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

Not lost :slight_smile:
Iā€™m working on it on a different point of view (that is, shell side), since (as said) some gtk widgets do not have the features needed.

I like the logo on top left corner as well :+1:

I think that, once we decide to change panel color, we should change all that attach to it, but I would choose a color in between full black and current #2B2929 (headerbar), or the division will look too harsh. In fact something like jet could be nice (havenā€™t tried yet)

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I meant ā€œlostā€ in the sense that it didnā€™t show up well in my screenshot, rather than forgotten about :slight_smile:

I had a play with the experimental snap channels. communitheme-pr189 (ā€œjetā€) looks better than current, IMO :slight_smile: Only downside is, because some legacy apps sometimes get out of sync between their window title/menubar, you can end up with three different shades of grey at the top of the screen (header, title, menubar all different). I think in the past I took this for granted and even mocked it up like that, but now just two shades looks better. But this isnā€™t a problem with the jet header - itā€™s just a limitation of the old apps.

I like the idea behind the purple one (creating the illusion of transparency with opaque elements) but I donā€™t think it worked as well.

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You know what, I think you could go even darker for the shell and it would look really cool:

Details:

another go at black detail #1

another go at black detail #2

I just noticed that the separator vanished between header and dockā€¦ Iā€™m not removing it to be stubborn :wink: but some thought would have to go into the shade for this boundary line. I guess the separator would have to be lighter rather than darker, if you were using such a dark grey for the panels.

EDIT: hmm, the specific shades seem to have gone a bit ā€œoffā€ when I exported to .png, but hopefully thatā€™s enough to give a sense.

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I meant ā€œlostā€ in the sense that it didnā€™t show up well in my screenshot, rather than forgotten about :slight_smile:

Sorry for the misunderstanding then :wink:

I agree with you, jet looks way better than my kind-of-purple one

Right, I couldnā€™t find a way to change menubarā€™s backdrop color in GTK2, so it stays the same as when in focus :frowning:

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I LOVE this. Itā€™s also great that darker popovers donā€™t mix with headerbars.

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Personally I find the difference between headerbar and panel a bit too harsh, and even more when the maximized window is out of focus, so I actually proposed a change in the PR to make it a little bit brighter instead :blush:

I actually havenā€™t changed back from jet shell, I think Iā€™ll leave it like this for now :slight_smile:

Okayā€¦ I donā€™t think people will go for these :stuck_out_tongue: but, now Iā€™ve got the darker ā€œjetā€ launcher, I could resist trying it out in GIMP: the Unity 8-style launcher button.

I think it looks superb and very distinctive with the jet panels! But I also think that, if this were the default look for Communitheme, it might help to have a toggle for ā€œremove orange from the launcherā€ somewhere in Settings or Tweaks, because orange wonā€™t go with every wallpaper:

Now I know itā€™s still a bit controversial to swap the upstream icon with our branded Circle of Friends, and that wonā€™t necessarily survive into the final Communitheme. So, hereā€™s a mockup of something Iā€™ve not seen before: the upstream app grid icon on a Unity 8-style orange square:

Again, I would add the same option if possible to Settings or Tweaks to remove the orange. I actually think this works really well :slight_smile: and could be a viable (albeit bold) compromise between refreshed Ubuntu branding, as per Unity 8 plans, and upstream design choices :smiley:

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Interesting

this is a totally different and long story :smiley:
Also because tweaks is a gnome app (If I am not wrong), so accepting an option for distro dependent changes would be hard, I guess

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Ha ha. This is the problem with me not being a developer, I never know what will be a long story :slight_smile:

Could it be done by shipping two themes? Communitheme (enabled by default) and Communitheme (Less Orange)? Well, I love it, but Iā€™m just one user.

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New stable release of communitheme is ready!

This week most of our effort went to the ā€œwall of darkā€ issue, so this release bring a new iteration of panel/dock color and several bug fixes :slight_smile:

Moreover, I think that having the full weekend to close all the open threads, branches and discussions before the release could be better. For this reason, I propose to change the new stable release day from Friday to Monday, starting from the next week.

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I think the problem with this is the same as with the logo (if not worse, because it attracts attention and it meant to be used for active states (the cross button being orange is somewhat active (though mostly about branding) because itā€™s only orange when the window itā€™s for is in focus)). It draws too much attention to the Applications button where in GNOME, if anything, the Activities button is more important (I suppose with the Dock one only needs the Applications button but the design is somewhat intentionally messy because the Dock is deviating from upstream, probably remains the case that the Activities button is most important as in upstream GNOME since you can manage workspaces from there and you can manage workspaces).

Yeah. Itā€™s a easy way to use the black but not have it be so jarring against the background. Iā€™ve made a PR that bumps the transparency up to 0.035 as opposed to my previous 0.025 suggestion.

Again, it looks better live.

Iā€™ve toyed with that idea too, but ultimately I think itā€™s even more distracting because thereā€™s even more orange because the Ubuntu logo hid more of it. :laughing:

One thing to note is that the Unity 8 dock had autohide on by default, so while the orange was there it wasnā€™t always present.

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Really, the only thing to recommend orange in this context is the fact that it looks cool and branded, and not everyone thinks orange looks cool or wants Communitheme to make arbitrary use of brand.

Of course, I love the orange on the jet launcher. I wonder, how hard is it to maintain and ship three virtually identical themes with Ubuntu? People have mentioned the light, darker, dark modelā€¦ well, one of the most contentious topics is how orange it should be :slight_smile:

Communitheme (default):

Communitheme More Orange (also included for brand superfans):

Communitheme Less Orange (included for people who opposed the return of the orange ā€œxā€):

Then everyoneā€™s happy - but too much to hope for, I should think :slight_smile:

General feedback: Iā€™m more and more happy with the jet launcher/top bar every day I use it. I think Communitheme is pretty much there tbh. I would be very happy if it became the default theme tomorrow :slight_smile:

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No thatā€™s really out of our scope. We will ship one theme which will have a css for dark and light because GNOME apps use sometimes the dark css by default. Also we should find a good design that works for most of the people.

That grid yes/ grid no decision is not a design decision (for now) and rather a brand decision which is not for us (designers/contributors) to decide but rather for the GNOME guys since itā€™s ā€œtheirā€ DE. We still wait for @didrocks and his news in summer.

The best will prbly be to use the app grid, since itā€™s gnome. We still have so much unique style and branding that everyone will know that this is ubuntu :slight_smile:

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Fair enough, @frederik-f! Well, the one theme is shaping up very nicely :slight_smile:

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That phenomenal is nonexistence one :wink:
What I could expect is to make easy to mix and match or in other (better) words : easy for the end user to customize.
If it will not be hard-coded MOST people will be satisfied.

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Yes it is!
Thanks @godlyranchdressing .

Every time I boot into Ubuntu now, in Edge channel, I just look at my desktop and think: I donā€™t really have any feedback left! It looks superb. For me, the jet panels were the finishing touch.

I was gutted when I heard that Ubuntu was ditching Unity and moving to Gnome 3 because a) I thought the desktop would lose its identity and b) I actually dislike the default Gnome 3 workflow. However, if anything, the switch has rekindled my enthusiasm for Ubuntu, after years of stagnation in Unity 7. Of course, the main reason for my renewed excitement is the brilliant Communitheme project, although I also give lots of credit to the team who made 17.10 feel like Ubuntu (rather than just shipping Gnome 3 as-is). Well done everyone :slight_smile:

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Agreed, I didnā€™t really have an issue with e.g. the ā€˜wall of darkā€™ until it was pointed outā€¦ And even then, itā€™s rather consistent ā€˜congruentā€™ (because the shell theme is, generally, black, except for notifications and dialogues) ā€¦