A few months ago I was designing the UI of Sequel OS. I am not part of the project anymore, but I kept developing the UI in my free time, just when I was feeling a bit creative. Yesterday, in my Gnome 2 article I mentioned that it would be nice if Gnome/GTK+ adopt a new default theme. So, here is my proposal for the project, mockups seen for the first time in public… Update: One more mockup I just (quickly) created just to show to some readers that the theme is clean when used in a normal app. Update2: Vote for the poll inside. Update3: Download the Gnome window manager theme here.Sequel was a “sequel of BeOS”, so you will see a few widgets that look similar to Zeta/Dano design (e.g. radio button, checkbox), but I have taken them further and enhanced them.
If anyone feel like coding it, by all means start creating a theme that looks like it, but please alert me that you do, so we stay in touch, as I can help and feed the development with more states and widgets that are not seen in the only two mockups I include here today.
Before starting coding away (well, if you like it ;), please bear in mind:
This are _not_ final mockups. I am sure they can look better if more work can get into them
It requires Toolkit changes (GTK/QT/whatever), it is NOT a matter of writing a simple theme for it. To get that look and feel, their shapes, sub-widgets etc, you will need toolkit support. If people from GTK+ team read this, please consider at least allowing bolding of headers, tabs, buttons and menus.
ALL widgets have on-mouse-over states. All of them. Including the radio buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, even drop-down boxes. It is not as simple as implementing the two basic states (enabled, disabled) as the idea was to have on-mouse-over state, and even animation (for radio and checkboxes when they get clicked)!!
The “ZSnake” effect (the selected menu that continues to flow on the menu and on the drop-down menu) should be flicker-free. Dano/Zeta OS does this trick too, but their implementation ain’t flicker-free.
Be careful of the colors involved! The background color of the application menu has a different color than the body. Same goes for the Tab views.
If you manage to get the toolbars underneath that menu and see them together they really look nice… 😉
The font sizes on the different elements are calculated and important, so please consult the mockup.
Should add some [optional] shadow underneath the windows and the menus, just to ice the cake…
I believe the colors are light and inviting, in contrast to Gnome’s default grey look.
Metacity needs to add the ability to take one pixel off its corner in addition of the usual “arc” shape that it offers.
Remember again, this is not final work. It _can_ be better, leave your comments or mockups in the discussion area. I do believe though that Gnome needs to implement a modern, good looking, inviting theme and I believe my proposal is close to this goal.
And now, the mockups:
A test window.
The important window that shows a number of widgets. (Update: People don’t seem to understand: This second window is there just to show the available widgets, NOT an application that is busy and cluttered! This theme IS clean, without losing its modern looks. Just look at the first mockup. Do not confuse the second busy window with a real-life application. The second mockup is just a placeholder for the widgets so developers can have them all in one place!)
Update: Erick Woods worked on an alternate scrollbar to better match the sliders.
Another update: This is a more silver-ish version, and while it looks a bit pale, scrollbars/sliders are now more consistent with the rest of the wigets.
Note: The poll is now closed.
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?![;)](https://www.osnews.com/images/emo/smile.gif)
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![;)](https://www.osnews.com/images/emo/smile.gif)
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![;)](https://www.osnews.com/images/emo/smile.gif)
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)