The main user problem resulting is that they find it hard to realise which tracks in Mixer Board are selected.

Created attachment 476 [details]
Patch for bug 262 by Matthew Lannan

Patch compiles on Windows. Not tested elsewhere. 

I am unclear why a bright colour like green is chosen for the mbTrackSelectedColor()bevel colour. This makes it look like a focus colour in the way that yellow is focus colour in the Track Panel tracks, but it is actually the track selected colour. 

Personally I would find it more intuitive if the selected Mixer Board track strips had the same track selected colour as in the Track Panel, and only the focused track strip had the bevel colour. That way it would be clearer which Mixer Board strip has the focus - if you TAB into the icon you cannot tell at all which strip has focus.

I have just been updating the documentation for Mixer Board and it looks to me as if nothing has been done to improve the visual cue to indicate track selection in the Mixer Toolbar.
http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Mixer_Board

The current visual cue is (quoting from the Manual, I added this today): "Selection of a track in Mixer Board is indicated by the gray half-border that sits right and bottom of an unselected track moves to left and top of a selected track".

This visual cue is far too subtle and is very unlike the indicators of selection in the tracks in the Audacity window where we turn selected tracks dark gray.  

For consistency, and for a stronger visual cue,I think we should be using the same dark gray visual cue for selected tracks in Mixer Board.

(In reply to Gale Andrews from comment #1)
> The main user problem resulting is that they find it hard to realise
> which tracks in Mixer Board are selected.

Why do we need to show or control track selectedness in the Mixer Board? What can you do from the Mixer Board that depends on track selection?

Testing on Linux Xfce, only about 30% of a "mixer strip" area effects a change of track selection. The "hot spots" are:

* To the right of the Gain slider (but not 'on' the Gain slider)
* The border (extreme edges) of a mixer strip
* The Audacity/Instrument icon
* A small area immediately above the icon
* The area to the left / right of the icon

Clicking anywhere else in the Mixer Board does not change the track selection.
Why bother having any "hot spots" in the Mixer Board for changing track selection at all? Why do we 'need' to change track selectedness while viewing the Mixer Board?

If there were no "hot spots" in the Mixer Board to change track selectedness, then why would we need to show track selectedness in the Mixer Board? 

if track selectedness is not relevant to the Mixer Board (and as shown above, it is not very relevant other than the existence of some "hot spots"), then indicating track selectedness is just visual "noise" (clutter).

(In reply to Steve Daulton from comment #4)
In other words Vaughan (the doer) requested this bug be opened as far as I recall from that long ago and I was not the only "user" that was complaining.  

I mostly use Windows (so there is no native way to put Mixer Board on top of all, nor is there on Mac) and my main monitor is only 1280 * 1024. In those circumstances if I ever use Mixer Board I usually don't bother to third-party put it on top but have it to left of screen so that it covers the Track Control Panels when it has focus. 

So personally I appreciate and urge that it should show and change track selectedness and ideally show and change focus. Only the logo is a really good place to click to select the track without unintentionally moving a control. You can't see the slider boundaries unless you right-click. 

Is changing selectedness in Mixer Board not helpful for real-time preview effects?  

And then there is the consistency argument which I think Peter sees.  

If you want to argue for closing this bug as invalid, please do so on -quality... but I am unlikely to concur.

(In reply to Gale Andrews from comment #5)
> If you want to argue for closing this bug as invalid...

I don't.

If someone wants to fix this bug by removing the track borders and hot spots, then I will probably support their decision.

(In reply to Steve Daulton from comment #4)
>Why do we need to show or control track selectedness in the Mixer Board? 
>What can you do from the Mixer Board that depends on track selection?

It's not that you can do anything with the track selectedness in Mixer Board.

Rather it's that you can make and change selections from the mixer board (and these changes direclt affect the main Audacity window - and thus it makes eminent sense to show such selections more clearly in the Mixer Board.  Otherwise it makes for a fairly opaque and inconsistent GUI - and one that should be easy to fix.

(In reply to Steve Daulton from comment #4)
>Why do we need to show or control track selectedness in the Mixer Board? 
>What can you do from the Mixer Board that depends on track selection?

Since this is indeed the case then another approach would be to 

a) totally abandon and inhibit the making and changing of selections from the Mixer Board

b) not bother showing any selectedness in the Mixer Board.

The problem is exacerbated when you have many tracks and several of them selected.

The user needs to ba able to quickly and readily ascertain which of his/her tracks are slected - and the current visual cue makes this very tricky.

As I already stated, 

1) You can affect real-time effect preview by changing track selectedness in Mixer Board

2) If you have Mixer Board over the main window's track control panels, which seems a way of seeing more of the waveform, then you need to see which tracks are selected in Mixer Board. 

The only way to fix the bug as titled is to do what Vaughan requested, as paraphrased in comment 0. 

But if the hot spots are a nuisance for Mixer Board users, perhaps an option could be provided to turn them off and so not allow Mixer Board to change track selectedness. Perhaps right-click over the logo on Mixer Board might be a way to offer that option.

*** STEPS ADDED ***

*** STEPS UPDATED ***

B steps fixed and removed.  A steps retained.
Converted to an Enhancement request.

DEVEL - FIX MADE
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/commit/8ff80bde11e663ec0ec5e14874e1b1dce04ef2ee

(In reply to James Crook from comment #13)
audacity-2.3.0-alpha-12-71f49ae0f63578abc3a9cfc6f270a0393471d1ac
and on macOS 10.13.4   audacity-macos-nightly-2.3.0-71f49ae.dmg - 28.47 MB | version: 2.3.0--13Apr18

Works fine on both platforms now.

Not sure why the steps to reproduce specifically specify using Classic theme (apart from the fact that it was Gale's, as bug reporter, obdurate choice of presentation).

Tested with all three themes Light, Dark Classic on both platforms with individual and multiple tracks selected - all OK