer" programmers believe that they "knew more" than the "mainframe ones", and then the "micro computers" programmers thought the same thing about the "mini computer" programmers, and on and on. They all thought they were the ones that wouldn't make the same mistakes over time, and their code would not be "convolved like the old code".  But that never comes about because time moves on, APIs change, you get different developers in, and at different experience levels.

On the business side, as a project drags on year after year much longer than anyone estimated (and they always estimate too little time) the support for such a project also diminishes and that is what causes the business side of this to remove its support for the project.

I will say even with my pessimist view, I don't think Quicken is going to die anytime soon, as long as the company funding it chooses to keep doing that.

gnat

would like to vote on this idea, but not seeing a way.

Isomeme

> "Invert Colors" is usable but, is definitely not good enough. No, too much fooling around, especially when using dark mode and multiple screens.

If I had known that my annoying hack to make Quicken borderline usable would be used as a reason that real dark mode need not be supported, I never would have shared it here. It was never meant to be more than a stopgap.