[ubuntu-art] Uspash

[Frank Schoep]

On Friday 12 May 2006 22:26, Lukas Sabota wrote:
> 	The current gray usplash is NOT dapper.  Dapper drake is supposed to
> focus on polish.  Much of the current artwork does not seem polished at
> all.  I don't mean to troll here, but much of the current artwork is
> lacking consistency.  For example, there seems to be no real color
> palette at throughout the menu system.  The 3D back/forward/up/reload
> icons of nautilus look different from everything else in the theme.  The
> folder icons seem bland.  I personally feel that tangerine would make a
> better default icon set.

I'm sorry to have to agree with you. I've postponed judging Human until it's 
more complete and includes different sizes for icons, but I'm kind of in 
doubt about whether or not to sound the alarm horn right now, two weeks 
before the release.

I've read this evening that the Tango shadows and along with it Tangerine were 
updated, which sounds great. I've always seen Tangerine as the more complete 
and usable icon set, I think it's also more vibrant, compare the "Internet" 
applications icon for instance.

I think Nautilus is especially out of place with the new Human icons: green 
navigation arrows, blue refresh, hard red for "stop", it just doesn't fit in 
visually with the browns and earth tones. This reinforces what you said.

Yesterday, Travis Watkins made my day with his punchline answering the 
question "what is the palette of Human": Looking at the icons the answer 
seems to be "every color you can think of".

> 	I would encourage artists to take a look at the new SuSe 10.1
> screenshots [1].  For what it's worth, I prefer Ubuntu as an operating
> system, but I feel SuSe is a good example of polish, and artists should
> get some ideas from other open source work that has been done.

Visually SuSE is very polished, but I find that certain areas of the 
functionality are less usable and more confusing than Ubuntu. A year ago I 
was really impressed with SuSE 9.3 [1], but I now find Dapper to be very 
usable. I'm using Breezy Kubuntu right now for daily use.

When I stepped in using Dapper, I think it was Flight 6, Tangerine was 
pervasive in all windows since Human had only a few icons. With this week's 
Human update I came to dislike it more. I'm still using it while testing and 
I'm getting more and more used to it, but it still doesn't cut it for me 
(yet).

> 	I'm sorry to sound harsh, but I don't feel that dapper artwork is
> really "dapper".  I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the
> artwork, but an overhaul is needed for the iconset and usplash theme to
> provide a truly polished OS.

I agree with you based on the current situation. If you can check out Flight 
6, do so, in a way I think it looks more polished and integrated than the 
current Dapper. I'm doing my best to help out get things right, and I believe 
all mockups and ideas for improvement are welcome on this list.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep

[1] - http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/reviews/linux/suse-9.3-ftp.php