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

you did mean these ones?

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Yes @jasonflindt, that one.
Sorry if I didn’t reply directly to you when you pointed at this issue first, but trust me, it was on my todo list since then :wink:

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Now sorry needed . I was poking fun and have since removed the comment as i thought people may think it was inappropriate:sunglasses:
Ive been looking at the gap issue . I think its because of the 1 pixel border on the dock .

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And since i don’t think I have the skills to contribute artistically i can at least test.
I couldn’t get the spinner to work either . I also couldn’t find /usr/share/icons/ only /local/share/icons/.
But it does work here.

Hi! I am testing the new theme and i want to share some ideas:

  • most buttons become darker when you hover on them. But it should be the other way round. Why? Because by hovering over a button you are closer to the “action”. Something is going to happen when you click on this. Making the button darker implies (at least for me) that you are going back. Here an example:
    normal
    This is the green button for “scanning”. It is bright green.

[EDIT: because i am a new user i was not allowed to upload a second picture. what i wanted to show is that the green button gets darker by hovering over it]
This is when you hover with the cursor over it. So i am close to an action (going to scan). The button gets a bit darker. (i hope the screenshots can show this)

i really recommend to change it the other way around. Same goes for the red buttons (maybe gray buttons too?). The dark buttons are already becoming brighter when you hover.
In short: Closer to something = brighter!

  • the orange close-buttons for the windows should become red when you hover over them. Why? Something is going to happen that needs my full attention: the window (with my work) is going to close when clicking on this.

  • the menus (when clicking the right mouse-button on the desktop or inside nautilus) sould get round corners. Why? It would fit more to the suru-style. When you need an example you should check the pop-theme or i can upload a pic.

I hope this gets considered and i really thank you for taking your time to get this new theme ready. i already love it and really hope it gets the default for 18.04.
Thank you!

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Menus
Here a picture to show you how the menus could look like i mentioned in my previous post. This is how they look like in the pop-theme and because of the rounded corners they fit more to the rounded suru-style.
menus

Grey buttons
have you considered the idea of making the shadow stronger/darker when hovering over them instead of making the button itself darker? Again: hovering = closer to action = brighter

Highlight-Color (orange)
Could we test this blue color. Just for some days? I think it would look very good. At least when highlighting icons.


it was considered by @merlijn-sebrechts

thank you for your attention.

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Hi @nusi, thanks for taking time to test the new theme :wink:

You’ll be happy to see that we’ve already decided to move to brighter button highlight, at least on dark backgrounds.

We use red color to show dangerous/destructive actions, so changing the close button to red is not that bad, but the orange close button is also very Ubuntu, this is why we kept as it is (untill now, at least)

Rounder menu’s corner is definitly something I’d like to try

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I tried to make dash solid when windows are maximized. And i do it! :smile: The top panel with dash looks like one. It looks really good for me now. Next my step is to set the same transparency for panel and dash. What do you think about this bars theme?

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Remember that you still need to take into account the intellihide case, where the dock appears on top of windows (solid selected opacity is used in that case).

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I don’t think the blue for the sliders makes much sense. I know many in the community are like ‘brrrr, too much orange, change it’, but…why blue? Isn’t ‘too much orange’ kinda the whole point of Ubuntu theming? Where else is this blue being used? Presumably it was going to be a key part of the Unity 8 design language?

A more plausible ‘third colour’ to orange and dark gray could be the green that’s being used to draw attention to important dialogue boxes and so is already being used as a ‘third colour’ for that purpose (tho maybe they would lose their effect if green was used more elsewhere)? Or perhaps purple since that’s Canonical’s colour (tho many in the community would hate lots of orange and purple as much as they would hate lots of orange)?

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I think that the blue is a left over from Adwaita .

Of course. But in my opinion the better is, when dock (in solid) appears on top of windows. I understand someone meaby likes more the transparency dock if appear on windows.

Moreover, it can be difficult to make two options in one: solid dock when not appears on windows, and 'transparency when appears. I can’t do that, I dont’t know how…

Isn’t ‘too much orange’ kinda the whole point of Ubuntu theming? Where else is this blue being used? Presumably it was going to be a key part of the Unity 8 design language?

Correct :D.
This blue does not come from Adwaita, but from Unity8. It’s not sculpted into the stone of course, but some weeks ago we discussed it and then just decided to give it a try. From time to time the point is re-discussed again and the color might change in the future.
Also, the idea is not only “too much orange”, but that orange looks like red that is a “destructive” indicator color.

There’s also a @madsrh proposal for a different one here.
I wouldn’t use green, because it’s used with a different meaning in the theme, and aubergine (which I like a lot) to me does not fit well with very dark backgrounds.
That’s my personal taste, of course. The designers would probably answer better here :slight_smile:

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Wow only 26 days ago! A lot has been discussed since then. :grinning:I actually don’t miss the orange now, I really like the blue.

I agree with @c-lobrano :+1:
There are some guidelines for the use of the different colors in one of these theme threads.

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I just stumbled upon this reintroducing transparency on top panel.

It looks that, with intellihide enabled and the dock hidden, the top bar gets the “.solid” css class also when a window just occupies the dock’s space without touching any panel border.

Here with dock visible
image

Here with Dock hidden, because Nautilus went closer, but it still does not touch anything
image

@didrocks do you know any way to avoid this? Any class that let me differentiate the two use cases?

This isn’t the case in my installation. The transparency is kept in the upper panel even when a window occupies the dock space

Hi @c-lobrano !
Thank you for your answer.
Close-Buttons on windows
You are right. Orange gives it the ubuntu-style. It really should stay orange. But only become red when you hover over it. You are going to close this window = attention = red. Is there a reason not to do it? What are the designers thinking about this?

Blue and/or orange
Isnt there already enough orange in the theme? @merlijn-sebrechts already linked to a new blue that should have been used for focus, selection and interaction (see my previous post). Do the designers have tested it? What do they think? What would be a reason not to use it?
Some reasons to test it:

  • it is a test. We can change it back after 1-2 days. The community could give a feedback.
  • it is a new color in the ubuntu color scheme = something fresh
  • orange (as it is used at the moment) is way to aggressiv. The icons are already orange enough
  • it was considered for unity 8? There was already put thought into it.
  • the shell-theme and the gtk-theme do not really look like they have the same design-language. By using a little bit more blue in the gtk-theme it would fit more to shell-theme. At the moment blue is only used in the progressbar.

A compromise could be to really test it only on focus for icons. Once again: The Pop-theme did a great work in using different colors. It would be nice when @isantop could give some ideas.
What are the designers thinking?

Buttons
I am looking forward to the updated buttons. But it seems a bit contradictory when it stays this way: dark buttons get brighter when hovered. Bright buttons get darker when hovered. Both buttontypes should get brighter. What are the designers thinking?

@c-lobrano: this is the intended upstream design, there is some tolerance of “close enough” in the upstream code for this to trigger the solid state.

Edit: this is in the non intellihide case. If you are really away from the top panel but the dock vanish, ensure you haven’t changed any dash to dock settings as there is a mode doing this. (reset the keys if needed)

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I am absolutely in love with the blue for sliders, spinners, and such. I very much hope it doesn’t go away.

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I think I hope it gets reverted (though yes, worth giving it a try!), we haven’t had a problem with the orange being used a lot in Ambiance, really (though maybe this is an issue we’re trying to fix here). But I recognize I’m just one voice and not a professional designer so I’ll accept whatever the pros say in the end :slight_smile: I’m sure I’ll get used to the seemingly-random blue eventually. Also that says in Unity 8 it was used in progress bars, not necessarily sliders? It would be very useful to know why the Unity 8 designers chose to use blue in certain situations in the first place… But I guess it might be tricky to track down exactly who made that decision and tricky to get a respones from them… If they could give a good reason then I’d be more inclined to back the switch to blue (which I know many do really like as a decision).

I don’t think @madsrh 's blue makes a clear difference, personally.

Agreed that aubergine probably doesn’t work well on dark backgrounds

Also, @didrocks, I’m assuming that site will be taken down at some point (because it’s docs for the obsolete Ubuntu Phone), where’s the source for that site? Would be nice if someone could fork a copy before it gets removed because that looks like an incredibly useful resource!

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