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Somehow it looks very 'inspired' by something else. I was hoping it'd be a bit more original, but it's a good design

The only inspiration there is the checkbox/radio button from Dano (remember, this was supposed to be the UI for a BeOS-related OS). But I believe the UI as it is, it is already pretty original, mostly because it is a pain to develop it... No toolkit available supports some of the stuff suggested there.

Ok, so that's what the window manager theme contest was part of, I see...

Anyway, what's with the blue? Aqua(blue), Longhorn(blue),Bluecurve(not quite blue), Eugenia's Sequel(bluish). Isn't there another soft soothing color?

Dont' get me wrong, blue is my favorite, but is the advancement of the desktop related to how blue it is?

are really nice. I especially like the background, slightly coffee-colored one (and the fact that the active button does not have random crap surrounding it)

2:45 AM...OSNews is ruining my sleeping habits.

>Isn't there another soft soothing color?

Not really. Blue is the nicest on the human eyes. Light.

I think it has to do with the fact that a) CRT's have blue backgrounds by default, i.e. everything is drawn on a blue base, and b) blue looks just nice on computer monitors.

I love it !

The day there is such a theme for GTK i might use GNOME instead of KDE ... until KDE has such a theme too

@Eugenia:
doesn't look bad, i like it.

it just looks a bit too complex on the first sight, especially when i first saw the second test i was kinda confused. the fonts are IMO too thick, something lighter would be better.
there should be a little more space around the number in the spinboxes in test1. although it's windows-ish, i prefer the idea of having a combo-box with an arrow pointing down on the button, seems to make more sense to me since the combobox does open downards (or do you want to change that, too? test2 shows something like that in the upper right corner). buttons are a little flat, maybe they should have at least a bit 3D in them. i really like the sliders and scrollbars..
the window border is a bit too icky for me (edges should be more rounded than just 1-pixel-off), and too thick with this additional border around the title bar. the bevel effect on the title text looks nice though..
i'm a bit confused by the button-focus in test2. there is the "Apply" button with a drop-shadow, the "OK" button underlined and the "Defaults" button just plain. if i press return now.. what will be activated? i guess "Apply" has default focus and "Ok" is selected..? when "OK" is selected, why still show which button had default focus? (something i didn't understand on BeOS either)

something i don't like about the listboxes is that there's one pixel space between the border around the selected item and the listbox-border. doesn't look nice IMO, would probably look better with 2 pixels space or no space at all. need to try that out

i like the ZSnakes and the way the selected menu item marking grows over the width of the menu itself.

then there's this tabview on test2... it's nice that the selected tab is bigger than the others. but it still looks too plain IMO. it's lacking something. but i'm not yet sure what.


just my opinion so far.

>it just looks a bit too complex on the first sight, especially when i first saw the second test i was kinda confused

The second shot is just a placeholder for the widgets, it is NOT a real app.

>i prefer the idea of having a combo-box with an arrow pointing down on the button, seems to make more sense to me since the combobox does open downards

No, they do not open downwards, not always. If you think about it, it makes more sense to look to the option and not to a direction.

>there is the "Apply" button with a drop-shadow, the "OK" button underlined and the "Defaults" button just plain. if i press return now.. what will be activated?

As I said, this is work in progress. I was playing with ideas, just pick the one you like best for "focused".

>something i don't like about the listboxes is that there's one pixel space between the border around the selected item and the listbox-border

Without it, it looks fat.

>then there's this tabview on test2... it's nice that the selected tab is bigger than the others. but it still looks too plain IMO. it's lacking something. but i'm not yet sure what.

Tab views should be plain. Not like the terrible Keramic's ones... What needs, is bold font to stand out. And it has that...

Love the widget and other stuff (don't know the terminology).

But although I liked the window manager theme last time it was posted here on OSNEWS. I just don't think it works well with the rest of the stuff. Maybe the colors should be closer to the rest of the theme.

Why not have the ZSnake thingy in the expandable tree-view box (where it says "Look and Feel -> Colour Theme")? much like the drop down combo box at the top right, that might look nifty.

On second though it looks okay as it is.

I like your design enough, but there's two things that bother me slightly:

1) several of your widgets (notably the tabs) have a second line of pixels around their outside to look more "anti-aliased" the result, however, is that they don't look crisp enough, you'll probably want to slightly tweak the color on that.

2) The min/maximise buttons lack definition, I think they could use slightly more contrast, to make them look less bland and flat.

otherwise, great job.

>The min/maximise buttons lack definition, I think they could use slightly more contrast, to make them look less bland and flat.

This is already being worked on on an alternative Today theme.

>) several of your widgets (notably the tabs) have a second line of pixels around their outside to look more "anti-aliased" the result, however, is that they don't look crisp enough, you'll probably want to slightly tweak the color on that.

I actually like it as is...

Instead of 'Why <insert UI name here> Sucks and will never compete with <insert Commercial Alternative here>', we actually have somebody who suggests improvements in a way that can be more or less directly implemented.

How refreshing.

It would be a nice theme for Zeta.

I think it is a nice theme. And I like the color of the backfround, too. It's a nice pastel shade.
But I think, that the scrollbars looks a little bit ugly. It don't suit to the rest.
But all in all: Nice theme. I would be happy, if you publish the theme at "art.gnome.org".

Wondaful... everything is clear and distinct, and the elements are unified (e.g. the selected menu's top looks similar to the selected tab). I think some of the more sweet-toothed will be turned off by the edges on the borders; after using the theme (or whatever you want to call it) for a few days, however, they would be grateful for them.

By the way, what program(s) do you use for mockups? Do you use the GIMP? How long does one take to make? I've been trying to make a mockup for my filebrowser-UI idea and I have spent too long with too little results; I think I have a good idea though!

>By the way, what program(s) do you use for mockups?

An old version of Paint Shop Pro: 5. It always crashes when I UNDO a transparent selection paste action and I always curse it when it crashes, but I like that app so I keep using it.

> Do you use the GIMP?

Only for specific stuff when I am under Linux.

> How long does one take to make?

About 1-2 weeks of 1-2 hours work a day. Not for the complete set, too much work for final work.

I'm somehow not too fond of the minimize/maximize buttons. Big and small circle ain't all that intuitive or clear

Pretty neat. But I think it would look more clean with less colours.
Maybe the menu icons should have the normal background color. And the scrollbars and sliders should share a colour with the arrows in scrollbars, spinboxes, combo boxes etc.

Also the gradient in ZSnakes and selections is IMO a bit overdone.

But for a first shot, it looks pretty good.

The scrollbars look similar to the Breeze theme for the Mozilla Browser (firebird), only just a different color.

This looks too busy to me. Simplicity is sexy! True UI skill is in creating a functional, attractive, usable and clean UI.
I did like the 'continuing' drop-down menu kind of style, though.
(Isn't red the easiest color on the eye, since it's at the lowest of the spectrum?)

>This looks too busy to me. Simplicity is sexy! True UI skill is in creating a functional, attractive, usable and clean UI.


You don't understand!!! This window is a PLACEHOLDER for the windows, it is NOT an application that has all these wigets in there!!! It is just a window to show you what it could be in there!

IF there ONE thing that theme has, is being CLEAN without losing its modern look.

Really nice

I'm really hoping that the Gtk/Gnome people will consider using this theme as default theme.

I do have some issues with it though, the menubar and some other parts are too heavy, and the window decoration doesn't fit with the widget style (imho).

And I would really like to see a custom color dialog like in test1.png

Hi Eugenia, i will comment your mod. I'm not a codder, but i know the GUI's look'n'feels. Don't shot me, it's just MHO:

-Generally, the colors are too much contrasted. The colors combination must bee more fine. Imagine 6 windows open at same time with lots of widgets: it will be very confusing to choose between buttons.
-The theme seems a variation (not a copy) of WindowsXP styles, specially for buttons and colors. Personal opinion: don't use the blue tones.
-The shadowed "Apply" button must be aligned with other buttons, maybe making their shadow smaller.
-IMO, the buttons musb be more squared, or better more rounded, to avoid it's XP-style
-I don't like the scroll bars too.

-I like the Zsnake effect, but, as other widgets, it must be less contrast

Anyway, good aproach

I love it! Would be great if it would be default Theme for Gtk 2.4/Gnome 2.6 ... Design of the UI is one of the important things on how people decide between desktops. Your Design is something really *new*, like Aqua or Luna were too.

I don't know anything about themes or HID stuff, but I really appreciate Eugenia putting in the effort (which so many people don't) in making the Unix desktop the best it can be.

pretty

Bads:

- Gradients, gradients everywhere! It gives everything pretty XP-ish look, which IMO isn't the best idea. Also the gradients add to general visual bloat these mockups.

- Widgets are too thick. Z-Snake looks terrible. The one from BeOS menus was pretty cool, this one is simply too thick.

- Widget borders: too thick and too rounded.

Goods:
- Colors. Get rid of gradients and make everything slimmer andlighter and this will be pretty nice thme

I don't see much things in this mockup which aren't yet supported by GTK+-2.2. You write:

"If people from GTK+ team read this, please consider at
least allowing bolding of headers, tabs, buttons and
menus."

Are you refering to bold text here? Complex text markup is supported since GTK+ version 2.0 and so are font attributes. Some apps already make heavy use of it. Should be trivial to use from a theme (gtkrc).

I don't like it so much, I mean it's to much Xp-ish (buttons, background coluour), Be-oish, and Mozill-ish. However some things I like very much but sadly they are not supported by GTK (and if you look just how long it takes to make new file/open dialouge you will se that your theme would be faster accepted by kde). I like Z-snake (colour is too mozilla like), and I really like sidebar dots like in kde or win explorer (don't know what is called but where the Look and Feel, Window manager and colour theme are written. Nice job anyway keep up the good work.

in my opinion, it (zsnake) doesn't look good at all.
it might be eyecandy allright, but it sure does not look
clean, menus are cluttered. dropdown w/ zsnake looks scary,
hopefully it's not implementable (you have to consider a
scrollbar in a dropdown menu, don't you?).
i also think radios and checkbuttons are too thick.
now the pros
i do like the colors, especially this beos-like blue,
although you use too many gradients (like in selection menu
- this it too flashy, makes letters hard to read).
tabs and tree menu look great, i'd like to see that in
Gnome one day. big scrollbars and buttons are definitely
good ideas, though they look kind of XP-ish.
keep it mockin'

regards,
artb.

Nice job, Eugenia. The only thing I don't like is the Z Snake effect, but if there was a way to turn it off, that would be great. Otherwise, I'd use this ui right now. Very nice.

Also, I agree with a previous poster that it's one thing to complain about something but it's another to actually do some work to suggest alternatives. Excellent work. Thanks for the mockups.

The snake thing to my eyes clutters the menus.

I didn't like the beige under the menu icons when they first appeared in MS Office, and still don't like them here.

I have a serious problem with window titles which place the close button so close to the maximize button. The GNOME HIG recommends "Close | Title | Min | Max" so that dangerous buttons are as far away as possible from non-dangerous buttons.

Someone was saying they are fed up with blue -- try shades of brown/cream. My theme -- SandyCrack -- is based around the colour of Wile Coyote (literally, I have a picture of him). A sample is at http://www.burtonini.com/computing/screenshots/sj-main.png

Really nice imho. It's a bit similar imho to http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6390 but that's not a problem at all, as that is a very nice, clean theme too (unfortunatelly qt only atm). I hope it will be implemeneted for both kde and gnome as i use kde as de, mainly for karamba, but use some gtk apps too, and i HATE when they look differnet. Anyway does somebody know any other unified solution than geramik/keramik which is available as source (i didn't find a "bluecurve theme source" ) ?.

I love the treatment of the buttons and the sliders; they look fantastic.

I think the window border is a little fat and imposing compared to the rest of the theme, but I always have problems with grabbing thin pixel borders so I'm not sure; maybe soften up the inside edge of the border so it isn't so distinct or it blends more (more like the rest of the theme)

Also, have you tried changing the frame outline (sorry; its called a frame in gtk; for instance the curving line around "header") from blue to brown? I really like themes that do a multi colored menu like that (hearkens back to Reno desk, which was fantastic), but I think the brown might be able to play a bigger part. Or maybe even the green, since you are using the colors from the buttons.

I was wondering, do you think about how other themes could mix with yours while you're designing? The menu system in particular looks fairly original (from what i've used, anyway), but how would the theme work with say different window decorations? I bring this up because I use Mist w/ metabox window decorations in gnome2, and there are many other themes in gnome2 that go quite nicely together.

Nice Job. I have a few questions...

1) The graphics appear aesthetically pleasing, but could explain what makes this design unique from other equally aesthetically pleasing graphical designs?

2) What significant contribution is being made to human computer interaction design here?

3) What aspects of human cognition are being addressed in this design that makes these graphical representations more usable than others?

Thanks

I think the z snake thing is really good! The use is to see what submenu you're in and you might say it is redundant information since the location of the submenu already indicates where you are, HOWEVER, I think it looks even better now.

Kepp up the good work!

Very nice, eugenia!

minor gripe: in Test1, the inner box-thingie (as outlined by a blue rounded box; someone give me the technical term) is a bit confusing to the eye for a moment; at first it looks as if it has the same context and depth as the outer two boxes, and at the same time the lack of a title makes it seem indistinct. otherwise, again, great job!

> You don't understand!!! This window is a PLACEHOLDER for the windows, it is NOT an application that has all these wigets in there!!! It is just a window to show you what it could be in there!

I *know* that. Perhaps I should clarify. I mean that the *widgets* look a little too busy, over-ornate, even misleading, now I took a second look at it.
What is the difference between Apply, Ok, and Defaults such that they have to have such visually contrasting styles?
Why the shading of everything?
If you're intent on this style, why not have the window borders, style and widgets reflect and complement the style of the others?

I hope I've explained myself a little more clearly.

Quite nice, although I do not like all the huge round corners; it isn't subtle enough to my likes.

One thing I think you should really improve is the window decoration. Try this: look at the top left of the window, then follow the left border to the bottom and the bottom-right. Do you notice how the perspective of the border changes from concave to convex? (sorry, I do not really know the correct english words... anyhow, it reminds me of Escher's "Hol en Bol").

That window in the test1.png looks a little familiar! Nice though, I quite like them. With some criticisms though..

They look good in most places but seem a little overdone in others. The menus are too much; the "snake" confusingly appears to start behind the menu but then comes across the menu item and follows down the submenu. It looks a little like the menu has been pushed through the snake. The snake doesn't really seem to add anything for the user either, as they already know which menus and sub-menus they have open. Simply highlighting the menu item they are over would seem to be enough. The coffee colour down the left edge of the menus is odd, too. You don't use it anywhere else in the entire scheme, so it sticks out a fair amount and draws the eye straight to it.

The drop-down menu arrows are confusing. As the menu drops-down, the arrow should point down as well; the principle of least surprise!

The drop shadow on the "Apply" button confuses everything. For example on test2.png the Apply button has a drop shadow, the O.K button has an extra border and the Cancel button has none. Which is the default/selected button? None of the other widgets have drop shadows.

The tabs seem to "glow" too much. How about having just the "Tab" part in the widget-grey colour, the blue outline, but the main part of the tab view the same background grey colour as the rest of the application?

Now as a final thing that I'm sure will bring flames (But that is not what I am trying to do!). Joel Spolsky (Of Joel On Software/Frog Creek Software) has written User Interface Design for Programmers ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html ) In it he offers some interesting insights into what users actually do. One of the most interesting parts (To me at least) was the idea that a mono-spaced font E.g. Apples Chicago, is a much better font to use than a proportional, spidery one like Arial. Why? Because users can't control a mouse, and trying to click between the letters in a sequence like ill, or rnm, is much much easier using a monospaced font than propertional. Something that had never occured to me before I must admit, but now I'm interested.

I may have to fork out some cash for a UI design book or two!

>1) The graphics appear aesthetically pleasing, but could explain what makes this design unique from other equally aesthetically pleasing graphical designs?

We are not talking about usability here, we are talking about widgets. OF course, well designed widgets do help usability. I believe this widget-set is both modern, clean, it has clarity, and it is not loaded, no matter what some people think by seeing the second mockup.
The checkbox, the list box, the menu zsnake, I believe help a lot and they are not to be found on other themes. Even Dano's are very plain and wild looking.

>2) What significant contribution is being made to human computer interaction design here?

I have no idea what you just said here. Speak plain english please.

>3) What aspects of human cognition are being addressed in this design that makes these graphical representations more usable than others?

See above.

I just reminds me too much of the default XP theme. I don't want gradients, rounded corners, irregular windows, etc. They just make the whole appereance of a desktop very bloated.

I think the current default theme (this one with the 1 pixel borders around buttons, not the one with the "fat" boarder) of GTK+ is one of the nicest looking themes I have ever seen - even prettier than the windows classic design.

Your mockup of the printer dialog looks acceptable in my eyes, however I still don't understand the use of rounded corners every - it looks like the keramik window border of KDE.

Really!

Everyone will be trying it out themselves...

*Opens paint and photoshop*

I really like the blue you used for the background (69,105,130 right?). Normally, my default (after a long search) is the standard MacOS azure dark from MacOS 9, which translates to 48,70,125 in Windows. But by direct comparison, the blue you use is even easier for the eyes. Neat. Looks good with Luna silver under XP, too.

regards,
Stephan

...doesn't really do it for _me_, but that's just me. :-)

I like the look of this. My main requirement with a widget set is that I can forget about it as quickly as possible, if I'm always conscious of what the gui looks like, it's interrupting my chain of thought.
This looks forgettable, and I mean that in the nicest possible way!

"I think the current default theme (this one with the 1 pixel borders around buttons, not the one with the "fat" boarder) of GTK+ is one of the nicest looking themes I have ever seen - even prettier than the windows classic design. "

My thoughts exactly.

I dont like Eugenia's theme at all...

First, let me say that I quite like your design! I have some feedback that might be useful to you, and I would be interested in your response to this feedback.

I think the choices to end the dialogues (like apply, OK, cancel) require a default choice (which would probably be OK for productivity reasons) that should be made visible in the design, which is not the case now. Also, these three buttons (that describe general window choices) cause a little confusion as their makeup is similar to button used to describe tool specific choices (like save scheme)

Also, I would like to know what the reasons are for placing the menu options above the menu titles, which does not feel intuitive to me, as titles generally describe the contents of the menu. Logical thinking would therefore put the menu options on the same z-index/level of the menu title. The context relation would be better then the floating impression currently used and would suit the graphical style IMHO.

A final thing to think about is the standarisation of the HELP menu option, which imho should be given the same priority as a search option on webpages. You never know when a user will need the help function, so you'd want to put it in a consistent place. Therefore, I'd recommend to try out how this would be improved by aligning the help option to the right of the toolbar, consistently with every window. This way it won't change position depending on the amount of menu options.

Note though that I'm not aware of technical limitations of Gnome and GTK+. If you wish I could try to mock something up myself when I have some spare time.

Hope this is helpful

@Eugenia:

>The second shot is just a placeholder for the widgets, it is NOT a

real app.<
i know but still, the thick fonts make it IMO a little hard for

the eye to find something to focus on.

>No, they do not open downwards, not always. If you think about it, it

makes more sense to look to the option and not to a direction.<
ok, if you change the direction, you have to change the arrow. an

arrow to the option itself just doesn't make so much sense to me..

>Without it, it looks fat.<
and with it, it looks confusing

>Tab views should be plain. Not like the terrible Keramic's ones...

What needs, is bold font to stand out. And it has that...<
i don't like Keramik's tabs either. i don't want them to be 3D..

btw, another thing, i like the idea (like in BeOS or AmigaOS) that in

the menus instead of "CTRL+Blah" a little image is displayed for the

modifier key.

and again, i really don't want to say your theme is bad.. it's one of

the best themes i've seen so far! i just think, when we are at

thinking about changing things, it could get even better

i've made a mockup myself and changed a few things that IMO make it look better. some changes are just subtle, but if you take a closer look, you'll notice them. i've cut away everything where i didn't make changes:
http://home.t-online.de/home/a_harnath/test2-mod.png

just my personal opinion: i don't like it. I recognize it is very well done, but, quite simply, it is not what i would like to have on my desktop.

Who cares, you (rightly) say. Well, i noticed that my taste in desktops tends to agree with those of a certain group of "power users" - to come to the point, i like mosfet's liquid theme a lot, I know you find it horrible, and i would very much like to hear why it is so.

federico

(what happened to my first comment-i've waited over an hour for it showing up...?!)

again,

i think your theme is too bright (not enough contrast-i also don't like blue very much), and is irritating or hard for the eye (the ximian theme is better because it has dark bold frame).
as for the different coloured buttons, they might be helpfull to some users, but the mojority is using such buttons without different colours (in the windows-standard-theme) without any problem, and they look strange compared with the rest of the window.

so, at least i wouldn't use it.

Sander, you are talking about *usability* here and how this theme would put into work. What I offer here is just a WIDGET-SET. Nothing more, nothing less. It is up to the developers to design their apps in a way that have help buttons, focused buttons etc. All I offer here is a graphics design with no other thoughts.

The mockups are stuck in the small monitor make-the-user-monkey do a million tiny operations modality of Windows 95. In fact, mostly that is where mainstream UI stopped evolving... right there, Windows 95. Oh, we have some flashy spare parts that were welded on for Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but that's about it. Well, add some Mac OS X widgets in there too, but most of those are simply rehashes of NeXT that were made worse instead of better.

It would be refreshing to see some imagination. And real usability engineering. Just looking at the theme window... how many mouse clicks does it take to setup a new theme? Is all of it visible at once? Are the most frequently used buttons larger? Is the action of all buttons clear? If button actions have visible side-effects, can the user preview the button action if it is not already on screen?

With all the firepower a modern graphics card gives you... and modern CPU... why settle for Windows 95 style UI and its broken usability? No one works on a 640x480 screen anymore. And if the UI were intelligent, it would autosize to your screen using your desired settings anyway.

I could go on, but it's pointless. Most usability engineers are too stupid to actually do any usability engineering. What they do is take some braindead style guide and become hawkish taskmasters and pixel dominatrixes. Unfortunately most of them no longer think and certainly do not possess imagination.

"The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science." -- Albert Einstein

very clean...id use it (if everything else could match). but you should try to take suggestions once in a while.

@Eugenia:

ugh, copy&paste from notepad somehow f*cked up the formatting on my post.. hope you still take a look at my mockup

I _hate_ the look of that, I really think it looks SO ugly and I have a hard time convincing myself that it would be good for usability... but it's flashy and that's what counts?

The rest of the proposal is really good however, I'm not so convince about the tabs, I think it looks a little silly that the button goes out of bounds on the tabs (test3.png - I think MyTab3 would look better if it was aligned with the border of the currently open tab "Options") - it would be really nice.

Radio buttons look silly, I like the older dot buttons better.

Check buttons look slightly silly, I like crosses better than checks.

Both of these should stay inside the bounds of the boxes, going out of bounds looks bad.

The button select effect - the shadow bit - I would like this to be in bounds of the button, maybe a blow effect ?

but other than that I REALLY love the slighty curvy look of the widgets, the dropdown lists especially are beautiful in their default states..

1) The graphics appear aesthetically pleasing, but could explain what makes this design unique from other equally aesthetically pleasing graphical designs?

We are not talking about usability here, we are talking about widgets. OF course, well designed widgets do help usability. I believe this widget-set is both modern, clean, it has clarity, and it is not loaded, no matter what some people think by seeing the second mockup.

Saying that the widgits are "clean" is not enough, since I can find cleaner widgets. If you say that 'clean-ness' is a measurable attribute of a widget that can be shown to improve understanding (semantics) or perception (syntax) then how do you measure it? What is important to be careful of is that 'clean' 'modern' and 'clarity' are all subjective terms that describe your view of the interface.

The checkbox, the list box, the menu zsnake, I believe help a lot and they are not to be found on other themes. Even Dano's are very plain and wild looking.

You need to be more careful when describing the actual effect of a design relative to human perception such that you use objective terms that can be measurable and provable. You explanation so far is not objective, cannot be measured, and therefore your claims cannot be substantiated.

2) What significant contribution is being made to human computer interaction design here?

I have no idea what you just said here. Speak plain english please.

Human Computer Interaction is a well established branch of computer science that deals with the issues related to humans and their interaction with computers, namely user interfaces. Check here for the latest conference : http://www.hcii2003.gr/

What I am asking is what your contribution is. What are you bringing that is new to the field of HCI. Is this just another graphical picture of widgits, or is there something really unique about this design that makes a computer more usable, and if you claim this, what is that contribution.

3) What aspects of human cognition are being addressed in this design that makes these graphical representations more usable than others?
See above

Your explanation of why your design is more usable uses terms like 'modern', 'clean', 'clarity' yet none of these have anything to do with cognition, i.e. how people think and perceive these designs. Saying that a design is 'clean' and is therefore is usable is not a complete answer because you have not shown any proof that this relationship is true. Why does 'clean' make the widgit usable? In other words, what can you say about how humans perceive that allows you reach this conclusion?

Allow me to translate into plain english:
>>2) What significant contribution is being made to human computer interaction design here?

>I have no idea what you just said here. Speak plain english please.

What does your theme do better to interface the user than others?

>>3) What aspects of human cognition are being addressed in this design that makes these graphical representations more usable than others?

>See above.

How does your theme make looking and finding things better than others?

Having read through these posts I should mention that 99% of them are about peoples personal oppinions of that they like or don't like. Although a persons opinion of 100% valid, I should point out that it is only valid for them, and therefore makes no contribution to the determination of the effectiveness or validity of Eugenia's design. Arguing about what one person likes vs what another person likes is a waste of time if you are trying to evaluate this GUI critically and objectively, but fun none the less =)

Seems like someone had the same idea I had...Sorry Simon

Ok most of them were, but what is the point of designing something for a user interface if you don't look at the user? What did you design it for? Perhaps this is off topic then, but deciding to build a new widget set because it is nice won't make anyone supportive, and makes me confused.

So I am left wondering how you design a featureset without thinknig about how it's used. For example, bold menu buttons, animated checkboxes and amount of contrast between widgets are all usability issues as well as design issues, and are used by you as positive points of the design, however when I would comment on those points, they stop being design and become usability. To the best of my knowledge, usability is part of the design, even for widgets.

Sorry if I sound critical, I'm just trying to express my confusion. I think a seperate background article would help clearing things up at least for me, and would make an interesting read.

Again, much praise for the mock up of the widgets, sorry if this comment is out of the scope of the intension of the article.

This looks really great!

Good work!

But IMHO not appropriate as a default. The current default is good enough. Let GNOME not make the mistake KDE did when it chose Keramik as default --- it's as imposing as the cheer-leader they have on the first-login screen. Windows made the same mistake with XP. Everything is as round as candy.

Well if you like the XP theme then you'll like Keramik and this one too but remember there are as many people who love it as they are people who dislike it. A default should be neutral ( not ugly, not imposing, just clean with a tough of professionalism ). Mandrake got rid of the teletubies for a reason.

The question to ask for a default theme is: Will you tolerate it if it was the only theme available? For Windows Classic, the answer is yes. For GNOME simple the answer is yes, for Bluecurve the answer is yes, for Windows XP the answer is no, for MacOS the answer is no, for Keramik the answer is no.

Just my £0.02

Spontaneously, I both like and dislike the theme. I don't think anybody misunderstood that the mockups wheren't actual programs. The busy look is, in my opinion, due too a slight overuse of shades and 3D effects. The fisher price of Windows XP is there, but much more appealing.
My main objection is the low contrast between the contents of widgets and the borders and other "uninteresting" parts. For example - the table in test2 has nice use of bold font and an alternative background for the headings, but at the same time the grid lines steal attention from the contents of the cells. The same applies for the borders and shadings of selections. They afford clicking in my view, but should only inform of state. And the buttons do not afford enough clicking when in combination with the selections. They might be more click appealing if they were part of a more toned-down theme, but as they are now, they are lost in the large selection of borders and shades. I would like to se the complete opposite, where buttons are shaded and fully 3D, while the selections and similar elements are toned-down and flattened. Yes, it's more old-school, but old GUIs are well worked through. The color selections are very nice in my opinion, and a slight shift in emphasis as mentioned would make it even more appealing.
Anyway - a very nice initiative and an interesting starting point.

Looks like a mix of KDE's web style with Dano elements and WinXP elements.

However I have to vote for "so so". Simply because of the colour. Well, it is a preference issue. In addition to that fact that it doesn't have enough contrass for those who have bad eye sight (some people just forget about this very large minority, do they?). Personally, I would prefer that colour darker. And the widget fonts white, again, for contras.

Plus I hope, if this gets implemented, please anti-alias the edges of widgets. They look awful especially since I'm too used to stuff like Keramik, Luna and Aqua :-P. I like the gradients (the main reason why I didn't vote for sucks). But as for the ZSnake, how viable is this in a theme? A GTK one at that?

But hey, I'm not the UI expert.

Actually, I remember studying that indigo is the more soothing to the human eye because of its lowest wavelenghts amongst the colours (red is the worsed, because of its highest wavelenghts). I'm not sure, I completely forgot (thus shows how good am I in studying).

I thought BLEH! Until I saw the shots that were at the bottom of the page. The GTK scheme looks pretty good.

"Metacity needs to add the ability to take one pixel off its corner in addition of the usual "arc" shape that it offers."

It has this capability. I've been toying with Metacity and GTK for a few weeks now, and I think it wouldn't be too hard to pull off.

"I'm really hoping that the Gtk/Gnome people will consider using this theme as default"

:-( I hope they leave it as it is.

Great job! :-)

I find the target areas of the sliders, radio and check buttons to be too small, at least perception wise. Also, the sliders don't give a clear impression of being adjustable by any other means than directly dragging the very small slider (IOW, the scale looks too static, as part of the background, without being a field open for mouse events).

Usually I can't stand your designs, but this one I am fairly impressed by. What I really like are the menu's and how the blueish color continues through each submenu. I'm not overly impressed with the window border especially the minimize/maximize/close buttons. I think its just the colors of them that bother me. I also wish that metacity allowed you to put buttons down the side of the window and not just the top, but that's a whole other issue.

Looks like a combination of Dano, the KDE dotNet theme, and the KDE Ceramic theme. Overall, I like it.

I really like the widgets, but I don't think the window title bar and buttons go along too well.

No, it's not indigo. Indigo's wavelength is 700 nm. Red is 400 nm. 400 nm is a much larger wavelength than 700 nm. Look for a pic of the Electromagnetic Spectrum and you'll see.
Red's much more soothing. That's why darkrooms have that reddy orangey color.

...the dano styled buttons looks great. But I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the window border... and it's wierd looking colors and icons.

What's the purpose of this theme? Making GNOME look uglier as KDE or XP?

Well, just kidding, but sincerely it looks far too cluttered and XPish to be efficient. The initiative is good and having such a theme could help adopting new users, so I really hope it will get implemented

Most probably, I'm not the first one to comment on this, but then, I can't be bothered reading through 80 comments. Anyway, the look of all the widgets is superp. Wonderful work Eugenia. I doubt it can get much better without being actually able to using it on a day-to-day basis.

However, I do have criticism about the window border decoration. The sharp edges don't go well with the curved look of the other widgets. I'd love to see some elaboration on that.

Keep up the good work!

Red's definately less soothing then blues, because red is associated with pain and danger (which is why it's used by traffic signs), and blue by water and calming effect (which can be a drowning color if used too much).

Any art-interested person or architect can tell you that.

I would like to hear from somebody in the know how hard this would be to implement. The ZSnakes thing would be challenging but I think you could use XSHAPE to do that.

Perhaps, but that's because of a socialization, not a physical attribute.
Higher wavelength waves are able to transmit much higher energy than lower wavelength ones. So even that blue is 'calming' and red is not, blue is more "intense", so to speak, since it has higher wavelength.

I don't think this theme is especially beautiful or overwhelming in the aesthetic sense, but that also happens to be what I really like about it.

This is the kind of theme that I would like to have when I am sitting in front of a workstation all day, staring at the screen and working for many hours at a time. It draws the user's eye to the key areas of interest very subtly and effectively without relying on any kind of wild eye-candy tricks and I like that. All of that anti-aliasing and gradient stuff really helps to 'comfort the eye' and that's what I like about XP Luna too.

The ZSnake is a bit disconcerting, and I would have to see it in action before deciding on whether or not I like it. I prefer a circle in selected radio buttons, rather than that little switch you are using. At first, I thought I preferred (the default) Gnome's greyishness but then decided that your blue-tint would feel better on my eyes over time.

When I look at this theme and think about having to work in it for a long period of time, I get a cool and comfortable feeling that I don't get from other, flashier, themes.

Very nice. Meant to be worked in, not gawked at (like Aqua). Functionally aesthetic more than visually and an excellent default theme.

If YellowTab has any brains, they will hire you and use this for Zeta (no green-card problems in Germany, I presume?).

So I got it upsidedown. Didn't I tell you that I suck in physics?

When you hear "red", people normally associate it with those bright bright red lights - there are many tones of red, and I mean many. Use pure blue, and viola, it has generally the same effect than red. In many cultures, including that of 1 billion people (Chinese), red is more soothing and calm than blue.

When I first installed KDE3 I was eager to try out Keramik. I was amazed by all the gradients and shiny buttons. But my excitement did not last to long. For day to day work I prefer a simple, clean and elegant theme and now I use QtCurve which is really nice and the old KDE2 window decoration + the KDE default colors. In my eyes, this looks really nice and offers you an interface, you can just work with.

I really appretiate all the work Eugenia invests in this theme, but for me it looks too much like Keramik or similar themes. A theme that is nice to impress some friends, but is not ideal for daily work because it uses too many colors, the buttons, lines etc. need too much space and so on.

Personally I really prefer a clean, elegant interface which does not waste a lot of space with gradients, shadows etc. and offers you the functionallity to make your life easier. I think currently KDE + QtCurve is a very nice combination that helps me a lot to solve my day to day work efficiently (I also installed KDE3.2 debs, I did not really look at it in detail, but what I saw at a first glance looks really nice).

Especially the discussion that takes place on the GNOME mailing lists afterwards.

soft...a little yellow...kinda feels like my eyes are blurry because its not really crisp anywhere...just my eyes 17 cents

I like it, I like it.

I think that your widgets and overall design are very slick, neat, and clean. Excellent!

"Red's definately less soothing then blues, because red is associated with pain and danger"

Tell that to my Lava Lamp ;o)

i am not sure if you would implement these buttons as bimaps or drawn line by line.

Because I really hate themes which can't be changed to ANY color. Like WindowsXP's luna. I don't like it at all, but even IF i liked it, I could not change the colors to anything different than 3 colors since the whole GUI is a big bitmap but not drawn by rectangles and lines anymore.

i lub it!

I would say that this theme don't need any bitmaps. You can do neat things with GTK primitives. FYI, I implemented LunaXP for metacity using gtk primitives only (so it does get the GTK theme color). Grab it here: http://sebdelestaing.free.fr/metacity/MetaXP.tar.gz

I've created a FULL XP GTK/Meta theme, but I'm afraid to release it. :-(

I looked up 'graphical user interface design' at www.amazon.com and it came up with a dozen titles. I don't understand one quarter of what you people are saying here, I really need to read a couple of those books.

I'll tell you one thing. I didn't like the default theme of Gnome2 or RH 9.0 so I changed it to 'ocean dream' and I messed around with several other attributes, and my desktop looks reasonably nice now, but I would definately like more choices. I actually want some liquid elements, but more generally I just want more functionality because I'm not sure if adding custom themes from the Internet even works on RH9.0. I tried a few times and was unsucessful. $HOME/.themes does nothing.

I think that a lot of work could be done, not just in terms of new designs (although this is obviously important), but also in terms of documentation and testing. It just requires that people become interested and also participate / learn.

I feel comfortable because I don't use any bitmaps. Did you draw a look alike from scratch or actually copy/pasted pieces of bitmaps/icons ?

Actually it may very well be that it doesn't do any difference , I don't know.

I'm really impressed with that theme, I've never imagined that gtk without pixmaps could do that...

It's a combination of both. It uses pieces of screenshots, and some of my own images. I'd guess that it would fall under fair use, but who knows lol.

Give me hard-edged, flat widgets any day. This curvy stuff really gets to me. Most of the GTK2 themes that come with GNOME do this well without looking dated.

Ho.
I like it. Especially the sliders, and easy on the eyes smooth look. Very simple and buttery. Better than Keramik by far to me. I like the blue too I just think the green and off red hues need a little tweaking though to something... more rustic-standard. But that's a minor thing really. Very good idea here. I'd love to have this as my default theme. What's the prob. Just make it happen. Soon pls.

"ALL toolkits have on-mouse-over states. All of them. Including the radio buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, even drop-down boxes."

You mean widgets instead of toolkits, right?

This will definitely look very good on implementation. I'm not too sure about the colours, though, I think they can be a bit warmer ... Did you discuss this with those on the gnome project?

red is used in darkrooms because it interferes with your night vision the least amount (its also used by various militaries for this same reason)

the reason for blue is more of an emotional response. there is alot of work done on colour and emotional responses in humans. ive forgotten what blue was supposed to convey, but im sure a quick google search would turn something up.

Oph

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=color+emotio...

Real simple.
I like it makes sense to me.

This is definitely a good theme, but there are a few reasons that it just doesn't work for me. I really like the reorg done in the "Ximian Fix" version. To me, some of your "new theme" changes are a step forward, while others are a step back.

- I like the new theme colors. I don't know that much about themeing. Is it possible to change the color inside of the "Print Range" and "Copies" areas like you have done? Is nesting of these areas possible? If so, how would nested areas be colored?

- I dislike how many of the fonts in the "new theme" version got smaller (especially "Select a Printer" and tab title). I find the "Ximian Fix" version easier to read.

- I dislike that the "Print Preview", "Cancel", and "Print" buttons got smaller. I am pretty sloppy/quick with my trackball, and these are slightly smaller targets. It would slow me down a little

- I REALLY like your checkbox and radio button widgets. Very cool. The edges are nice and defined in a pretty 3D way.

- The windows border theme is somewhat of a mixed bag. Aesthetically, it doesn't work for me. Maybe it is the number of colors or the hard edges. I don't know. However, you did a good job of matching the "tone" of the button colors to the rest of the colors in the border. I also don't like that there is no space between the buttons (same problem as Bluecurve/Windows, but not OSX). In Win2K, I often hit the close button accidentally when I am trying to maximize (again, sloppy trackball). So far, my favorite window border theme is Mandrake's Galaxy. I like the rounded edges and the separation of the buttons, though I think I would add mouse-over coloring (when you mouse-over the minimize, maximize and close buttons, I would change the button button color to light yellow, green, and red respectively.

How's it feel now to have others judge your work?
Even though I don't like you, I do like the theme, so why not just do it?

Very nice theme for a CandyOS!!! :-)

Just kidding, but I believe that Industrial and Simple (the default Gnome2 theme) look much more professional.

Don't you think that the Ximian's Metacity theme will look better than the one you proposed? IMHO it's more coherent and has more or less the same colors and shapes.

Just give me GONX

http://cotito.free.fr/projects/gonx+index.html

-G

From the screenshots of Ximian Desktop 2, I don't see this as an improvement. That's just my opinion though. This looks more cartoonish . . .

Rounded, smooth, and simple. It's easy to look at, which is how it's supposed to be, in my opinion. Personally, I think polish is the key to professionalism, not how "cartoony" it is.

Looks great! So...how long until we get to use it?

I remember reading that green was the most gentle color on the eyes, and that's why so many monochrome monitors were green.

http://www.colormatters.com/culturematters.html

A weakness in green is also the most common color blindness.. wonder if it's related to being pleasing?

you claim this needs toolkit changes. where? why? what for? you say bold text on widgets isn't allowed. not in a gtkrc no, at least not fully. So what? You claim the need for a theme engine, you do realize that all widget labels are drawn via theme engine? and that the theme engine can override font attributes? and that it can set each column header bold or not if you want? I see no font issue that can not be overriden in the theme engine. which is the whole point of theme engines. to have a external theme "engine" which drives the gui. the snake can be done too. I already know several ways it could be implemented one I think would even be flicker free. what is so special? animations? yeah that can be done too to an extent. perhaps toolkit support in the theming infrastucture could be added to make it easier, but it is certainly not impossible. I have done it myself before just to see if it was possible using pixbuf animations and a timer.

(this theme would be much harder if not downright impossible afaik to implement in kde/qt as stands without toolkit adjustments)

That said. I think it had some very good ideas in it. so here is what I think is wrong with it(please don't take offense if I seem blunt) your AA sucks, you borders are poorly done, your colour scheme is inconsistant and for most people unuseable, or at least not opimal,(oh yeah did I mention ugly?) your corners are all rounded to the extreme. soft coreners is a good thing. being obssessive over arcs as big as the widgets can support is not. it fosters inconsistancies between widgets which makes things _harder_, not easier, to use. Animations are a bad thing to have because it takes up critical threads and cpu operations and likely memory, making this theme only work on higher end machines. a Default theme which requires top of the line gaming hardware. give me break. The Snake adds overall too much clutter and draws the eyes away from the menu items, it should draw it toward the menu items.

so as stands this theme is not only unusable, but ugly and pointless. clean up the above problems. forget animations that kind of eye candy is wasted. and you might have a decent theme. maybe even one worthy of being a default. but since those things which make it ultimately worthless as stands are what you think the biggest features I would have to say I find it unlikely that this theme will ever be good enough to be the default.

So could I implement this theme in an engine? yes. for the most part with ease? will I? Not hardly. there are enough bad themes out there without me helping contribute to the waste.

I especially like the choice of colors.

You know how sometimes you're working on something and another window steals focus without you telling it to? That's how bright colors in a UI often seem to me. They steal my visual focus, if only at a subconcious level.

The http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/test2.png">mockup is just perverse for these reasons:
1) The small dot / big dot on the title bar isn't clear what it stands for.
2) The radio button with a line in it isn't clear what it stands for.
3) MAJOR abuse of gradients.
4) The snaking menu isn't necessary -- Is it even possible to navigate two menu's at the same time so that you might have to follow each back to it's root? More than being unnecessary, it distracts your eyes from where they should be.
5) Shouldn't the line seperating the title bar and the main window be thinner? I don't know why, but it really doesn't look right.
6) The default action in the (Apply|OK|Defaults) block should stand out more.
7) It's really cartoony and I might have to hide my computer away from anyone who might catch me using that theme.

I really liked http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/gnome1.png">this , not because it looks a lot like windows but because it's clean, simple, crisp, professional-looking and, I think, would just work.

Very well said andrew! I can't agree more

I think it looks excellent, colors, widgets, and all. The default gnome theme is to dark and gloomy for me.

Imo this second attempt is much better.
I specially like you rounded it more (the 'humans' are made by curves ). It looks more 'modern'
Now i guess it must be polished a bit, avoiding the teethed-looking curves (sorry for my english level).
I know, you choosed the colors in the theme, and surelly they will like you... but please, change the colors, specially the yellow... it looks like WindowXP default theme .
Wich Metacity theme you are using (or Sawfish, or another)? Change it, it really don't match with your theme, and it makes look your screenshots very ugly.

Some things I'd alter if that ever made it into an actual gtk engine (if it all was possible), note that these are just my personal opinions and that I always alter stuff left and right :

Button shadow
Actual shadow (as in blending with bg) not shadow based on some color from the scheme.

Frameborder
The blue solid line just screams Bleeh, no idea really how to improve (an actual beosish bevel would be nicer even).

Window theme
All horrible to me, yes really clean and perhaps a good easy 1st theme for something, but to me it seriously off.

That's all, i'd disect your mockup to show my thoughts but it'd just instantly be dragged down by comments cause redoing someone elses work and make it appear better at first glance is fairly hard. Despite it's downsides I'd surely prefer something looking like that to both the default Gnome and the horrible default KDE theme.

I remember reading that green was the most gentle color on the eyes, and that's why so many monochrome monitors were green.

So many monochrome monitors were green because it was the colour IBM chose for it's monitors. Sometimes, it really is that simple (and perhaps IBM did do some studies besides price estimates to determine green, but most studies show that amber was the best for the eyes at the time).

Other monochrome monitors were white, while amber monitors were created to reduce glare (because white produced a great deal of glare). Apple used off-white (more like grey) for many of it's monochrome monitors, because it reduced the glare of white, but still preserved the better contrast with black (and possibly produced a closer feel to working with paper than green or amber).

I don't know if green is the most gentle color, but its the one the eye is most sensitive too (think evolution and trees). Green also tends of invoke feelings of well being and harmony. Blue, on the other hand invokes feelings of security and calmness, which is probably why Luna goes so overboard with that color.

will you release this theme for gnome ?? if so any ideas when ?

Snake

the colors of the close, minimize and restore down/maximize buttons. They seem to stand out too much. I personally would love it if this was the default theme, but other themes should be bundled.

Last thing, it would also be great if KDE could get this treatment.

Just a small nitpick, but shouldn't an option like 'Every Other Page' in a print dialog be a checkbox, not a radio button, since it's not really exclusive of the other options (ie you might want to print every other page of 'All', 'Selection', or a range of pages). Basically it would be more of a 'Copies' preference, as one would assume you'd normally print every other page for purposes of feeding the paper back in to print the remaining pages on the reverse side (in which case you'd definitely need it to be a separate option). Also, it might help to know whether it's print odd or even pages (though that could get wordy).

Also, changing 'Collate' to 'Assembled' takes a bit of getting used to for those that work in any office that has a collating copier or that regularly takes work to a copy shop. Collate is simply the standard word for the operation, not just something the developers pulled out of their asses.

I don't know... I'm not impressed. Nothing there that is ground breaking or revolutionary. In test3.png the XD2 shots look 10 times more refined. Everything is smooth and clean.

I don't like the icons, I prefer the zeta icons style.
Moreover, I don't like the edges too much round off.
The others parts are pretty.

>I don't like the icons,

WHAT icons has to do with this? This is widget suggestion! Icons are there merely to fill up the suggestion! You can put whatever icons you want to replace anything!

Milke, I was thinking the same thing. Even despite the fat blue title bars, the Ximian windows in test3.png look much better.

Wowww this is are really nice screenies!!!
Very amazing good work Eugenia!

For me (don't think this is also for other people), a must that a good OS must have is a nice layout and these screens just showed the coolest theme I've ever seen.

very nice work!!! i love it...especially the menus are so cool...

It would be nice to have a clean, consistant theme across all Gnome imlpementations, but it probably won't happen. People (especially open-source gurus) often underestimate how much normal computer users need a consstant interface that doesn't change depending on the machine thay are using. I would take out some of the blue and make it a bit more platinum like Bluecurve or Classic MacOS, but I really like the little side highlighting on the menus. Oh, also rollovers can get annoying (depeding on how they are done). If it is low key (like Luna) they're OK, but there should be an option to get rid of them easily.

.. but the gtk theme seems nice.

btw
I actually like your ximian mod quite much too.

I personal never like gradient and too much round, which they make the UI look unprofessional and UI for children.. :-)

I like the 'My Ximian fix' a lot better, but I dislike the buttons.

Theme sucks.

Nice on first look, but concentrating on interface is not possible. (I know it's a mockup not app, I'm dissapointed with control look)

Everything is just to hard to look at.

There's no way it could compete with base Gnome, XD2 or RH9 theme. Reasons:

1. Blury look makes you dizzy. To identical colors. Non distinctive colors are hard to recognize.

2. Bitmaped controls. Well, bitmaps are way too dead. No distinction from background, almost no heter activated or not.

3. Rounded corners are out. Maybe there was a time when rounded corners seemed sci-fi. Well, now everyone can have rounded corners, but now all they do is decrease readability

4. ZSnake Menus??? Well, confuzing for a newbie.

5. Buttons, I like them, but they are just shaded Ximian Desktop 2 buttons, so.... no glory on that one.

5. Scrollbars, Colored XP scrollbar???

6. Pager, that one looks nice and clean, heh just as XD2 without shade.

This interface is suitable for some geek trying to impress neighboor, but usability equals zero.
My opinion is, Eugenia should do some other things than UI design.

I really don't like the Window Manager style, those buttons on the right are hideous, especially the "amber" button. Its washed out, and sort of resembles vomit, that puke-yellow color.

Also, It doesnt look like the circles for max/min are quite centered correctly within the buttons, I _know_ youve noticed this Eugenia, it seems the size of the button or the size of the circle will need to be changed
to correctly center them.

All in all the Ximian window border/title is much nicer looking, with the exception of the close "X" box, which needs some work.

The gray background with the blue border on the Ximian fix looks much more pleasing, IMO, than the color choices of the new UI. The title bar is small and doesnt really stand out. The Application Icon in the title bar is cramped within its little white box.

I like the widgets, they are nicely designed and well done. They would fit GTK well, however don't look progressive but rather regressive. They are pixelated like the old style and do not look high-res like OS X, or even Luna.

Just my thoughts as a fellow GUI Designer

I like this theme a lot, but it did remind me why I love OS X's Aqua/Metal interface so much: materials. Aqua/Metal looks like it was actually built out of materials (plastic, glass, water, metal, etc.). It looks like an only slightly-stylized version of real objects and real surfaces. When you go look at XP, GNOME/KDE themes (like this one), BeOS, etc., they look like 2D cartoons by comparison.

I wish someday someone would design a GNOME/KDE theme that really looked like it was made out of real-life components. It's so much more exciting to use an interface that looks like it didn't just come out of MS Paint. Look at all these audio software plug-ins on the market now. Using something that looks like a real piece of gear inspires musicians so much more than a plain UI. What about the rest of us?

Regards,

Jared

It would really fit into the "feel" of X if windows looked like pieces of cardboard strewn about my desktop (of unpainted plywood). Radio buttons could be thumbtacks. Edit boxes...Who needs edit boxes when you can just draw on the cardboard? Sliders can have grooves "cut out" of the cardboard (using alpha=0). Scroll bars could be strings (think curtains or blinds). Check boxes should be big shiny metal toggle switches like every geek loves. List controls should look like trays with stuff just thrown in 'em....

imagination

Id use this theme any day. it does look kind of cartoony, but i still love it. If you could adjust the color of the theme, it would be even better(if it was an option). Few things I dont like. The shiny look on the sliders, looks too kheramiky and I think the shading on the tabs isnt necessary. Otherwise, I love the tabs - very simple. overal it is a great theme.

WHAT icons has to do with this?

Everything. They lack clarity, are difficult to perceive, and create more work for a brain already fatigued by a vague, cluttered, and confusing design, as nailed down by many of the later comments. The only elements that could avoid tweaking are the window controls on the menu bar. I liked those - they're clear, simple, and distinctive. After seeing them the first time around, I'd expected something much better than this below average effort.

"I remember reading that green was the most gentle color on the eyes, and that's why so many monochrome monitors were green.

http://www.colormatters.com/culturematters.html

A weakness in green is also the most common color blindness.. wonder if it's related to being pleasing?"

Green is also the color that human eyesight generally reacts most to. It's quite likely that the early monitors were that color because it was easier to get the phospors to react well enough without using as much power. I've always found the amber text to be far less harsh, but the contrast was not nearly so good.

>>WHAT icons has to do with this?
>Everything. They lack clarity, are difficult to perceive,

Again, you are missing the point, and I really dislike when people don't understand! These icons are in the mockup *just* to show some random icons and how icons would fit in such a design! These icons ARE NOT suggested to be part of the theme!!! It could be ANY icons! It is besides the point in this *particular* instance!

Great Job Eugenia, keep up the good work:)

Again, you are missing the point, and I really dislike when people don't understand!

No, I do understand, which is why I balanced the icons against the theme rather than treating them in isolation. Even though the individual developer is responsible for their own icons, themes must take into account every element. Yours placed an additional stress on the icons they couldn't handle. Something has to give. A different colour scheme would probably be more useable in this context, while hopefully being forward compatible with new icon sets. I know I'm being picky - it's a detail I can't ignore.

i have to say that i like most of the theme as far as the widgets in the apps are concerned. what i really don't like is the colouring of the title bar min/max/close buttons. they look kinda cheap and don't match the rest of the theme at all.

the second thing that strikes me as odd is the title bar border in test1 - with a border all the way around it. from a usability perspective, it seems like i ought to be able to click and drag that bar just under the app title just as i can the outside edges of the window to resize, but it generally makes no sense to do that. the way this looks in test2 is a tremendous improvement - making the app look like it's hovering on a window surface. coolness.

the "default" button is questionnable. oughtn't it say "reset" for clarity? default doesn't explicitly imply an action like "ok" and "apply" do - so what does "default" do when i click on it? and why do each of the three buttons have different edges? is one the mysterious three a 'default' if i just hit 'enter' on the keyboard or what?

also, in test2 the "options" widget has two options and an arrow with the z-snake thingie. what's the arrow supposed to imply as an action? what if i select multiple options, if possible?

anyway, there's my feedback. keep up the good work

they look kinda cheap and don't match the rest of the theme at all.

With a little tweaking they could form the foundation for a new and far better theme.

I would like to make a windows xp visual style of this. Do I have permission...?

Thanks ^_^

Is complete possible to make this theme right now?, are people working in it right now?

Yes.

Hmm .. I hope ya all remember that this is a mockup, not the real thing. It should look a lot more better when its done, and there would be more than enough time to improve the details in the process. Let the theme be done and let's see how it looks like first. As usual, criticising and writing RFCs is the easy part, while actually coming up with a positive thing like this is the hard part. If you are a UI person and don't like this, please do your own mockup and share with everybody else!

Nice job,Eugenia. You not only talk the talk you walk the walk!

I've downloaded the Today theme and installed it using Gnome's theme manager, and it shows up in my ~/.themes directory, but the theme manager doesn't show it on it's list of installed themes.

Did I do something wrong?

Make sure you untar it on the .themes directory and you re-start the theme manager in order to find the new theme. The theme is listed after you click the first button in the theme manager (third tab), and it is called "Today".

That worked. Thanks.

Why doesn't the Today theme show up as a theme on the initial page of the theme manager?

Because Today is not a metatheme. It is a window manager theme, which is just a part of what consists the "metatheme" which shows in the front window (window manager, icons and widget theme)

I think the this default theme looks great. I like it even better than bluecurve. What I am most attracted to are the rounded corners (for as the Jetson's has shown us, there are no hard angles in the future) and the subtle yet poignant blue outline makes eveything look so much more defined.

What i DON'T like is the choice of a default metacity theme. It doesn't mesh well with the GTK theme, and the colorfulness of it would only appeal to certain people (not me). However, i think the modified ximian theme completes this Gnome overhaul rather nicely.

According to tog, apple did some tests on the use of colors in guis a long time ago. According to him test subjects gravitate to red items as if they were magnetically attracted, hence the lack of the use of red in the original macintosh ui. He criticizes osx for the same reason.

If I wanted to run XP I would and I don't need Gnome looking like a rip'd off version of XP. I would rather have something more orginal then yet another XP like Linux theme. Also why did you get rid of the round corners ! I thought round corners were more inviting ?

You don't like it? Then please do your own thing! and share it with us so we can critizise it! Eugenia did a great job!
Keep going Eugenia, I hope to see more of your great work!

>If I wanted to run XP I would and I don't need Gnome looking like a rip'd off version of XP.

I fail to see how this is a rip off of XP. The only thing I see similar is the background color, which is not even the exact same color, but it is true that the open/light yellow-grey color IS inviting. So, even if these might be used by Devil OS and we will go to hell if we use them, as long as they do the job as they are supposed to and they are gentle to the eye, it only makes sense to adopt them.

The theme is good but that horrid window decoration must go. the buttons for exit, minimize.. ect.. ruin the whole thing.

Not to post another 'the second screenshot is too busy' comment, but what would this 'app' look like with the (current) default theme?

just a few thoughts that fell out of my screwy head:

I) wouldn't it make, usability wise, more sense to make the border part of the contents of the window by using for example the same icon for closing the window as the one used on the cancel button? And what about the same buttons instead of another set (the rookies have to learn). My (minimal) experience with teaching people using a computerinterface is that they don't understand the function of the buttons on the window bacause they are completely different from the rest of them. Even worse, for this reason they are usually not even thought of as buttons.

Wouldn't it be better if the tabs were centered instead of lined out at the left? If I'm not mistaking, we humans conseive a ballance between left and right as nicer than unbalance. It would also be nicer to put an arrow on both sides of the tabs if there are too many. It makes (to me) more sense, since there would be a reference to scrollbars and it's less mouse intensive because click on the right arrow to see more tabs on the right, and on the leftside arrow for more tabs on the left.

for the combo boxes: I noticed that you use left arrows. Wouldn't it be nice if the selection stayed next to the arrow and that the rest of the items moved up and down by a little down/up movement of the mouse? You could also use the weel of the common weelmouse there.

Just curious what you think about these ideas...

Linux defacements are on the rise - even our own Eugenia is on the prowl.

So why don'T you write about KDE. There is so much that has to be improved and there is so much done (Karamba ecc.).

I find your comments and suggestions quite impressive.

...is the best one out of all the mockups. It's clean and very smooth and is just very very pleasant to the eye.

Yuk. 1000 times.

and if Eugenia din't want anyone making comments then why did she post it ? Think about it before you go into a butt kissing rant mode.

Don't care to much for it. It's not that it doesn't look clean, it does.. it's just missing a certain vibe that's definitely needed.

I think this would make a really good theme. Maybe someone could start making a pixmap theme of this, the smooth engine might be another good option. However, for this to become a killer theme (or potential default), someone has to create a kickass theme engine and unfortunately that's much more difficult then drawing mockups. A theme that works well in every situation and looks professional really is a rarity. The current default is one of them, that's why it is a good default, even though it's a "bit" outdated.
BlueCurve is a great and professional theme, even though it doesn't look very fancy or colorful. And I'm really looking forward to Ximian's Industrial (can't wait for monday).

To be honest, I don't really care that much what the GNOME default theme is. RedHat and Ximian both develop their own GUI's and spend a lot of time into this because it makes their product stand out from the rest. Maybe it isn't even bad that the default theme is rather boring (but still quality) so those companies have more incentive to set themself apart.

Seeing the difference between the quality of commercial themes and uncommercial themes, I kinda doubt that the next kickass theme will be an uncommercial one and I don't think that a company has much interest in funding a theme for the uncommercial community release of GNOME. Unless a company agrees to have their theme included in the release.

That said, I still think it would be cool to see this theme implemented, it would at least be a fresh change and some eye candy. And who knows, maybe it could evolve to a better alternative for the default theme.

I really like it, nice base for a default UI theme.

Good work, Eugenia.

Why does the toolkit need to have a bazillion on-mouse-slightly-over-but-not-quite type states? Sure it means you can sit around and indulge your artistic fantasies, but it doesn't make the UI any more intuitive (you need to pro-actively design the layout for that, see Gnome's HIG), it does take up more memory and CPU time, and it does make life a lot more complex for programmers.
That isn't to say I hugely object to it, I just don't really see it being that much of a problem, GTK already provides a bunch of states for widgets, states that reflect actually useful things...not things like making tab headers bold....why would you need or want that?
I am pleased to see Gnome2 getting less cluttered and cumbersome, so I wouldn't really want to see that creep back in as eye candy, which is all the author has suggested implementing (window shadows....come on, WHY!).
Shoe me some real intuitivity/usability suggestions that relate to HCI and not art.

window shadows....come on, WHY!

Shadows are actually really useful because they make it simpler to differentiate between "levels" of height on your desktop. Sometimes when I have loads of windows open, I loose track of which window is what and where. So shadows are more than just eye candy, they are a natural part of a 2,5D desktop and you can be sure that we will get shadows once X can support them well.
Animations are also very useful for usability because they help you to keep track of what's happening. Of course those should be used VERY carefully because animations can also easily distract a user or interrupt his work (should never happen).

I remember Eugenia said in her review of Mandrake 9.1 that Mandrake Galaxy widgets are the best so far available to Linux, except their lacking accessibility features (like better defined shapes a la Bluecurve).

My question is why not taking Galaxy as a starting point for a new Gnome theme, if all that is needed is improved accessibility?

Shadows are actually really useful because they make it simpler to differentiate between "levels" of height on your desktop

I can see there is some merit in that argument, but since all windows should have clear borders, it's pretty easy to figure out which ones are where if you can only see bits of them.
I would suggest that the taskbar and (if you have a Gnome menu panel enabled) the button at the top right of the screen should be adequate for locating a window that fell under some others, I would also suggest using more virtual desktops, but I will concede that they can be confusing for new users.

As for animations being useful for usability, I would say that could be true in only very specific cases - there is no need for a radio widget to be animated, or a checkbox. Something like a file copying dialog would need some kind of information to tell the user it's still going, but this need is quite well taken care of by a progress bar.

I'm not against making a desktop pretty, but I do disagree with rampant, runaway artyism overshadowing the excellent work done so far in making Gnome more usable and internally consistent (ie the HIG)