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No.57 · Controls

Theme Dial

A theme picker built as an instrument: five themes along the light of a day (Daylight, Paper, Dusk, Ink, Midnight) on a half-dial. Drag the sun and every colour token is mixed continuously in OKLab between neighbours; let go and it settles into the nearest detent.

The prompt

The design brief behind this component — reuse it to regenerate, remix, or explain it.

Build a theme selector that feels like a designed instrument rather than a dropdown or a hue wheel. The themes lie on one meaningful axis, the light of a day: - Daylight: cool white, blue accent. - Paper: warm ivory, terracotta. - Dusk: plum-clay mid-tone, apricot. - Ink: deep blue-grey, periwinkle. - Midnight: near-black, moon gold. Each theme defines the same tokens: bg, surface, ink, muted, accent and line. The control is a 150° half-dial in SVG. The arc track is stroked with a gradient of each stop's own background, so the day reads as a sequence of materials. It has major ticks at the stops, three minor ticks between each pair, a needle from a hub, and a 'sun' thumb on the arc filled with the current accent. Dragging anywhere on the dial maps the pointer angle to a continuous position t (0–4), and every token is interpolated in OKLab between the two neighbouring stops. The whole instrument and a live preview (a small app card with a stat, a chart line, a list and buttons) recolour as you scrub, and so does the page behind them via onPreview. On release, t eases into the nearest stop over 280ms (cubic out) and onChange fires with the stop's id and tokens. The readout under the arc shows the stop name in a serif, its note, and the live text contrast ratio of ink against the background. The thumb is role=slider with aria-valuetext ('Dusk: Low light, clay and plum'). Arrows, Page keys and Home/End step between detents, the wheel steps too, and a row of named stop buttons (each with a swatch) gives direct access. Side by side from 44rem of container width, stacked below it.

Notes

Interaction
Drag the sun along the arc, click a stop, or focus the dial and use ← → / Home / End.
Motion
Continuous OKLab interpolation while scrubbing; a 280ms ease-out settle into the detent.
Accessibility
The slider has aria-valuenow, aria-valuetext naming the theme and aria-orientation. Named stop buttons use aria-pressed, the chosen theme is announced politely, and the contrast ratio is shown for every stop. Reduced motion makes the settle instant; scrubbing still interpolates, because it follows your hand.
Responsive
The SVG scales with its container, and the preview stacks under the dial on narrow screens. Dragging uses touch-action: none on the dial only.
On touch
Drag the sun with a finger or tap a named stop.

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301 components