Mockups/new design discussions

I like the current way.

It might’ve been posted here already but I like what this blog says about the orange:

https://design.canonical.com/2016/05/colour-palette-updates/

It’s important for UX that keyboard navigation focus state “pops” because it can jump all over the place when you for example press tab.

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This also provides an explanation for how nautilus looks: The “hero item” in Nautilus is the selected item in the left sidebar. You can argue that the folder in the pathbar is the same item, so it also deserves to be orange.

The hero item in tweaks for example is the current category you’re on.

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I fully agree! I also think that we should use dark(er) for buttons. It might seem like a controversial post, but I was merely pointing out the inconsistencys.

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A quibble: The next section of that article describes blue as “the Ubuntu selected state colour”, as distinct from orange. I don’t know what “hero item” actually meant in that context, but it suggests that a selected item wasn’t one.

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Thanks for the clarification! I was on mobile, I honestly didn’t read that far :slight_smile:

I actually really like blue as the general “selection” color. I liked it on Ubuntu Phone and in Adwaita. However, I’m unsure what the current stance on it is, since it has changed a bit in the past few weeks and I’m not following the design discussions too closely.

I also like the “new” blue from the latest color scheme; it feels warm and “homely”.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FtHFW67ycl6uvxZqKIZwyinVyOuV9NxXDuJv1SwQ70k/edit#slide=id.g13b3c671fc_1_0

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I wonder whether that darker blue is a problem with dark backgrounds

It seems that the black bottom line is rendered bad on some screens

https://ubuntucommunity.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/optimized/2X/c/c03871a24c91b771dcd39e002472ecf11ce1be4e_1_690x144.png

Now the path-bar is still under rework, so maybe this won’t be a problem anymore, but this might be useful to know as well :slight_smile:

This is replacing it with $slate (#5D5D5D)

image

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I actually thought that we were reverting to this:

I don’t think the current design is working IMHO :worried:

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Hey there,

since the button design is not consistent and has problems on the dark back, I stepped back again and overlooked some design and stuff we need to adopt (because of Gnome and so on). This is an overview of possible designs, after choosing what we like and what’s working I can work on defined mockups with the chosen design.

I also could not try all sorts of designs. Simply combine!

First the flat button design: (Not perfect visible on the PNG)
butnewline
The four states are flat, hover, clicked and focused (like when hitting tab).
The first row is like it is now, the dark is hardly visible. So the second row has the same color for hover and clicked, with an inner-shadow to make it look clicked. Row 3 and 4 are also with an orange border for feedback.
We should consider this as a working and visual better solution. Also, the jump from white hover to dark clicked is less consistent.


Like always, breadcrumbs say hello.
The actual design is like also mads said not working (but was worth a shot!).
Like the connected buttons, they should be connected somehow and they should have a similar look.
Like the address bar in a browser, I don’t mind if it is not completely flat - they have a certain meaning and task and IS an address bar in a way. And with the white clicked button design from above it’s more consistent.
buttons2
1: Flat, same backcolor, but repeating the Gnome surrounding buttons style
2: Like 1 but the clicked buttons also get’s an inner-shadow like on the other buttons.
3: Like 2, but only bottom line for focus and maybe little thinner like it is now because of the double feedback.
4: Only the clicked buttons feedback with the inner-shadow.
5: Flat with bottom border only, but then they need a separation between.


This kind of design is also adaptable to the power off window - with 4 or 1 border (focus and clicked):
poweroffnew

Or the Software Center:
softwarecenter


I don’t have time for perfect mockups (like squircle and colors, visual them in your mind^^) but this way around we’re adapting the Gnome style buttons and combining them with a better visuality like we have it now and the orange focus border(s) we use. And this brings more consistency and better usability thru the system (on dark back).

The buttons on white are still very different, but that’s also part of the deal when having a dark background. I tried also the inner-shadow effect, but this is a thing to try, mockups are not enough to see if it’s working. The orange color is also just a focus color - people will get used to it when using.

And yes, it is also a little compromise - maybe there is another consistent and working way. But to be consistend we need to make compromises here and there. Maybe it’s working in the live system too.

Overall - do you think this is a good way for you all?
Inner-shadow in connected buttons - or flat with a border only?
Other thought??

Let’s try to speed things up a bit to get faster decisions.
More stuff later… Stefan

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Nice work Steffan :smiley:

Short reply here: I like 1,3 or 5

Would you suggest another Hangout session?

Awesome work Stefan!

Flat button design: I like 2 and 3. The second option might be less visible in some screens though.

Breadcrumbs: 3 and 5

Summing it up, for squared items I prefer borders, while I prefer the bottom border only in rectangular shapes.

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Nice work!

My preference:

  • flat button: 1 since the design of 3 doesn’t have a way to show “selected” status of a pressed-in button.
  • breadcrumbs: 3, although I would prefer the pressed in state to be the same color as flat button 1. Since a pressed in flat button and breadcrumb is in the same z-axis, they should have the same color shade imo.

Thanks for your input, I’m not sure if the always pressed status is working everywhere in a nice looking way, but only for clicking (like in power off) it should be fine. We’ll find out^^

I sum it up to this for now based on your answers and including my favorites (hope this is right):

I’m out for today, hope we’ll get all feedbacks until tomorrow.
Stefan

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I like as well your proposal summary :wink: Way better for the click state than the orange-jumping-on-you that we did

The colors are subtiles and working well IMHO and the line shape brings consistency. However, I wonder how that will work for application buttons: we will have a square around focused buttons, which will be different in the Shell, like the Power Off dialog, any thoughts on this?

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Thank’s Didier!

Can you give me a quick example/screenshot - not sure if I understand exactly what you mean. Are we limited to a certain design on some buttons?

I’m just talking about any GTK Button in any application for instance. The well-known paradigm for having focus (via keyboard navigation, tab tab…) is normally to have a selection border (orange in our case, blue for upstream).

For instance:
Capture du 2018-01-30 11-54-40

Note that it’s the same for textbox and other widgets.

Having some buttons focus (like the Shell ones) representing differently may look inconsistent?

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Another obvios construction site for me is the top bar and the dock, I also want you oppinion to force decicions:

I like the bar and dock in window mode (color and opacity, also the inner shadow is better, too strong on the top), only I still miss the shadow for the whole bar - this looks a little weird because the dock receives a shadow from the top bar.

The main problem is the max-window state - because the top bar is melting together with the headerbard and this has no meaning but visual confusing.


I put together some screenshots with mockups to get feedback, hope you can see enough to make decisions:

#1
Like it is now, only with a shadow for the whole bar for separation. The inner-shadow on the dock is too strong (because its a screenshot)

#2
Like it is now, but no shadows at all, only black separation lines. (too thin on the mockup)

#3
Shadow for separation, the bar and dock are still quite the same opacity like in window mode - maybe a little less for an opacity for a fancy transition effect. This design is also less heavy then the actual.

#4
Like #3 but now shadows, only black separation lines (too thin on the mockup).


Let’s try the poll tool:

  • #1
  • #2
  • #3
  • #4

0 voters

Thanks, Stefan

Looks good! I like the consistency between the various elements, nothing seems out of place.

I don’t think they are different? As I understand it, focused buttons have an orange selection border. In the following screenshot; the states are the following:

normal | hoover | active | normal focus

image

This is the same for other elements;

focussed (the orange is brighter in reality, but the screenshot isn’t able to capture it completely)

image

unfocussed

image

@luxamman

Can you elaborate on what the focused state of the pathbar is? For example, what happens if the “folder” element is focused in the next screenshot?

image

My guess would be that the entire border is orange, instead of only the bottom line, similar to how we do it now, yes? Like in the following screenshot, but then with your updated folder button.

image

And for the top bar and dock; I like the shadow because it clearly differentiates between top panel and application. Otherwise, the difference between the top bar and application is identical to the difference between application window bar and application menu bar.

If I had to choose, I’ll go for #2, but I’m probably the only one who likes no border at all :slight_smile:

To me, top panel shadow might have a meaning only with un-maximized windows, since I expect windows and top panel to be on the same “3D” level above the desktop and I don’t see any reason for a third level (desktop, windows, top panel).

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