For shell dialogues, differences are: no dark stripe at the top; borderless buttons; rounded bottom corners; dimming of the desktop. I think both dialogue styles look very good but probably have a preference for the app ones, because they look more āCommunithemeā to me (the shell dialogues are nice but look alien).
It may actually be desirable to have a clear visual distinction between shell dialogues and app dialogues. But I donāt IMHO think the points of distinction should be arbitrary design choices (e.g. one has square corners at the bottom and one has rounded onesā¦ one has button style āxā and one has button style āyā, etc.).
Of the differences listed, I think the one that makes most logical sense is dimming the desktop for shell dialogues, because it emphasises a shift of focus away from apps, open documents, etc., so you can talk to the shell itself.
Are there limitations in terms of what can and canāt be themed here? I think I would like to see the shell dialogues styled in a similar way to the rest of Communitheme, if possible. A dark bar at the top would give a nice balance between light and dark (so the dialogues are light but not too ābright-seemingā) and the desktop could still be dimmed for shell dialogues only, to distinguish them from app dialogues:
So it would make perfect sense to me to have a dark shell yet light dialogues/notifications
The gtk theme is both dark (headerbar) and light (window), too after all.
But a dark shell would be more āupstreamā.
And to finish my above post, volume/keyboardbacklight/screenbrightness OSDs would be also dark
After investigating a little bit (like Columbo), Iām also with the opinion, to separate the dialogs and notifications/shell popups into light and dark. Even if I also need to get used to the light dialogs in some situationsā¦
The dialogs (like when try to close LibreWriter without saving @jaggers ) should be the same everywhere - even if we canāt have headerbarās - it is more like a ācall to actionā and that way it is more consistent.
Popups and notifications look good in dark and are (IMHO) closer to the system/gnome and the dark touch we give the whole system (which is still brave for a widely used system). When choosing the light version, everything should be white. But I like the mockup from @frederik-f with the dark popups (only the right click menu on the apps is simply exaggerated high per entry, which is a Gnome thing - for touchscreens??).
Also the dark popups need some adjustment, but I will get back to that when we choose to use the dark (side). And yes I know, Windows is also handling that the same way. But we look better.
Let me start of by saying that I love the current white dialogs
We styled the app dialogs to look like something that belongs to the GTK application - this was a personal achilles heel. I felt like there was a lot of resistance against this design decision (maybe there still is?), but I really think the current design ties the dialog and the application together nicely having tried it in the real for some time.
The original application dialogs looked good too, much similar to the shell dialogs now, they just looked, as you say, ailien coming from an application.
ā¦even if itās a good idea to distinguish app dialogs vs. system dialogs, there are many more coherent ways to do it than changing the shape and size and layout and colour of the buttons all at once! Having a difference in all those things at once is likely to make users think that they were designed by different people who werenāt communicating.
This battle (Iām using the word in the most friend possible way) I lost, and Iām okay with that. As much as I would like to see them (app and shell dialogs) styles more alike, the current shell design look really good, so if they have to be different, this looks good.
The top bars would give the impression that this is coming from an application and not the shell. @didrocks mentioned here that a distinction is wanted.
Changing the roundness and button style would be another way to make them look more similar, but it looks like something is missing: (or maybe Iāve just gotten used to the current design)
So many good arguments! Should we make a public poll again?
I actually do not care that much since everything could work and the super good work of @godlyranchdressing enabled us to switch from dark to light with just one line of code per class.
After all I said before, I voted for what I think is the status quo, I think it can be justified by saying that the white is more attention-grabbing and dialogues and notifications should be that way?
Hi @ads20000! Oh noes. Then youāve voted to the wrong. Current master is: everything light except the popups I hope you can correct your vote to the one you would like to vote Youāve voted for dark popups/osd/switchers + light dialogues/notifications
You might want to do screenshots of everything in both their white and black forms? I wonder if thereās some bias that arises from doing the way youāve done it at the momentā¦
I stand by my initial vote for now (not the status quo), dialogues and notifications can be justified to be more attention-grabbing by being whiteā¦though maybe notifications should be slightly less obtrusive and should be darkā¦ also I worry Iām in the wrong now but not going for all dark, especially given @d0od whoās a real stickler (meant positively, not pejoratively) for design voted for all dark! Obviously the poll is not final so I hope that the team led by the Didier-the-nominal-bdfl will come to the right decision, whatever that is. All dark would be the most consistent/coherent (if you prefer the word coherent I could just use that from now on ) and the most in line with upstreamā¦