As this thread was resurrected from the dead.
What OS are you on there?
On Windows I have never seen this. Specifically the blue bars that indict the importance. On Windows (forever) for me it is always grey bars throughout so you never know what direction to slide the sliders (I have always presumed to the right for more but there has never been any indication)
@outsidecontext can obviously answer better, but that looks to me like some form of Linux; probably using GTK from the buttons, but potentially KDE. Just checked on my Windows installation, and it does definitely rely purely on traditional context to communicate that. I’d lay the blame on Python rather than Picard, but that doesn’t seem like the best design decision.
I’m fairly sure they’re just standard Qt widgets, so the blame should probably even be shifted from Python to Qt, if you really want to blame someone. Picard 2 will change from Qt4 to Qt5, not sure if that means that these bars will now get coloured though.
This is just how sliders look with the theme I am using on my Linux. Those are ordinary Qt sliders, and by default they will look like ordinary Windows sliders on Windows.
I actually implemented those sliders (quite some time ago) and we were aware of the issues with its usability back then. I had hoped having this increase from left to right would be reasonable intuitive (at least for people used to a left to right writing direction). I had originally imagined those sliders to be somewhat formed like a wedge, but my Qt custom widget skills did not allow for that. Unfortunately nobody ever came by improving this implementation. Maybe after the Qt5 port is done this can be easier 