Red Hat engineers announced today that the very popular ClearLooks theme engine will probably be the default theme for the Gnome 2.12. The theme was developed by Richard Stellingwerff helped out by Daniel “Spark” Borgmann, others, and with some help from myself on the usability side. This was a much needed refresh of the Gnome default desktop (old theme, new theme screenshots). Hopefully, a more usable variant of the Winter-Bold window manager theme (get matching colors, on-mouse-overs, don’t get so greyed out when unfocused, buttons better vertically centered etc) will make it in as the companion of ClearLooks on Gnome instead of the currently bundled (and not as sexy) Industrial. Update: Elsewhere, GTK+ 2.6.3 was released, with bug fixes mainly for the Win32 platform.
there is a difference between having an opinion and being opinionated … a lot of the posts unfortunately fall into the latter category.
http://bvc.kernow-webhosting.com/theme/screenshots/ClearlooksLila.j…
When saying:
“To all those who think that the usability is in the eye of the beholder only: Wrong.”
I of course meant only to say that usability is not just a matter of taste – like it isn’t, naturally. And I did explain that point quite clearly in my post too.
CraHan: “Why not make the high contrast theme the default so even people who have a hard time distinguishing GUI elements have a more usable default?”
Oh yeah, and boy, why not use those finger touch “screens” for blind people instead of the LCD/CRT screens..? The high contrast themes are special themes meant for those with very poor eysight, just like the equipment that the blind use are meant for them, not for us with normal eysight.
ClearLooks is just a nice, clear and usable GNOME theme, designers have done quite a nice job with it. Even if you might like some other themes more, or if you might sometimes dislike Eugenia’s (or others’) strict opinions, those matter’s certainly nothing worth to rage for hours and tear your pants and shirts for…
*why* does everything have to be round? A piece of paper isn’t round, and a monitor isn’t round. That covers most of the interface you’re dealing with when you use a computer. So why the heck do all the widgets have to be quasi-round? What am I supposed to do with the three pixels that have been chopped off the corner of every widget, put them together and make soup? Sheesh. Just because UIs have always been square doesn’t mean that square is ancient history and round is exciting and cool and New, it means square makes sense…
Rounded edges pronounce the shape of elements (where does it start, where does it end) and also make things appear less harsh. Most monitors actually have slightly rounded edges, like most other hardware devices.