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

So as @didrocks points out, the actual name in Gnome is ā€œsuggested actionā€:

@meetdilip, in my explanation I only mention ā€œdestructiveā€ for red buttons. Green should be the action that the app developer or the OS developer suggests you click on in 99% of the cases. This gives the user an additional confirmation that what he is doing is ā€œcorrectā€. Itā€™s ok to press the green button since that will ā€œdo the right thingā€ in 99% of the cases. For the login screen, 99% of the cases, a user wants to login.

@didrocks, is there any notion of a ā€œdestructiveā€ action in Gnome? Either ā€œan action you should not doā€ of ā€œa dangerous actionā€?

I actually think the first example is a lot more user-friendly. Option one clearly shows that the button is associated with the textbox. This isnā€™t clear anymore in option 2.

Flat is good, but letā€™s not throw away years of improvements of subtle UX hintsā€¦

3 Likes

Yes, and they are currently red in Ambiance.

Not making an argument, what if I am sitting in front of a locked screen of an office machine, or another home machine. Ubuntu need not further fuel my curiosity in trying passwords on the login screen. Wifeā€™s name, childā€™s name etc of the machine owner. A locked screen is locked for various reasons. It could be due to privacy in presence of an outsider. A developer need not have to suggest that the PC should be unlocked.

Just my opinion.

Maybe, my main objection was how box-radius is used in the first image. The radius was a bit too high for my liking.

(1)

https://ubuntucommunity.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/optimized/2X/c/c476cc558cc4bf8317b5c94a7a817512230c609a_1_690x388.png

Purple and black widgets are not doing great together. A semi-transparent login widget with the purple background would have been great.

Also, these are the days of round avatars :slight_smile:

(2)

I used to like breadcrumbs more when it had border-bottom or border-top

To get to this screen, the user mustā€™ve already removed the ā€œlock screen shieldā€ by pulling it or pressing enter.

Appleā€™s design also has very difficult to see hairline-thin icons are a a big loss to usability. While itā€™s very beautiful, itā€™s been slammed repeatedly for being a UX disaster. Having a usable UI is one of the constraints of this design, and design without constraints is just art.

The black fine line gown down along Nautilus window, between the shortcuts and the suru icons, is not that pretty. It look like a bit W95 in a way!

@madsrh Kindly do not restrict highlighting to dots. Background highlighting gives a better UX. Dots are not easy to spot. Especially when we take the launcher to bottom.

4 Likes

@luxamman @madsrh facenated about your muckups and discations about trasparicy and round corners thought you might have a look at Mist theme:
Mist Gnome-Shell

Slightly unrelated, but I just wanted to give a heads up. There was an interesting chat about themes, design and the community involvment on LinuxUnplugged - about halfway in (30+ minuttes).

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/120287/hacking-the-community-lup-225/

2 Likes

@madsrh

The gray / red dot difference in is almost invisible for me. I think the difference between open/closed app should be made more clear. I like the square highlight as it was on the Ubuntu phoneā€¦

29Nov17_ActiveIndicatorDockGrayDot

image

1 Like

@luxamman I tried with rounded avatars, ubuntu colours and so on

7 Likes

I also sat down one evening to create my own utopian version of GNOME on Ubuntu after Iā€™ve read the wonderful ā€œFinding Ubuntuā€ article, so my concepts are heavily inspired by it. I have switched some of the elements around and Iā€™ve included the menu from ā€œFinding Ubuntuā€, but with some tile-like functionality that I would really like to see. The way it is right now would also deal with the confusion about the ā€œActivitiesā€ button - Iā€™ve replaced it with the menu that GNOME normally has on the right side. This way, maximized windows would still have the buttons on the right side & the closing with the mouse would still work without any precision. Iā€™ve also lined up the workspaces in the activities overview on the right side with the top bar elements. Probably to radical and not realizable, but Iā€™d love to hear your opinions on it!
First one with Ubuntu Orange:


Second one that would showcase dynamic colour:

And just the minimal desktop with activated title & window controls (if there would be an application in focus):

And without any application in focus:

8 Likes

I think there are a lot of great suggestions here, but it surprises me that not more people have suggested to base the GTK theme of Arc. I think Arc is the theme that by far looks most modern and flat, as well as being a consistent theme that works well with the default Gnome shell theme in 17.10 (I am only talking about the GTK-part of Arc).

Here is an example of how the Arc GTK theme looks with the default 17.10 Gnome shell theme and the Suru icons:

Which software do you guys use for the mockup ?

I personally just use Inkscape, but thereā€™s also Pencil, which is more limited but arguably friendlier. Since Iā€™m limiting my suggestions to free and Linux-friendly software those are the only two programs I know of. :laughing:

4 Likes

Hello @didrocks ! Is still help needed? How can i participate, if yes? :slight_smile: Thx!
So beautiful to be part of this project!

As a fan of Adwaita and vanilla GNOME, allow me to ask (again) a couple of things:

a)
If it is the goal of the main developers to stick as close as possible to upstream GNOME and to Adwaita, is it perhaps a thought to just use Adwaita theme and adjust only the colours, in other words the bare essentials?

b)
I have read that we are thinking about a new theme, but not about the GNOME Shell itself anymore. Does this mean that it is beyond debate that the Desktop will remain active - hence containing the trashcan and files that you put there - and that the Ubuntu Dock will be kept as is? ā€¦

I, for one, hope we can think about moving even closer to a vanilla GNOME session, removing the active desktop, maybe the minimize buttons as well? That will leave us with a vanilla GNOME experience, but with Ubuntu branding. Am I the only one who would love to see this happen?

4 Likes