You haven’t seen Android KitKat:
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I don’t recommend the second variant. On the background of the icon, there is a semi transparent dock + a semi transparent square when you hover the mouse.
You’re right, lol, I hadn’t 
Mind you, I’m now seeing some Samsung screenshots where the app grid is very similar to the current one (4 x 4 square dots with no circle) and some HTC screenshots that are literally identical (3 x 3 square dots with no circle). So I guess it’s going to be near impossible to do something here that a) respects upstream and b) is truly original.
I like 3 x 3 squares on an opaque circle as per the mockup, but of course I’m happy for the thread and design team to decide whether it’s too generic
I was before android! 
What I appreciate of the shapeless grid 3x3 is that it fits whatever icon set of choice
What I don’t like of upstream’s one is mainly the size
Fair challenge, it means quite a bit of layered transparency. To me it looks fine:
…but the appearance of the button when hovered is certainly something that needs to be considered.
So the three permutations with the transparent circle would be:
Right, I thought about circles, but I wasn’t sure if adding another shape would look jumbled and incoherent. I like the look of the semi transparent one, but I agree that the double outline when hovered looks weird. However, I would be interested in exploring different hover shapes for icons on general. Perhaps we could make it just the shapes, but give it a circle on hover? And give icons a slightly larger squircke highlight h just big enough to look like a glow or highlight on suru icons, but a clear suru on regular icons?
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I can’t remember how the Circle of Friends button worked when you hovered. That was a circle, so I suppose it was the same issue, but I can’t remember whether it had a square highlight like the app icons do. If it had a double outline, I must have found it inoffensive because I don’t remember it
I like the idea of the squircle hover effect you describe. That might give a bit of unity to the launcher icons, if some are Suru and some aren’t. At least they’ll all get a squircle-shaped frame when they’re hovered or active.
@thread, something just occurred to me. The Ubuntu font includes a Circle of Friends logo as one of the characters in the private use area of the character table. Is the “Activities” text rendered in the Ubuntu font, and, if so, can special characters be used here? If so… could the Circle of Friends be inserted as an actual text character, rather than an image? So you could do “X Activities” (in various languages) where “X” is the Circle of Friends character rather than the letter X.
EDIT: Example of using the Ubuntu font in LibreOffice with the CoF character:
The word “Activities” does indeed seem to be rendered using this font (as you’d expect for Ubuntu!), so this could be an option, if special characters work in this position.
EDIT #2: Ah wait, I think I remember now that the theme can’t edit the text
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And we have a new name! More information on my blog post: https://didrocks.fr/2018/07/24/open-the-cosmic-gate-a-beautiful-theme-gets-a-beautiful-name/
Next steps: getting it into 18.10, which is in progress.
Congrats again to the whole communitheme and participants
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You could change Activities text using Extensions but COF is really small.
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Hey, so there’s a bright and dark aubergine in the branding pallete. might it make more sense to use the bright aubergine in the GDM screen? Since it’s the first screen, I feel it needs to be more welcoming and less… rainy.
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The problem with this line is that you can’t eliminate it while windows are not full-screen .
@dawidpotocki Yep, very small I thought using the special character might mean it was possible without introducing a new extension, but I forgot that the text couldn’t be changed by the theme. If you’re going to use an extension anyway, I guess you can just add a lovely graphic, align it nicely, etc., with no need to compromise on the size.
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Thanks, this idea and similar have been already explored. Actually waiting for an update of dash to dock to test something that can be removed in unmaximized windows 
What does not convince me in your proposal is that the line between panel and dock is increased as well with no real reason
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I actually think it already looks great as it is. I mean, nothing will be 100% perfect for everyone (e.g., I have a very mild desire to get rid of the faint seam between top bar and launcher), but I think 95% of people will think the current design is 95% amazing. I’m struggling to think of things I’d like to see “fixed” except for:
- The use of two slightly different greys on the title and tab bar in Chromium (I prefer Chromium to Firefox so see this oddity every day);
- The loss of the little logo by Activities
I mean, I know I had a go at mocking up a new App Grid button, but only because it was under discussion. I actually like the current one.
The Chrome header bar is actually themeable. We could think of making an exception for Chrome 
I had another play with the circle app grid. Here’s an idea I quite like: keep the circle, but get rid of the transparency, and add some Suru/Yaru-style lighting on the upper and lower edge:
Normal:
With maximised window:
With active highlight, when the shell overlay is open:
