On 06/11/2007, Günther Beyer <<a href="mailto:contact@guentherbeyer.de">contact@guentherbeyer.de</a>> wrote:<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hey all. This is my first atempt to activly join an open source project, although I'm using Ubuntu for about two years by now. Short intro: My Name is Günther Beyer, I'm an interface-designer from Germany, using Gimp and Inkscape, doing icons, illustrations and mockups of all kinds. Here are my thoughts on the Hardy theme: First of all I followed the discussion between the two main approches - The Mac like interface from Neil J Patel and the darker theme derived from Ubuntustudio. I wonder, why we should at any time imitate Vista or Leopard. Why not use the best of both worlds and add a little extra Ubuntu-linux flavour? If we want Ubuntu to look like Leopard, why not just wait for Kubuntu featuring KDE 4 - compare: <a href="http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2007/11/decisionsdecisionsdecisions-so-many.html">http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2007/11/decisionsdecisionsdecisions-so-many.html </a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=382776013&amp;size=o">http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=382776013&amp;size=o</a> <a href="http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/07/02%20Peek.jpg"> http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/07/02%20Peek.jpg</a> I think we should go down the other way and try a darker theme with the style and astetics of Neils mockups. There were many of my friends, who went from Windows to Ubuntu, just because of thouse fancy 3D effects. Why not try to repeat this again? As somebody truly pointet out, that new users are drawn to a desktop because of its looks, not if the usability is much better than the competitors ones, see Vista. The transparencies are horrible concerning interaction, but still today people tell me how great Vista looks and how much they love it. Anybody who's doing office work on Ubuntu can change the theme to a lighter one with an handfull of clicks. All the other ones will be drawn to that darker, unique one. Imho Open Moko has a good start on an orange-black interface, but it looks a little cheap. Maybe we could start here and try to merge this with Neils stuff. The only problem I see is the fact, that I don't know, how to get black and orange into an theme, tha looks both extraodynary and business-style. Here's a first test: <a href="http://guentherbeyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/ubuntu_804_theme_test_02b.png"> http://guentherbeyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/ubuntu_804_theme_test_02b.png</a></blockquote><div> I was actually just looking at some OpenMoko screenshots and thinking that they contained some of the stuff we need for Hardy. Maybe we read the same blogs? ;-P Anyway - I think that the black widget background is a bit over the edge. I'm a big fan of  black/dark themes normally, but no matter how much I like them I always end up resorting to a lighter theme. They are just not nice for my eyes. Another problem with dark themes is a purely technical one. I've done a handful dark themes myself, but they always end up with small glitches here and there because not all apps are designed to respect the theme 100% This makes for a bit of an amateurish feel in the long run. That is not acceptable for Hardy. Ofcourse broken app theming is a shame for us, but there is simply no way we can fix this for all known apps. Prominent ones like Firefox has problems among others (or atleast it used to - have not checked Gutsy with dark themes). </div> But the OpenMoko inspiration is a good thing IMHO. Cheers, Mikkel </div>