[ubuntu-art] Intrepid Dust Theme

[Dylan McCall]

> On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 12:19 +0300, SorinN wrote:
> > 1. What I can see ? - finally an other scrollbar design - (as I
> > proposed in the past). For the rest we have Aurora M1, Aurora
> > Borealis, Orion Aurora, Dark Aurora ...etc. 
> > Nothing 'kinky' on this theme (that's good). Pretty bad is dark - but
> > at least is simple, clean, clear.
> > 2. You should put triangle arrows on scrollbar - actual V lines are
> > not so visible.
> > 3. Pretty but - just pretty look - no too much original (read Ubuntu
> > distinctive elements). 
> > 4. Ken, you must be jokin'....
> > 
> > 
> > 2008/8/18 Ken Vermette <vermette at gmail.com>
> >         
> >         On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:50 AM, Andrew Wood
> >         <caish5 at tpg.com.au> wrote:
> >                 I'm a big fan of this very clean and modern looking.
> >                 
> >                 
> >                 
> >                 On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 23:31 -0700, Brian wrote:
> >                 >
> >                 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/DustTheme
> >                 >
> >                 > Has anyone opened this for discussion?
> >                 > I think it's a very good mockup, and doesn't look
> >                 like it'd take that
> >                 > much work to get a working mockup from it at least.
> >                 > Throw in some orange highlights here and there, and
> >                 I think this would
> >                 > be absolutely perfect. [:
> >                 >
> >                 >
> >                 
> >                 
> >                 
> >                 
> >                 --
> >                 ubuntu-art mailing list
> >                 ubuntu-art at lists.ubuntu.com
> >                 https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
> >                 
> >         
> >         
> >         I actually gasped aloud (to the cause of great mockery on my
> >         part) when I saw this.
> >         
> >         This is the GTK look, the frame blends beautifully, I just
> >         have no words. This mockup has caused me to scrap my current
> >         design for Kin Piano, and I'm going to use this as a template
> >         for anything I do further, but this remarkable theme, in my
> >         humble opinion, is it. I dont know if I can do better, because
> >         this is always what I've been trying to aim for, in sheer
> >         cleansliness and polish.
> >         
> >         Excellent, Excellent work.
> >         
> >         -- 
> >         -Ken Vermette
> >         
> >         
> >         --
> >         ubuntu-art mailing list
> >         ubuntu-art at lists.ubuntu.com
> >         https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
> >         
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Nemes Ioan Sorin
> > 
> Whether his is joking or not that theme is really good.
> It may not look ubuntuish but the icon set will surely be
> orange so I don't think thats a problem.
> Or maybe instead of black it could be a dark brown chocolate color
> like in Kin Piano.mmmmm
> 
> 
> please stop top-posting.

Indeed, it is a beautiful theme. (I commented on the wiki page there). I
would like to add that I, too, thought "this is the one! Everyone stop
what you're doing!" the moment I laid eyes on it. (Trouble is, I was at
work, so it took out all my day's energy trying not to yell it aloud).
Ken, I thought it seemed quite a bit like Kin Piano, too, so I was
secretly hoping for you to do this. Kudos for being a team player, and
good luck!

Various dissers: Care to explain why you don't like this mockup so
others can improve it? This is the art mailing list, not a poll, so even
something like "I don't think black is the right direction" would be of
use ;)

Note the comments pointing out that the icon set is unintentional, and
just a leftover from painting on top of a desktop screenshot.

Not a fan of the Firefox mockup, but that is of course another thing
entirely. My trouble with Firefox's mockup is that it takes a completely
different design for tabs and for buttons, so something that should at
least LOOK desktop integrated becomes a jarringly detached presence. In
this case, its interface is too visible.
The Nautilus mockup, on the other hand, is a gorgeous bit of interface
design for the Spatial mode. Someone should cut that out and bump it
over to the Nautilus team.

What I like here is that it remembers something critically important:
Less is more. ESPECIALLY with a theme. The aim here is to create a more
open ended, rigid desktop feel; the look is coloured by the user's
background image and the contents of the windows, instead of by the
frilly borders around buttons.

The same thing is seen with the current unfortunate Empathy vs. Pidgin
debate. A lot of people say "Empathy's interface is not good" but fail
to identify what it needs. Or they say that Empathy's Preferences are
too simple. Fact is, Empathy doesn't /need/ anything more -- and neither
should Pidgin have. It's an instant messaging client, not rocket
science!
With Empathy, we see straight through to people and our messages. It's
quite nice.

I like that this mockup translates into a theme with absolutely minimum
fiddling. The widgets do not rely too heavily on each other, for example
to end shadows or continue gradients. They are generally self-contained,
so this won't be broken by programs that put their toolbars or menu bars
in weird places. In addition, this does not rely on fancy, out of reach
compositing effects; there is not a single transparent window in that
screenshot (except the panels, which are... special). The borderless
windows necessitate shadows, but I think Metacity's compositing is
shaping up well enough that we can ignore the issue. (Case in point: I
had it running under Debian on my Nokia N810. Slowly, but running). If
necessary, a 2px black border isn't too much of a loss.

Thus is slightly Macish, but really only in that it follows the right
trend in theme design. (That is: Not the Vista one). OSX is very unique
right now, in that its theme is the only one designed to stay out of the
way; people only really notice the theme if it is all that's there.
Otherwise, one sees straight through to what he is working on. His
perception of colours, the presence of what the user is working on and
his focus is not limited at all by the window border. This is how it
should be. Because there is (for some bizarre reason) nothing else
really like the OSX theme, anything following that 'stay out of the way'
trend is voted down for "looking like OSX".

Indeed, OSX marks a particular /kind/ of theme, just as Vista marked the
usability-hell transparent windows (which people have no problem poorly
duplicating until their eyes peel out) and earlier Windows gave us the
colourful title bars.

To say this can't be done because it follows a trend set on by another
group of developers smells like NIH syndrome. Not Invented Here is
something quite common in Redmond and we can attribute to it the
spaghetti-like state of web standards, among other things.

This also feels a lot like that recent Ubuntu mockup (the wooden table
one -- any DailyWTF readers here? :P) which it seems everyone has been
screaming excitedly about.


Bye,
-Dylan
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