I tend to believe that the best interfaces have already been made. Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made. It looked like ass, but it always did exactly as you told it to, and it never did anything unexpected. When it comes to looks, however, the gold standard comes from an entirely different corner – Apple’s Platinum and QNX’ PhotonUI. Between all the transparency, flat-because-it’s-hip, and stitched leather violence of the past few years, one specific KDE theme stood alone in bringing the best of ’90s UI design into the 21st century, and updating it to give everything else a run for its money. This is an ode to Christoph Feck’s Skulpture.
Both Apple’s Platinum and QNX’ PhotonUI revelled in the 3D effects that were a big thing in ’90s UI design, but both did so tastefully, using it where it made sense to make elements stand out and to visually separate them from one another. Both of them were also decidedly square and angular, as opposed to the later obsession with rounded corners.
Lastly, and most importantly, both of them were designed in an era where applications were mere means to an end, and users expected – and rightfully so, demanded – that they fit in with the rest of the operating system. This made both of them highly consistent, which I still believe is one of the biggest virtues in UI design, even if the rest of the world no longer cares (in fact, inconsistency seems to have become a goal, not a flaw, since applications need to stand out between the 99.99% of App Store/Play/etc. applications which are utter crap).
Sadly, from the early 2000s onwards, all this was thrown out, and the world was ‘blessed’ with things like Aqua, Luna, KDE4’s Oxygen, Aero, and so on. All of these styles – Aqua and Aero in particular – pretty much ruled the roost, and to this day, Aqua-like and Aero-like themes tend to dominate the popular theme lists for GNOME and KDE.
Still, there’s one theme that bucks this trend; a theme which brings the what we now consider ‘classic’ UI design of the ’90s into the modern age, and despite not having seen an update since 2010, has in fact managed to do just that. Christoph Feck’s Skulpture for KDE4 manages to bring together classic and modern, arriving somewhere in the middle with something which, while clearly taking you back to those days of Platinum and PhotonUI, still looks entirely modern and fancy. Striking a balance between classic and modern is hard, but Feck nailed it.
The three design principles behind Skulpture tell you all you need to know, really.
- Skulpture has a classical look
Flat gradients are used to oppose the current trend of shiny or “glassy” buttons used in other styles, giving it a conventional classical look that can stand the whole KDE 4 lifetime, if not longer.- Skulpture is three-dimensional
Light and shadow effects are applied to generate the impression of a three-dimensional user interface, with elements raised out of (and sunken into) the window surface.- Skulpture is real artwork
Giving it a photo-realistic (antialiased) appearance, pixel-perfect alignment and spacing between user interface elements, this style has been created to please users eyes.
However, none of these design principles are taken to their extremes. Sure, it prefers flat gradients, but it doesn’t take it too far. It goes for the 3D look, but the third dimension doesn’t overstay its welcome. Less professional themes tend to take things way too far – transparency impeding readability, extreme glossiness causing focus issues, and so on – but Skulpture does it all in moderation.
It’s not all roses and sunshine, though. The theme hasn’t been updated in almost three years now, and it’s starting to show – Kwin changed its shadow system somewhere around KDE 4.7, and as a consequence, the Skulpture Kwin decoration no longer has one, with no way to fix it. You really start to appreciate the importance of window shadows the moment you have to do without.
Still, this may be a blessing in disguise, since in my view, Skulpture’s window decoration is clearly its weak point. It doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the style, and the gloss stands out like an eyesore. Because of these two things, you’d do good by opting for a different Kwin decoration.
Lastly, it’s quite hard to find a proper colour scheme that really makes the most of Skulpture. I’ve been using Skulpture for years, but only this past week have I finally managed to find just the right scheme, but it took lots of tweaking. Skulpture doesn’t like it too light, but it doesn’t like it too dark either. Like Skulpture striking a perfect balance between classic and modern, you have to find the perfect balance between light and dark to really make it shine.
In a world full of themes with transparency-up-the-bum and now-with-even-more-gloss, Skulpture stands as a pillar of reason, and offers the answer for those of us with a longing for something to bring the interfaces of the ’90s into the modern age. You can get Skulpture through KDE’s Get New Stuff, or straight from its own website. There’s a 3rd party matching Plasma theme (whoever decided not to unify Plasma with regular KDE styles needs to be point and laughed at) called Atelier as well (which, coincidentally, could also use an update).
KDE always alienated me because of ugly looking themes and icon spacing. That’s what I expected when clicking on the screenshot link int the article. But I was slightly surprised: it actually looks tolerable
I will now try to see if KDE4 could become my Gnome2 replacement when doing stuff in *nixes.
Thanks Thom!
The UI theme/style can’t change the way applications are written. KDE applications (more than pure Qt ones) come with loads of GUI widgets. All these MDIs, nested tabs, movable docks and toolbars look as if the authors felt obliged to demonstrate all the bells and whistles Qt and kdelibs come with.
As for the styles, I found the basic Qt styles (cleanlooks, polyester) the most pleasant and usable. Plasma is a different story, let me know if you see anything of matching quality.
Most consistent? Probably. As you said, CDE will never do things byitself. Best? Probably not, if you take intuitiveness into account.
We had a couple of Blade 1500’s and Ultra 25’s in the lab (before switching to Debian PCs) and I could never find out how to restore an iconified window when a maximized window was on the foreground. I did several silly things, like drag the maximized window a bit to the right, or iconify everything. I guess there must be some keyboard combination that shows a list of all windows, but it’s not something you can guess (intuitive = easy to guess). In an intuitive GUI, you can guess where things go when you minimize them, and how to restore them.
Other unintuitive things in CDE include having to double click on the dash to close the window (how can you guess that?), the fact you can have some “pre-iconified” windows that are there from the beginning of the session, thus resembling icons, but dissapear if you open and close them (thus not acting like icons), and a lack of obvious way to customize the dock.
Worst GUIs in my opinion: CDE, Gnome 3 and Unity
Best window manager: Windows 7
Best app launcher: Gnome 2 (everything is arranged in 3 menus, which can contain submenus. Neat).
Edited 2013-01-02 00:23 UTC
Worst GUI is Metro
Not sure if this is a troll, but really? Why exactly?
Edited 2013-01-04 03:52 UTC
I have to explain why a Single Window at a time interface which hides as much information as possible (like the time!) shows huge amounts of empty space which means you need to swipe a lot to get info instead of it all being on one screen… sucks on the desktop?
On PCs – yeah, absolutely. I have a WP7 phone though and I think this is where Metro shines.
Yes, I was talking about PCs. I haven’t used it on a phone yet since they don’t sell it here but the idea of putting a phone OS on a desktop seems… not soo great.
Edited 2013-01-06 07:37 UTC
The window is fullscreen because you, the user, told the window to be fullscreen. If you want to access part of the desktop to see other windows you have two options: either resize / move the fullscreen window or use the standard (and I mean REALLY OLD standard) key combination Alt + Tab.
When you press the “iconify to the desktop” button you know exactly where the window is going: it’s being iconified and placed on the desktop.
You restore iconified icons by activating them with a double click, like you do any other icon.
A single click on the dash will load a menu with a very intuitive button in it that says “Close”. Alternatively, as you mentioned, you can double click the upper left corner of the window to close it, just like you can in every version of Microsoft Windows from version 3.1 to 7.
I assume you mean iconified windows that you, the user, placed on your desktop. They don’t just “disappear”. You restored them to full sized windows and then closed them.
I agree. Every so often I re-learn how to configure the dock and my response is always the same: “That was neat and kind of harder than it should have been”.
I hate any window manager that uses a task bar. I find task bars to be one of the worst inventions for user interfaces. They waste space with a tiny representation of every window I have open. I don’t need a tiny version of every window since I already have the full version of every window right in front of me.
Strangely, I love the (somewhat unique) task bar in the Haiku user interface, maybe because it’s so incredibly compact.
I can see them making up the posters now.
This looks pretty good.
Thanks Thom. I’ll look at it a bit deeper.
On a slightly related topic.
Am I the only one who hates the Blue on Blue(MS OFfice) etc that MS insists on thrusting down our faces. IMHO, people with bad eyesight would find it almost impossible to use. Therefore, IMHO, it breaks all sorts of disability access laws. Strange that no disability rights group hasn’t taken them to court over it.
Blue on blue is kinda no longer….
I used to LOVE Blue on Blue. But that was on my Commodore 64, and the year was 1985. These days, I’m not a big fan.
I’m a long time KDE user, and I’ve been tweaking KDE themes (specially colours) for a long time. I just installed this wonderful theme, and it gets what I have been searching for years. Why isn’t this theme installed as an optional theme by default in distros??
Edited 2013-01-01 21:26 UTC
KDE already have a set of extra themes that ship with KDE full, but the author needs to request to have added to the kdeartwork module. It is considered impolite to begin including other peoples work without their concent, but you could write to the author and suggest it, and even offer to make the request for him.
Anyway, additional themes like this are already automatically available via the built-in Get New Stuff, so it is already pretty easy to find and install.
See also http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-artists&m=120844008119587&w=2
The comment regarding the code quality I made there still applies.
BTW, you cannot install widget styles via GHNS, since they need to be compiled.
I compile the git version from time to time to no avail, running KDE 4.8.4 the Skulpture theme does not even appear in the list to be selected.
So in the mean time I switched to QtCurve, one can configure it to look pretty much like Skulpture and as a bonus all the GTK+ apps look uniform too.
Edited 2013-01-01 21:51 UTC
Why would you compile the git version if you can just install the latest one straight up? I don’t get it.
He’s probably a mathematician. They are renowned for going back to first principles.
OTOH, there are some people who revel in building <insert distro name here> from source code rather than a binary ISO.
Nice trolling try, Debian Sid, not a mathematician, but the “previously known problem” trick should yield results wih git.
Because I don’t know where else to get it from since:
1. the kde-look.org version is pretty old ( 0.2.4 );
2. I don’t have something like “KDE Get New Stuff” for Styles in my panel ( but I do have one for: Colors, Icons, Emoticons, Mouse, Plasma Themes, Decorations, Splash, etc ) and this is Debian Sid 64bit BTW;
3. the git build should always work, right?
Wrong, the git build does not work by default:
1. PREFIX is by default /usr/local and KDE does not look there for styles;
2. style files are installed in PREFIX/share/apps instead of PREFIX/share/kde4/apps;
3. latest branch named five does not build ( /skulpture.h:25:34: fatal error: QtWidgets/QCommonStyle: No such file or directory ) and I do have libqt-dev; anyway master branch is ok.
0.2.4 IS the latest release. Therefore, you’re building unstable code from git, so no surprise it doesn’t work properly.
Just get it from KDE-Look
.
0.2.4 is from 29 Dec 2010 and there are 2 dozen fixes added in the mean time. The kde-look.org page does not have any Debian packages available anyway ( try to download them I dare you
).
This said all my other points stand since I need to build it from source anyway.
And I’ll add 2 more since I started KDE4 just to test this:
1. (using Atelier ) the button style is not applied to the KDE StartMenu nor to the Systray menu, although strangely it’s applied to the task list applet.
2. I found that the “KDE 2” window decoration fits the style better than the default Skulpture one.
Edited 2013-01-02 10:57 UTC
You can easily add any additional prefix to $KDEDIRS.
By default that is unset but of course OSV or admins could have chosen to set it to a list of paths already.
I am not sure it has to be kde4/apps for all prefixes, I think this is just the path chosen for prefix /usr and maybe not even on all distros.
kde4-config –path data
shows share/apps as the path for the local prefix here.
Is that libqt-dev Qt4 or Qt5? The latter being needed to compile Qt5 code (branch is called “five”, QtWidgets is a module in Qt5).
Branch “five” is for Qt 5, but only builds using qmake right now. Use “master” for the Qt 4 version, which also supports shadows for KWin.
To specify the installation prefix, use “cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/foo/bar” when configuring.
Yeah, of course it’s for Qt5, I’ve even read that in the git but somehow it did not click. 10q both for the heads up.
This kind of article is the kind I keep coming back to OSNews for. I would Never have found this myself. The theme is lovely. Ive been avoiding KDE4 for years because I couldn’t get it ‘out the way’ while I was trying to get things done (to many flash bangs all the time).
I think ive reached the point where dedicating HOURS of my time fiddling with a theme are behind me, simply to many things to do
Why dont any of the nice distro creators take on this mantle and make it their default (plus a bit of polish)? I really think this kind of theme could help KDE steal some of those disenfranchised gnome users who dont like where the project is going with GNome3(me).
If only the theme played nicely in light or dark shades (I dunno maybe it does better then it sounds, I’ll have to give it a go and see how it does.) I’m not picky about which of the two ends you’re on, but I do require one or the other (the higher contrast is just nicer in general.)
Then again, I’m actually pretty pleased with oxygen… it’s what I settled on while I was distro hopping because it was the nicest looking of the commonly available themes.
I personal think kde-plasma-netbook is the best KDE ui. It’s simple, it’s clean and stays out of the way.
Oxygen is even less flashy than Skulpture…
Also, what’s with the skeumorphism?
I really have to wholeheartedly agree that Platinum was amazing… but then Apple used to be brilliant at that sort of thing.
Even with the 7.x-series copy of MacOS I’m running in BasiliskII, whatever precursor they use feels so comfortable that my nostalgia almost makes me prefer it to my native desktop.
(I know Platinum came with 8.x and 9.x, but I can’t remember what they called the 7.x UI.)
Edited 2013-01-02 04:04 UTC
I’m not sure the themes had names before Copland. I remember using an extension on System 7 that gave it the Platinum look:
http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/aaron.html
Tried it out, but there’s a few things that bug me. The menu items are too close together and I prefer a solid colour background highlight for menu items.
You can configure spacing between menu items.
Oxygen isn’t a bad theme either, but somehow it just never felt professional enough, it didn’t use space efficiently enough for me and I missed the classic desktop look, yet I still wanted to have a modern looking desktop, too. Skulpture is all of that for me, I’m not using it anymore, because KDE as a whole doesn’t get out of my way enough and I actually love my Gnome3 setup today with lot’s of extensions that made it possible and a nice theme. But the designer of Skulpture is a genius and a great guy, there’s not much to improve about this theme, except for bug fixes maybe. I don’t get why this theme didn’t get even more traction and isn’t the default KDE theme at least in some distros. I guess the KDE project idolizing Oxygen when it first came out makes it hard for them to assess different options. What makes Skulpture great in my opinion is that it embraces rectangular shapes, where other themes try to be smoother and rounder than everyone else or they try to make everything web2.0 style. The fact is, windows on X up to this day are rectangles for the most part, instead of trying to create the illusion that everything is modern and spacy, Skulpture opts for a classical robust look, which is visually pleasing and art if you will.
Now I’m using a Gnome theme which couldn’t be more different from Skulpture, which is spacy and web2.0 looking, but it somehow manages to remain professional enough for my taste and the subtle colors don’t abuse my eyes either, so I guess, you can make great art with both approaches.
All I’m saying is KDE users should try Skulpture for a while and distros should at least look into including it as an option.
I hated CDE on Solaris because some CDE’s applications weren’t network transparent.
It may have *looked* consistent, but it didn’t *behave* consistently.
Thanks Thom for the honorable mention. Skulpture is somewhat inspired by the NeXTStep style, mixed with visions I had when I dreamed of customizable AmigaOS styles (if “sysihack” rings a bell…)
Regarding updates: In the “master” branch support for KWin shadows has been added, but I always had the feeling I was the only one still using the style, so I never made a new release. A Qt 5 version is available in the “five” branch.
And yes, it does not adapt well to color schemes. It basically only works with the color scheme I use (which is Skulpture-Beton).
Maybe this article led to some new downloads and renewed interest – and thus, motivation for an update
.
Thanks for commenting!
Now that it go updated, I’m going to try it. Go OSNews!
I know it’d be a lot of work, but have you thought about creating an Enlightenment version of Skulpture (maybe called Sculpture17) for EFL applications and E17 itself? E17’s finally out and there’s a dearth of good themes for it – the theme API broke about fifty times over the last few years before it finally stabilized, and so a lot of what was out there is broken.
I’d do it myself but as I have no sense of design and am partially color-blind I’d probably fuck it all up.
You are free to port it to E17 or GTK+ or any other toolkit that I have zero experience with.
I have seen a port to the rather unknown U++ framework at http://www.ultimatepp.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=18450& so I am sure someone can do it for other toolkits.
Man that look takes me back. As someone who cut his teeth on Workbench 3.0 at home and used System 7 and RiscOS at school that has a certain look I can get behind.
Not a fan of the top bar at all, but the main body and controls are lovely. Almost wish it had Luna Inspirat’s top bar.
Apple’s Platinum, QNX’s Photon, Be’s Be and perhaps NeXT were the highpoint of UI widgets, everything is been downhill ever since.
I never could stand KDE because for some reason, the fonts all seem to be odd, icon spacing is odd, and everything looks like a Visual Basic form. However, the screenshots of Skulpture look very very slick. Perhaps I might even switch to Kubuntu???
Ironic now that I’ve finally found a Gnome 3 theme that does not suck complete ass, that being the newly updated Zukwito. Zukwito has nice sane colors, widgets look good in Eclipse, and just around is clean, simple and nice. Zukwito really should be the default Gnome theme.
Anyway, now with Skulpture, perhaps there is finally a non-ugly KDE theme and I can switch to a DE where I can OMG, ACTUALLY CONFIGURE SOMETHING WITHOUT A THIRD PARTY TOOL LIKE GNOME!
Thom, thanks for the info about Skulpture!
The fonts I’m using are the Ubuntu fonts. They are clearly specifically designed for how fonts are rendered on Linux – they look *stunning*.
Also, I manually arrange the toolbars of every KDE application I use. Just so you know – I put time into it.
Hey,
Can the KDE toolbar be configured like the OSX / Gnome Dock so that app icon raises the app, and does NOT open a new window?
I’d have to add the Amiga Workbench to the list of UI high points.
I hadn’t used KDE since the late 90s, but recently I’ve been experimenting with version 4.8 after my dismay with the direction in which Gnome et al are taking. I’m quite happy with XFCE for the moment, but in the longer term I’m mulling over a switch back to KDE, especially now I’ve finally seen a theme I like! It really is very nice. May I ask which window decorations you are using on that desktop?
The most recent Gnome release (3.6) is quite good and it will continue to get better – probably being a very good desktop by 3.8 or 3.10. The problem will be that the brand has been badly damaged by the release process. 3.0 was horrid, 3.2 was not much better, 3.4 was tolerable but full of glitches.
Gnome is getting better, but really? I need a freaking 3 rd party application to change the theme??? And I can’t even change basic colors like I could in windows 3.0 ??
I’ve just about had it with gnome’s locked down lack of any configurability that I’m about ready to jump ship. Perhaps I will give kde a try after using gnome for 10 years
I was about to write a long, displeased comment about how much KDE still sucks, but I’ll just leave the following wishes here:
* Fix the stability-issues of Plasma. I can *still* crash it whenever I feel like it.
* Consolidate settings and group them into sane, coherent categories.
* Come up with a proper file-format for all the various theming files and settings inside it so that an end-user can just point the system to install that file and have all of its contents placed in their proper places.
* Actually work on making KDE4 intuitive and discoverable. Heck, even the people I asked over at #kde who have regularly used the desktop for years don’t know how e.g. activities work! Now, take someone who isn’t used to KDEisms — like me — and the whole desktop feels like a total clusterfuck.