Re: [Usability] Re: Proposal for a new default Gnome GUI

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

>The colour bar is vertical and I think mentally I am looking and seeing a
>vertical bar with icons on it and grouping them together when really what
>should be happening is I should be mentally associating the icon with the
>text on their right.

I understand what you are saying, you have a point indeed.
However, one could also think that icons get under a differnt color just
because they are icons and not text. Besides, when the user is selecting an
item, the icons becomes part of the horizontal selection and that helps. But
indeed, you do have a point. Depends how you think of it I guess. :D

> I dont like the icons on the top right of the windows o O X, the colours
> are unpleasantly muted, I prefer clear sharp primary colours I am not
> ready for a theme done in Pastel colours.  The shapes o O X are very
> stylised, o and O are not as conceptually clear as the Icons metacity
> currently uses.

There are two themes already created for Metacity that fix this. Especially
the second one:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3496
Here is a screenshot of the first theme:
http://img.osnews.com/img/3476/today.png
Notice how bright the red is on the gimp window, when it is mouseovered,
even when it is not focused. The second theme fixes this and the focused
window has the bright color. In my mockups on osnews I only used the first
theme because I didn't have a screenshot of the second one when I put this
article together, I was too tired to reboot to my FreeBSD (2 AM).. :D

> http://img.osnews.com/img/3721/test1.png
> Decor and Theme should be left aligned rather than centre aligned if i
> remember the Guidelines correctly.

When I designed this theme, I did it for Sequel OS, not for Gnome.
Also, this test1.png is nothing else but a remake of the Syllable OS theme
preference panel. It is not my creation, neither I discuss usability with
these mockups. I just put widgets together to _test_ the clarity and how it
would look like in a real world situation (in that case it was Syllable's
pref panel).

> It is not a new concept (keep destructive actions away from safe actions)
> but I really hate having the maximise button so close to the Close X
> button, but I dont want to use a theme that clones the Mac either.

AFAIK, today the default Gnome theme ("Simple" right?) also uses the Windows
paradigm of button order. Personally, I prefer it that way, but this might
just be a preference...

> http://www.osnews.com/img/3721/test3.png
> The Ximian Fix pictured in the article looks good but really dialogs need
> to be designed to resize and reflow properly or to do at least a bit of a
> little bit of reflow as best as can be managed.  Some people prefer/need
> different font sizes and then get screwed by dialogs that they cannot
> resize.

I don't see the problem with it, but then again I don't understand why you
say that it can't resize. If GTK+ is font sensitive, it should resize the
frames/window as appropriate. If it is not, then GTK+ is what needs fixing.
;-)

Regards,
Eugenia