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

You’re right! I’ll debug that ASAP (probably tomorrow morning, fixing other things related to communitheme & wayland before ubuntu bionic final freeze :stuck_out_tongue: )

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@didrocks: I have both the Gnome session (DEB) and commintheme session (SNAP) installed and the GDM login bug is back :frowning:

With CommuniTheme chosen GDM always falls back to starting the Gnome session. I have to switch to another session (gnome or ubuntu) manually and back to CommuniTheme first. Only then gnome-shell will start with CommuniTheme.

@jyaku: are you using the wayland or Xorg session? Are you sure you are falled back to the GNOME session or just that the theme is unapplied?

I tracked down a bug yesterday due to session living longer than expected and mixing environment in bionic, and so, you were starting communitheme (Wayland), but end up with Adwaita theme.
The latest gnome-session and xorg + latest communitheme snap fixes this altogether :slight_smile:

If the bug persists, please print your environment variables (I guess opening a bug report would be better) in the “faulty” session.

Also, you might notice I mentioned “latest snap”, meaning I fixed autopublication to edge again. Thanks for the ping @nusi :wink:
I used that opportunity to publish a now stable version after some testing. Enjoy!

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@didrocks is it possible to change the version after any update? Even if we stay on 0.1 maybe add 0.1b1 … 0.1bn like that we can track the version we are using.

@Alculete: Changing versions at each commits doesn’t make sense. Versions are major versions that can be changed manually (probably more in the beta/release candidate state) when we get closer to release.
As the project is the merge of 5 projects, adding the commit ID to the version would be bad as well.

Right now, you already have an ever incrementing version that you can find with snapd:

$ snap info communitheme
installed:   0.1 (70) 7MB -

The number in () is the revision of the snap, you can communicate that to the developers.

We can also imagine shipping a communitheme.version listing all commits IDs for every of the 5 projects + the revision of the snap. If someone want to work on that, It will be very welcomed I guess!

OK thank you for the explanation, I didn’t know about the revision :sweat_smile:

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Hey Didier, gorgeous work with the snap so far. Where is the best place to report regressions? On the update from 48 to 69 and 70, the GTK2 theme wasn’t loading into gimp. Just confirmed with reverting to 48 and restarting my session.

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I’ve opened a ticket it seems the theme still not loading apps properly

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It seems to work again now. Thanks a lot for all your efforts.

Finally upgraded to 18.04 and installed the communitheme and wow - it’s amazing! The change is immediately noticeable and refreshing and noticeably Suru (and so has the advantage of borrowing much from a theme that had lots of time put into it but needs some more use!)

Some thoughts:

  • [GitHub Issue] The orange circle in the top left seems odd because of the light gray squircle highlight around it though it is consistent to have that…maybe it should be an orange squircle or maybe it should be scrapped entirely, I don’t really miss it as much as I thought I would! But others do want it and disagree. Also the cross in Activities when hovering over windows is an orange circle (obviously without the gray squircle around it) which seems inconsistent with the current window close button (naturally).
  • [GitHub PR] The Ubuntu button in the bottom-left was, I thought, a direct contravention of what @didrocks has designed before, he wanted to keep this in line with upstream? Also it seems a tad confusing because of the Activities button existing too…the GNOME Applications button clearly showed that the button was for showing applications…though since we have the Dock maybe the button people should be using more frequently is the Applications button (since people don’t need to window switch with the mouse via Activities) and having the Ubuntu logo for that will make people do that more often, I think, but it is still an additional deviation from upstream design that I feel @didrocks needs to explicitly approve somewhere (and I haven’t noticed he has anywhere). Maybe just an indication from him that he can tolerate the change if the communitheme does roll with it in the end.
  • [GitHub Issue] I really liked the use of the blue at first but I then I remembered that its use might not be consistent (and I care about that!), iirc the communitheme doesn’t use the blue in all ‘indication’ senses as in the original Suru design, but then its use seems inconsistent, why use it at all? When exactly is the communitheme intended to use the blue? :slight_smile: Opening Settings brings out the confusion more because you get visible black, grey, green, orange, and blue… Further to this, the outline of search boxes is jarringly inconsistent. Activities search has an orange outline but the Firefox Awesome Bar has a blue outline, for example. Also Firefox tabs have a blue highlight. [Firefox tabs and search are now orange]
  • I’m not as bothered by the lack of many squircle icons as I thought I would be but I still feel that eventually, for consistency (and I think it was the case in Ubuntu Touch’s apps?), all icons should use squircles, maybe via a script? :slight_smile:
  • [compliment!] The top bar looks good, the white highlight when a window is maximized helps to emphasize the divided between top bar and window (more than top bar and menu) in a really good-looking way!
  • [Decision - Won’t Fix until on 18.10] The session (as listed in GDM) needs a rename. I think the ‘snap’ part of ‘Ubuntu with communitheme snap’ needs to be scrapped. It should just read ‘Ubuntu with communitheme’. E.g. ‘Ubuntu with communitheme snap with Wayland’ is very long and ‘Ubuntu with communitheme with Wayland’ is more acceptable, imho. Though maybe people find it a useful indicator if the session is using the snap or not? Maybe there’s another way to work out if you’re using the snap or not when you’re in the session?
  • @c-lobrano did this get fixed? I still have this, if the communitheme is using an orange outline around search boxes maybe it should use an orange outline around the windows (in Activities) as well?
  • I’m not sure about the cursor theme, as I thought the amount of space within the loading circle is excessive, on any OS we’re used to having small loading circles. The cursor itself is fine, however :slight_smile:
  • Checkboxes are inconsistent, some are plain green squircles, some have ticks in them (e.g. in Software & Updates)

I’d like to stress again that people should not feel the pressure to necessarily agree with me here, just expressing my thoughts, though do give your thoughts on my thoughts so the team can gauge opposing opinion…

Communitheme 0.1 (71)
$ snap info communitheme
tracking:  edge
refreshed: 2018-04-21T16:15:20+01:00
installed:   0.1 (71) 7MB -
$ snap version
snap    2.32.5+18.04
snapd   2.32.5+18.04
series  16
ubuntu  18.04
kernel  4.15.0-15-generic
$ snap info core
tracking:  beta
refreshed: 2018-04-16T11:33:06+01:00
installed:   16-2.32.5                (4486) 90MB core
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I also think that the current situation where the circle only shows while hovering is odd. I’d either always show the orange circle or remove it altogether

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@ads20000 The theme uses orange now mostly as lines or dots. The color is very attention-grabbing and does not need bigger orange fields. That is why it looks so elegant at the moment. The orange is used for “activated” or “selected” states while blue is used to show progress (progressbar) or for sliders (volumeslider). The text-selection-color was changed to blue too because it looked more like salmon or even pink on some displays. And because unity 8 used blue too. I understand that it can be confusing because the orange is still used in libreoffice and icon-selection while on firefox or gedit blue is used.

IMHO selection-color for content should be blue everywhere. That means selected text or even selected files. Selection-color for the system should be orange. That means when parts of the system are selected or activated (in stackswitcher, sidebar or topbar). This way it would be consistent and comprehensibly.

The makers of the theme will test and check what needs to be changed. So lets see what the future brings.

I think so too. It would be nice when this made possible.

You mean the close-button? On my system it is on the right. I share with you the same opinion. It looks a bit odd at the moment when hover. I would recommend to make the X orange on hover. This way it looks (at least for me) more consistent with the rest of the theme:

But at the moment there are no plans to change the close-button. But i am pretty sure a change will come.

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Yes sorry I changed it to the left because imho it makes so much more sense mouse-travel-wise but I agree with the decision to move it to the right by default because that’s the upstream default and putting it on the left is an unnecessary deviation.

I know you(?)'ve complained about two much orange in Files before but I worry that would be too much blue, which is even more of a problem because the brand color is orange (and so, as I said before, I’m not convinced too much orange is actually that bad a thing). Anyway, we’ll leave it to the team for more decision-making, I just think it needs more thought :slight_smile:

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Hey Andy! Glad that you like it :slightly_smiling_face:
Just report against the github gtk-communitheme project for now, I’ll let the core communitheme team have a first look. I’m focused on the ubuntu 18.04 release this week :stuck_out_tongue: Also, nothing on the snap itself changed, so maybe someone can diff the 2 versions, have a first investigation so that we spot where this regression is coming from and fix it.

Edit: the only change that happened since then snap-side is that communitheme now is the first in path (so takes precedence over the ppa version for instance). Also, I can’t reproduce the issue here with Gimp, but I don’t really have exactly a standard installation, as I’m developping the distro :wink:

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I personnally still think (as I have repeated multiple times) it’s a very bad and confusing idea + not helping upstream on their view either. So no, nothing changed from my side and I think the core team knows it :slight_smile:
I’m not against experimentation as long as it’s not shipped though and see how it goes…

Edit: on the session name, I preferred to have an explicit name (which is already translated on many languages, so not a good idea to change it as this point). Anyway, this session will vanish as some point as the default “ubuntu” session will take communitheme.

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You are talking about the original grid button in gnome, right? I think this is a bit more complex.
Since vanilla gnome does not have dash to dock and when you open the dash, the “dock” in the dash view is much smaller and thus the grid button is more in the middle of the whole left side. Since ubuntu dock is almost only dashtodock with panelmode activated the ubuntu button in the left looks a bit in the wrong place. So this problem consists of two parts: a) gridbutton could be more intuitive for people using smartphones, b) the position feels wrong (especially if you come from 16.04)

Edit: but if you come 16.04 the ubuntu button could be familiar :expressionless: Hmmm

(((Sorry for the offtopic, but I will have my popcorn right here at my desk when communitheme replaces ambiance and the “I miss ambiance” threads pop up xD)))

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I am having the same problem. Neither GIMP nor Inkscape are themed (they are not snaps).
I think they were themed a some time ago, but maybe I had the ppa enabled then.

And another interview today: @merlijn-sebrechts. Thanks for answering! :wink:
Happy reading: https://didrocks.fr/2018/04/24/welcome-to-the-ubuntu-bionic-age-behind-communitheme-interviewing-merlijn/

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I really like Yaru :grin:

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We are mentioned in a popular youtube channel’s new video =D
Linux Scoop - Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - See What’s New
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OTwHSa1KVc

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