That’s interesting, because “Aktivitäten“ and “Actividades“ have both 11 letters. Why does the spacing of the former look better than the latter?
if it’s weird, sure it must be by the screen resolution, it’s 24 inch 1080p IPS
That’s probably the difference: I don’t have a Full Hd screen but a 1440x900 max. resolution monitor.
I cannot go to a higher resolution but you could try lowering it.
is not the screen resolution, I already tried several
I love the idea of having the logo back on top, like in the old days. It makes brand visibility a lot better.
Moreover, the app grid symbol in the bottom of the Dock is much more of a logical choice considering its function.
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After reading the full discussion about the app grid and the logo in github, I must say I AM emotional about it!
How nice of “them” to allow Ubuntu small logo to be there. Branding is also emotional. Good design is also emotional.
So much effort was to put to get UBUNTU COLORS, SOUND, SPIRIT. What is it if not also emotional?
Why can’t we keep it and argue about this decision as something that important for us without someone will call us
emotional? - anyway, I am saying my opinion emotionally and rationally as well, for the worth of it .
Edit : My productive idea is to create a new icon with a tiny appgrid dots surrounded by the circle of friends.(a.k.a Ubuntu logo.)
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The logo at the bottom has never convinced me, so I believe the grid icon is right for the position it has, that is, quite far from main focus, which is in the top panel and where the distro logo should be.
The best solution, to me, would be not to change icons, but to switch functionalities: top panel for applications (which I consider the main view) and dock button (at the top or bottom) for activities, but this is up to Gnome devs and I believe there is a valid reason for what they did so far.
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If I (or someone else) won’t find a way to fix the alignment problems with the activities background (yes, the logo is only a background) then I fear it will be removed again.
However we could play around with something like this for the app grid button (and ofc double check if it’s ok for upstream):
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As it stated in @didrocks blog about the transaction to Gnome. the idea of the Ubuntu dock came to make UBUNTU users feel at home after ditching Unity. Ever since The one that I wished to have is @luxamman mockup with the grid icon instead of the recycle bin.
http://stefaneduardkrenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Start.png
To make it short :
Ubuntu logo at the top of the Dock
Grid icon at the bottom.
And… The Activities (word) on left top panel as the upstream demand. (hot corner is good enough for it but no argue about it)
That way we can keep the branding and have upstream be happy 
While it is a nice idea, it does not address the missing logo in normal state
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The Communitheme team is happy to announce a new stable release!
It’s the 13th stable release, but no one is superstitious right? 
This week we worked mainly on
- updating icon set
- bug fixes
- clean up
and in some background activities regarding the repositories and some more
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I’m already updating!
By the way, why did you choose the black cursor?
"To make it short :
Ubuntu logo at the top of the Dock
Grid icon at the bottom."
“If I (or someone else) won’t find a way to fix the alignment problems with the activities background (yes, the logo is only a background) then I fear it will be removed again.”
The easiest (not necessarily the best!) way to deal with these problems might be something I suggested a while ago:
“You could ask the Suru developer to incorporate a circle of friends into a Suru icon, for an app that could appear at the top of the launcher by default. ‘Settings’ or ‘App store’ would be possible contenders, or it could just open a relevant web page or list of credits. For users who leave the icon where it is, this approach is arguably the closest look to Unity.”
Here was my mockup, although I suppose the Ubuntu icon doesn’t have to be “squircular”:
Pros:
- You have a prominent Ubuntu logo out-of-the-box, exactly where long-term Ubuntu users expect to see it;
- You don’t have to worry about fixing the alignment problem with the activities background, because now it doesn’t need a Circle of Friends anyway;
- You don’t have to deviate from upstream, because the app grid button can just be the app grid now (this satisfies @Mozit’s preference for “Ubuntu logo at the top of the Dock, grid icon at the bottom”).
Cons:
- Users might remove (or relocate) the Circle of Friends when they customise or rearrange the launcher (I guess that’s up to them - or should we try to enforce the Ubuntu logo on users who actually want to remove it?!);
- You have to think of something suitable for the Ubuntu icon to launch (surely not beyond the wit of man…?).
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You know what - if the mini Circle of Friends turns out to be unworkable, I’d be tempted to change the File Manager button to an Ubuntu logo and have it at the top of the launcher by default.
Of all the apps, File Manager is the one that most represents your installation of Ubuntu, and it’s something you click on a lot. Most people would be happy to see it on the launcher by default and probably keep it there too. I suppose it’s quite arbitrary for an Ubuntu logo to take you to a place where you navigate/search files and directories, but no worse than the previous behaviour. After all, the app grid is just another place where you navigate and launch the stuff you’ve got on your PC, but with the emphasis on apps, rather than files and directories. I’m guessing most Ubuntu users resort to both views a lot in their day-to-day navigation.
If this was the chosen solution, I’d redesign the Software Centre, to avoid having two default icons with the same colour scheme (white on orange).
EDIT - so 18.10 would look something like:
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Aha - quick question for @frederik-f:
Am I right in thinking that the text “Activities” is aligned to the right so it doesn’t print over the Circle of Friends? So it’s doing this:
[O . . . . A c t i v i t i e s]
<--------->>>>>>>>>>>
Which means you get different spacing according to the length of the text:
[O . . A c t i v i t i t i e s]
<------>>>>>>>>>>>>>
[O . . . . . . . . . . . . A c t s]
<---------------------->>>>>
???
If so, my question is… is it possible to left align the button text, but add a few space characters to the start of the text in each language, to make room for the logo? So the text starts next to the logo but not on top of it.
E.g., replace the string “Activities” with “_ _ _ Activities” but with spaces instead of dots (annoyingly when I try to do multiple space characters it reduces them to just one). Then add the same number of space characters to the start of each translation and have the text attached to the left. Would that lead to consistent spacing between the logo and the button text?
Text:
“_ _ _ Activities”
“_ _ _ Activitities”
“_ _ _ Acts”
[O . . . A c t i v i t i e s]
[O . . . A c t i v i t i t i e s]
[O . . . A c t s]
?
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Yup. That’s the problem.
What we would need is another container
[[Logo][Text]]
Then we could style and align the logo and text individually.
Sadly we don’t have access to the inserted strings in css
I like your idea with a default icon using the circle of friends. But the file manager is wrong.
What would make a bit more could be either the “help” application or the settings imho
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Aha, worth a try
Of those two I would prefer Settings. I see the logic in Help, but only new users would click on it really. Then established users have a choice between removing it (and therefore losing the Circle of Friends) or wasting space on the launcher with a button they never click. At least Settings is something you’re likely to always use sometimes, however long you’ve been using Ubuntu
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That’d be really something for our fork of Suru. Since the settings icon is pretty fitting for gnome.
Can you make a PR for our repo?
https://snwh.org/suru/guidelines
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Ubuntu logo in Activities looks very wrong in my language.
This is how it looks in Greek, the logo is hidden somewhere after the 3rd letter.
In Greek “Activities” is translated as “Δραστηριότητες”, 14 letters in total.
I think the same happes in other languages too, it depends on how many letters or special characters the translated “Activites” has.
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