Call for participation: an ubuntu default theme lead by the community?

I like white dialogues - I agree with @frederik-f, dark ones can look creepy.

I am less sure about the style difference between the app dialogues and shell dialogues:

current shell dialogue

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 :slight_smile: but probably have a preference for the app ones, because they look more ā€œCommunithemeā€ 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 donā€™t 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 ā€œxā€ and one has button style ā€œyā€, 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 canā€™t 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 ā€œbright-seemingā€) and the desktop could still be dimmed for shell dialogues only, to distinguish them from app dialogues:

changed shell dialogue

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@jaggers The shell dialogues canā€™t have a headerbar.
But we have a PR somewhere (?) to revert the gtk dialogues back to upstream/shell-lookalike

@c-lobrano dialogs are somehow similar to notifications with buttons like this one:

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 ā€œupstreamā€. :stuck_out_tongue:

And to finish my above post, volume/keyboardbacklight/screenbrightness OSDs would be also dark

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I understand, but notifications fall without really interrupting the user and without blurring the desktop, which makes a lot of difference to me.

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Well you explicitly press logout to logout/shutdown/restart, why should it not interrupt you? O.o

Edit: or maybe @luxamman could jump in once more and share his opinion as well =)

Hey there^^

After investigating a little bit (like Columbo), Iā€™m 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 canā€™t have headerbarā€™s - it is more like a ā€œcall 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.

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Uhhhh, a hot topic :sun_with_face:

Let me start of by saying that I love the current white dialogs :smile:

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 :alien: coming from an application.

Hereā€™s a quote from the discussion:

ā€¦even if itā€™s a good idea to distinguish app dialogs vs. system dialogs, :man_shrugging: 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 werenā€™t communicating.

This battle (Iā€™m using the word in the most friend possible way) I lost, and Iā€™m 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 Iā€™ve just gotten used to the current design)

image

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Lol @madsrh ā€¦ Good to see I didnā€™t change my mind since that poll ā€¦! :smile:

I voted #5 and @frederik-f did the same then :wink:
I lost that battle as wellā€¦

So many good arguments! Should we make a public poll again? :smile:
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. :bowing_man:

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Okay here is the public poll:

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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?

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Hi @ads20000! Oh noes. Then youā€™ve voted to the wrong. Current master is: everything light except the popups :frowning: I hope you can correct your vote to the one you would like to vote :slight_smile: Youā€™ve voted for dark popups/osd/switchers + light dialogues/notifications

Ah my bad.

You might want to do screenshots of everything in both their white and black forms? I wonder if thereā€™s some bias that arises from doing the way youā€™ve done it at the momentā€¦

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I was worried about this, too :frowning: I will try to this evening

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Cheers, and then maybe reset the vote and tag people who voted before and ask them to vote again? Just to ensure that people look over it againā€¦ :slight_smile:

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Just checked: you can correct your vote until the pull is closed
EDIT: updated with light and dark screenshots

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I think it will look better with light App switcher when you have applications with dark windows like Steam and Kodi.

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Yay, BOB, the big orange blob, is back :confused:

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Are you talking about the sidebar row? :slight_smile:

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 Iā€™m in the wrong now but not going for all dark, especially given @d0od whoā€™s 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 :stuck_out_tongue:) and the most in line with upstreamā€¦

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Weā€™re dangerously shifting toward ā€œHe-who-must-not-be-namedā€ style :smiley:

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