Creating Visual Guidelines for Xubuntu

[Santiago Roland]

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On 07/29/2012 06:16 AM, Eero Tamminen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On sunnuntai 29 heinäkuu 2012, Santiago Roland wrote:
>> * Gmusicbruwser: Should be replaced by Banshee.
> ...
>> Maybe a retouched version of VLC should replace all video players
>> around, Parole in this case.
> 
> It would help if these kind of proposals would be formulated
> according to the selection criteria given in the Xubuntu Strategy
> document.
> 

I would be glad that someone point me in the right direction regarding
topics like i mentioned. I did not know what specific steps to take
and please tell me if i'm in the wrong mailing list, i'll try to
follow your instructions and avoid being off topic.

> 
> 
>> * Themes: Xubuntu should have a light theme by default and not
>> trying to imitate Ubuntu ambiance theme or others, light themes
>> are better for understanding, reading and it is well demonstrated
>> that light themes are better for the understanding of the mind.
> 
> While I don't have any contrary evidence, this sounds just as your
> own opinion...
> 
> Could you point out the research studies or other non-anecdotal
> evidence which gave these results?
> 
> (The studies should include information about the used display
> refresh rates and how long people have looked at the display
> continuously.)
> 

I think it's ok asking for references, i'm a scientist myself so i
should have cited my statements to clarify that. If you want to learn
more about display color schemes, there are several studies about it
(i mentioned because i often read articles like that, it is not just
my opinion). I can point you to this article:

http://uxmovement.com/content/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background/

that states black text over white/shade of gray is better for reading.
It has some biological reasons regarding the eye, but you can go
deeper if you want

Algo you can chech out this article:

http://www.laurenscharff.com/research/AHNCUR.html

That shows some good statistics in reaction time of reading something,
and includes also different types of fonts.

You can also check out this survey of color test:

http://www.laurenscharff.com/research/survreslts.html

and many of this results belong to website-oriented researches and
surveys for they to have the best reception and the best readability.

You can try out yourself this elemental color test and honestly
evaluate them:

http://www.laurenscharff.com/research/colorsurvey.html

As a final comment about ligh/dark themes: I do work (for the last 11
years) in a no-light room. I'm an astronomer and i work in a room with
4 LCD monitors next to the telescope room. In that place, white-rich
light themes leaves my eyes blind when i step in to the telescope
room. So we developed a dark color scheme for that machines plus a
decreased contrast and brightness in monitor settings. This color
scheme is fine because the place is dark and we need to not get blind
by monitors, and nights are 8-12hrs long.

I also tweaked that color scheme to make it more fashion and uploaded
to gnome-look a couple of years now, but we had this for years in the
observatory. You check it out in my spanish blog:

http://elasterismo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tema-de-escritorio-dark-para-gnome.html

Everyday people do not work in a place like that, so the light (shade
of gray) theme is more eye friendly and increases reaction times, help
searching ans scanning in file managers, reading and people even apply
this to webpages.


>> Thats why the kindle is black text over white surface and not
>> backwards,
> 
> Kindle uses electronic ink screen which has different display
> properties from LCDs (and CRTs) used in computers where Xubuntu is
> installed.
> 
> Also, ebooks try to imitate books.  Normal paper of course has also
> different display properties from LCDs. :-)
> 

But humans are very used to read black text in white background. I
know that maybe a dark theme makes our machines look cooler, and
hacker style, but that is for 15 minutes, or for watching a video...
if you have to work on it and read, you will wish someone make a good
light theme (with a subtle shade of gray instead of pure white)
because you will be more productive. The dark theme should be equally
well designed, but as a second choice, maybe asked during installation?

> 
> - Eero
> 
Best Regards to everyone.

- -- 
Santiago Roland.-
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