KDE 4.0.0 has been released on January 11th, after a number of delays; the months preceding the release, the KDE developers tried very hard to downplay expectations. KDE 4.0.0 was just the first release in the KDE 4 series, and such, should not be seen as the best possible representation of the KDE 4.0.0 vision. So, when I installed KDE 4.0.0 on my Ubuntu Gutsy installation last Friday, I knew what to expect: KDE 4 Developer Release 1 (yes, I am a BeOS guy - how did you know?). Read on for a few quick first impressions.
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Member since:2005-06-29
What Thom dislikes, I like. What he likes, I dislike.
I think the title bar is just horrible, especially the minimize, restore and close buttons. I like the scrollbar a little bit, at least the colors of the scrollbar. I think the bold fonts are important where they are, they make things stand out. I couldn't imagine normal fonts instead. However I don't like them being Bitstream Vera Sans, I would prefer Luxi Sans or Dejavu Sans. Regarding openSUSE's kickoff, I really love it, it's easy to use, it's organized and has many options, not sure why Thom dislikes it, really. I dislike widgets, they are really thick (input boxes, submit buttons, radio buttons, checkboxes, grippies, resizers, etc...). The widgets should be pixel-precise, for instance input boxes should have one-pixel borders instead of blurry borders. The black taskbar is huge, it should be a lot smaller. To sum up, everything is thick, big, not refined. The KDE team should use graphic designers instead of coders to create their GUI, there has been many suggestions and offers in the mailing lists, and no one has listened.
Member since:2005-09-13
Member since:2005-07-07
KDE has a very good and dedicated, but slightly overworked team of graphical designers. They've been doing a great job, even though there indeed is still a lot to be improved.
But saying it has been designed by coders is simply wrong. The applications are written by coders, and they probably didn't spend enough time yet on using every widget properly, aligning and stuff - but that's not the artists fault.
Member since:
2006-03-20
The KDE team zero graphics designers on their team. And if they think there are some, those are posers. While on a quick glance, the theme looks OK, there's so much wrong with it in regards to margins, paddings, font sizes and what not.
Hell, just look at that task bar!