Re: GNOME 2.4 default theme proposal

[Andrew Johnson <andrew ajgenius us>]

first agreed. definitely need a lot of love, and is obviously
unfinished. that said, I am still going to pick apart the things that
are worst about it even they might be fixed :)

first, the default theme should be a consistent clean theme. In terms of
edge, grips, checks, arrows, and colours.

edge inconsistency. the check marks and radio-buttons don't use the same
theme. thus this causes a widget inconsistency, you shouldn't ever use a
different engine for one part but not another unless it doesn't break
appearance. this case it does. This is also true of the menu item
separators which are very thick, even thicker then the check-box edges,
breaking appearance even further. This holds true in several places,
though I believe this may simply be due to flaws in the gktrc.

The arrows are good, and the rest of things are consistent.

Colour consistency, overall its fairly good however,  the radio-buttons
scrollbars and sliders have the same default colour that the rest of the
widgets use for insensitive. this is very bad, they should be using the
same colours as other widgets whenever possible, and for usability
reasons you should never use one colour for normal if it is used in
another for insensitive/disabled. moreover the menubar apears to use
another colour entirely, which is also just as bad.

Second usability, colours should be useable, things should be consistant
and reflect their state, both by colours and actual change in
shape/apearance.

I am not sure but that the colours might be a bit better and more
useable with slightly more neutral colours, not back to the usual
brownish, just not quite as off-colour. (you might look at Snowdream
colour schemes as being a slightly better aproach for some of this.)

Edges should be distinct and obvious, and prelight/selected/active
colours should be understandable. a good interface does not just change
colour when you click but has a visible state change effect (albeit
minor) the Industrial engine has none, and as such is (I think)
especially non-conducive to disability themes, which means a good gnome
disability theme imo will have to be based off of a different engine
entirely. Not good practice for a simple consistant interface.  

Essentially I believe a different engine should be used, I am in favour
of CleanIce myself as being simple and clean enough, as I do not think
flat widgets are user friendly for a default theme, and thicker edges
like the default often give the apearance of being too heavy, and bulky,
not lending too as clean an interface. 

I also wonder if perhaps we should however include _two_ defaults, a
simple clean interface similar to what we have now, but with better
softer colours, and another one with more eye-candy, thicker edges more
pronounced extras for those who like a desktop with a bit more
character, again with the same or similar colour scheme. I am thinking
something similar to the Lush/Nuvola GTK themes or the direction some of
the newer XFCE themes have gone in terms of using various degrees of
gradients to give a soft more rounded 3d apearance.

Andrew

On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 09:16, Luca Ferretti wrote:
> Disclaimer: it's totally unfinished[1], it needs more love and you need
> Industrial[1] to see it, so please look only the general appearance and
> feeling.
> 
> Note that there is a suggested bg, but theme manager can't handle it, so
> you have to do manually.
> 
> IMHO this look if simple and cool. 
> 
> Any suggestion, help, someone that can write a new engine or knows all
> gtkrc internals?
> 
> 
> [1] i.e. I've to change GtkList color from white/gray to white/blue, or
> find a way to use the same color in toolbar and menubar
> 
> [2] I use it 'cause it's the more fresh theme engine and on FootNotes
> it's the most voted. But it has some troubles, IMHO: 'shadow' around
> buttons breaks alignment in HIGfied dialogs, rounded scrollbars are
> ugly.. Or, probably, I've to learn more about gtk themes and this
> engine.