Ambiance GNOME theme bugbears and what can be done about them

@mozit not needed anymore, changes are now in ubuntu

@initu-icr ahh… That’s using mutter-side decorations, so maybe my fix wasn’t covering them

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+1
I 100% agree. What’s the reason for changing the appearance in the first place? :thinking:

I old design was waaayyyyy better IMO.

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I’ve noticed several GNOME themes, such as Arc, change the Activities button to “…”. I’ve read in another thread that Canonical’s position is to keep the “Activities” word on the button but I wonder if it could be styled differently for two reasons, aesthetically and functionally:

  1. For aesthetic reasons, I think it should be moved to the left a bit. Because it sits right on top of the dock, I think it would look nicer if it sat cleanly 100% on top of it. Right now, it’s sitting on top of it, but hanging off, as if it might fall off. Oh no! :slight_smile:
  2. Another thing is that because it doesn’t look like a button it looks as if it is saying that the activities ARE the dock – that “Activities” is the name of the dock and each activity is each application. Somehow it needs to be styled to look like it’s clickable.
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This can be done for sure :+1:

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I really really really do not understand the reason for staying with ambiance anymore after such big and really questionable changes. Maybe someone can explain it to me and please do not tell me the alternative (Communitheme) was not tested long enough or Ambiance is “rocksolid”. After this changes it is obviously not.

I don’t have a problem with the Files sidebar.

There is no reply other than the one @didrocks gave you, he basically gets the final say, we’re not on the desktop team, we don’t get to make these decisions. Note that you can join the desktop team and make decisions like this in the future, if you satisfy the requirements (which include experience, so you’ll need to contribute to Ubuntu first, we’re a meritocracy ( /dictatorship, due to the nature of the self-appointed benevolent dictator for life! ) not a democracy): https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Developers

Sometimes they ask for our opinion and consider the different opinions and use them to inform their judgments, but the final say is entirely up to them. There’s nothing than we can do other than accept the decision and meet the objections so that this doesn’t happen again next time and helping as many as possible to get onto the Communitheme (i.e. helping to make the snap, promoting the snap, developing the theme, holding the desktop team to account on their promise to get it in 18.10 early in the cycle (remember they never promised that it would be default in 18.04, it was always only a possibility)).

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Btw here’s the desktop team Trello card for Ambiance fixes and there’s a sidebar fix here ( not sure it fixes whatever you lot are talking about as an issue but it’s something, they’re working on stuff! :stuck_out_tongue: ).

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I don’t have a problem with the Files sidebar.

Neither I, I rather like it as it differentiates it more than before.

– OOPS wrong thread –

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In general I like the darker sidebar. The separation of icon from text, however, does not work. And the sidebar being the same shade as the headerbar makes it look like you can drag from there - a different shade (darker, or lighter) would have been better.

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Do you have any ideas for how you can make it more clickable? I’d love to hear.

Ohhh, this (the post I’m replying to) is the nautilus sidebar issue (with icon backgrounds different to the text backgrounds)! I forgot about this… Yeah the merge request I linked doesn’t fix this particular issue… Is this not present in Adwaita on Ubuntu 18.04? If not then I guess it is a bug that needs fixing…

Just a short question: is anyone working on Radiance?
In Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, it has started looking quite lovely as of late:

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Yes. That would be @3v1n0 making changes to the theme recently:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-themes/16.10+18.04.20180328-0ubuntu1

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I concur after reading comments like this one (and I didn’t notice the change so my previous comment saying this this is OK was a mistake), @3v1n0 could you confirm with Canonical’s design team that this is a good move?

Some people do seem to like it (see, e.g. some of the replies to this tweet), so if Canonical does decide to settle on this then it’s not without its support, as angry as some people may get about the design :joy:

I feel it is just another wave of reaction to change… any change! I like it - I must admit . :smiley:
You will always find people that are angry about something anyway… :wink:

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What I found most surprising was that the design is different from this one :thinking:
https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/desktop-design/issues/28

I already expressed that I don’t like the new sidebar. I don’t understand why it needed a change at all. Is the user experience improved?
We all want Ambiance in it’s best shape for it’s (hopefully) last relase as the default theme. IMO this is beyond tweaking and fine-tuning. Hopefully they (not exactly sure who they are) will reconsider.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ubuntu-ambiance-gtk-theme.jpg

Here it looks like ‘Recent’, ‘Home’, ‘Desktop’, etc. are sub-items of a tab which has a home icon. It’s confusing!

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Maybe it’s a decision that takes place for pleasing those who are disappointed by the fact that community theme can’t be the default in 18.04. As if to say : you wanted some change? - you’ve got it! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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No, this has nothing to with reacting to any change. Multiple people have stated that the sidebar now looks like 2 levels of hierarchy - the icons being the 1st, and then the text being sub-categories of the icon. Which of course is not the case here. I like the dark sidebar - it looks nice - just not the separating of icon and text. It makes no sense.

Also, why fix what wasn’t broken - and leave tabs/notebooks still broken?

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I for one, quite like the new sidebar design, however as a primarily Adwaita user find the rest of the Nautilus theming completely inconsistent, but maybe that’s why I live in vanilla GNOME land :wink:

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