That’s the thing, and in upstream they don’t have the dock viewable all the time, and just having the keyboard shortcut isn’t really enough since there needs to be something clickable for newer users to use (too much to expect them to use a keyboard shortcut) but that’s not entirely relevant when the dock is on the desktop.
1 Like
I believe the hit corner should be returned too . If the option of the apps button is not going to be re-introduced then there should be little in the way of accidental triggering of activities.
With activities hot corner off by default I don’t think the text tells the user to click here . Should we trial an icon instead ? 
!
I, personally, do not want the activities hotcorner enabled by default. IMO, it just brings back Vietnam flashbacks of Windows 8. Just from using the pure, vanilla gnome session I accidentally activated it many times, which will effect accessibility. If the community really wants this feature as default, then I support it 100%. Just a personal preference of something that I will disable on my machine.
I also think we should keep the Adwaita port as an alternative to the CommuniTheme (which should be enabled by default).
We thought about an icon for “activities”. Ideally it’s very similar to the Windows 10 “window spread” icon. This will definitely be revisited in the future, so stay tuned.
About the hot corner: We want to prevent users from accidentally triggering it because it will be very confusing for them. I remember some research about this a while ago: users don’t realize what triggered the new screen and they don’t know how to go back. Edit: that might actually have been about the Windows 8 hot corners, but still applicable here
Ideally we want users to discover these features consciously, and we want to guide new users towards them. Some work is being done around this by the pop_os folks and iirc, upstream Gnome is also working on the “welcome new user” workflow. However, that is far out of the scope for the theme 
3 Likes
For me vanilla gnome works great . I find the use of the hot corner very convenient , and becouse gnome has the dock in the dash its something I instinctively do.
I do think an icon button is needed for new users because nothing says push me better than a button.
Then win8 hot corner was terrible . You had to touch the corner then drag down . In w8 there was no clear way to close a window . This got a little better in 8.1.
Unfortunately everything is see but ultimately support takes us further away from the vanilla gnome experience . I play with pop_os too . They have the hot corner off by default too. The best thing I found to introduce new users to gnome is in fact gnomes own videos under the help link . Take a look they are great .
(Help-ubuntu desktop guide) Getting around gnome. =Videos.
or https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/getting-started.html.en
Any way we have drifted off subject.
I think the community theme would do well with windows spread icon instead of the activities text.
1 Like
To me that seems less intuitive than just having the text at the top. We shouldn’t go closer to vanilla GNOME by reintroducing the hot corner, because that doesn’t really work with having the dock out of the Activities tray, it would be too easily accidentally triggered. Instead, we should stick with vanilla GNOME by keeping the Activities text there, which I think is more clear as to what it does and looks better then having a tiny icon in the top bar or a big one in the Dock.
False alarm, this is a bug with the LibreOffice snap and Wayland (assuming that can be reproduced without installing the communitheme PPA), which means the PPA is safer than I previously thought 
1 Like
Its just work flow. For me it works for you it does not for the next person who knows. It does work well with the dock set to auto hide, give it a shot.
Sorry I’m a little confused . Are you advocating sticking with vanilla gnome or modifying it ? The icon it self could fill the same area as the activities currently does or the icon could be next to text or be the same size the other icons in the activities bar . I’m suggesting we trial it.
I really like the dark top panel and prefer it to transparency. Vanilla GNOME with Dash to Dock would also be a preference though for everyday use there isn’t much difference. The hot corners are a tricky one. They work great for workflow on a laptop but can be a real pain on a desktop while gaming unless it is easy to find the way to switch them off. I’m in two minds about them.
1 Like
I don’t think having two Ubuntu logos is a good idea. Tbh the workflow is a bit weird (having Activities, a Dock, and Show Applications) but that’s a natural consequence of trying to make GNOME something more comfortable for Unity users and something more Ubuntu-y. To me it just makes more sense leaving Activities without an icon, as a plain text button 
7 Likes
The sign in button on login screen is suppose to stay with this color?
I think the green looked better
4 Likes
Green is an eyesore. Too bright and flashy.
Could someone please provide somekind of namelist of the elements in a gnome-shell-theme and in a gtk-theme? Maybe with pictures? Is there a link? Sometimes i dont know how the element i am talking about is called. It would make helping easier.
You can use the gtk inspector - it’s an awesome applicatio which does exactly what you want
Taken from : https://github.com/Ubuntu/gnome-shell-communitheme/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
Install inspector
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev
Enable the shortcut to open it
gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.Debug enable-inspector-keybinding true
Now you can open any program GTK3 program and press CTRL + Shift + D to bring up the inspector.
3 Likes
Agreed. IMO, the buttons being recessed make them look disabled; the Sign In button especially.
1 Like
tl; dr:
- If Communitheme won’t be in 18.04 Adwaita with only the colors changed would be the better, more “upstream” option
- If this can’t be done, what about showing a note in the post-install screen? Or highlighting it in Software Center? Creating a dropdown at install time with something like “Theme selection: Experimental Redesign XOR Ancient, but stable”?
- Would anyone be interested if I’d create a fork of Adwaita with the Unity8 colors? Just for evaluation, would need practically no testing since Adwaita is being tested by Redhat etc.
I really hope that the theme will be in 18.04. Everyone I know said that one of the main reasons they are not using Ubuntu is the design - So I’ve installed Fedora on their Machines and they’ve been happy ;/. I know, I could just install Adwaita etc. on their machine but since they recommend Ubuntu to other people that will simply not install a theme because they do not know that such a thing even exists and thus just not use it, this aint an option. Downloading stuff from Github/Lab etc. or even a ppa is not something that any regular user would do. IMHO the out-of-the-box experience matters tremendously and Ambiance, while I do quite like it (nostalgia …), just isn’t cutting it. People will see Ubuntu with Ambiance in every YT tutorial etc. until at least 2020 (No one ever uses non-lts versions, and that’s simply because it’s the first option on the downloads page, not because they need it) and will not use Ubuntu because of this. What about just showing the option in a post-install screen or something? Enable it by default in the USB version? Just to show that it exists? Preinstall the GNOME Tweaks Tool?
I would love to contribute but simply can’t (Do know SCSS/SASS but only for webdev). Also, I really believe that just using Adwaita with Unity8 colors would be the right choice if this plan goes burst. It’s a lot more “modern” than Ambiance and while skeumorphic, it’s recieved a lot more positive feedback from the people I’ve showed it to than Ambiance has, to a point where they would rather recommend another distro than accept Ambiance.
6 Likes
Everyone I know said that one of the main reasons they are not using Ubuntu is the design
I can only confirm this! How something looks is for the average user very important.
Would anyone be interested if I’d create a fork of Adwaita with the Unity8 colors? Just for evaluation, would need practically no testing since Adwaita is being tested by Redhat etc.
Yes! I would test it and give you feedback. I really think it is the right way to go.
In this thread it was already pointed out that we should only talk about the communitheme. So we should open a new thread for this. “Adwaita with Unity8 colors if Communitheme will not be in 18.04”. I could open it and we could link your theme there and discuss it. Please PM me when the theme is ready for evaluation.
2 Likes
I have created a thread so we can discuss Adwaita without undermining the community-theme thread.
4 Likes