Call for participation: an ubuntu default theme lead by the community?

To get to this screen, the user must’ve already removed the “lock screen shield” by pulling it or pressing enter.

Apple’s design also has very difficult to see hairline-thin icons are a a big loss to usability. While it’s very beautiful, it’s been slammed repeatedly for being a UX disaster. Having a usable UI is one of the constraints of this design, and design without constraints is just art.

The black fine line gown down along Nautilus window, between the shortcuts and the suru icons, is not that pretty. It look like a bit W95 in a way!

@madsrh Kindly do not restrict highlighting to dots. Background highlighting gives a better UX. Dots are not easy to spot. Especially when we take the launcher to bottom.

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@luxamman @madsrh facenated about your muckups and discations about trasparicy and round corners thought you might have a look at Mist theme:
Mist Gnome-Shell

Slightly unrelated, but I just wanted to give a heads up. There was an interesting chat about themes, design and the community involvment on LinuxUnplugged - about halfway in (30+ minuttes).

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/120287/hacking-the-community-lup-225/

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@madsrh

The gray / red dot difference in is almost invisible for me. I think the difference between open/closed app should be made more clear. I like the square highlight as it was on the Ubuntu phone…

29Nov17_ActiveIndicatorDockGrayDot

image

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@luxamman I tried with rounded avatars, ubuntu colours and so on

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I also sat down one evening to create my own utopian version of GNOME on Ubuntu after I’ve read the wonderful “Finding Ubuntu” article, so my concepts are heavily inspired by it. I have switched some of the elements around and I’ve included the menu from “Finding Ubuntu”, but with some tile-like functionality that I would really like to see. The way it is right now would also deal with the confusion about the “Activities” button - I’ve replaced it with the menu that GNOME normally has on the right side. This way, maximized windows would still have the buttons on the right side & the closing with the mouse would still work without any precision. I’ve also lined up the workspaces in the activities overview on the right side with the top bar elements. Probably to radical and not realizable, but I’d love to hear your opinions on it!
First one with Ubuntu Orange:


Second one that would showcase dynamic colour:

And just the minimal desktop with activated title & window controls (if there would be an application in focus):

And without any application in focus:

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I think there are a lot of great suggestions here, but it surprises me that not more people have suggested to base the GTK theme of Arc. I think Arc is the theme that by far looks most modern and flat, as well as being a consistent theme that works well with the default Gnome shell theme in 17.10 (I am only talking about the GTK-part of Arc).

Here is an example of how the Arc GTK theme looks with the default 17.10 Gnome shell theme and the Suru icons:

Which software do you guys use for the mockup ?

I personally just use Inkscape, but there’s also Pencil, which is more limited but arguably friendlier. Since I’m limiting my suggestions to free and Linux-friendly software those are the only two programs I know of. :laughing:

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Hello @didrocks ! Is still help needed? How can i participate, if yes? :slight_smile: Thx!
So beautiful to be part of this project!

As a fan of Adwaita and vanilla GNOME, allow me to ask (again) a couple of things:

a)
If it is the goal of the main developers to stick as close as possible to upstream GNOME and to Adwaita, is it perhaps a thought to just use Adwaita theme and adjust only the colours, in other words the bare essentials?

b)
I have read that we are thinking about a new theme, but not about the GNOME Shell itself anymore. Does this mean that it is beyond debate that the Desktop will remain active - hence containing the trashcan and files that you put there - and that the Ubuntu Dock will be kept as is? …

I, for one, hope we can think about moving even closer to a vanilla GNOME session, removing the active desktop, maybe the minimize buttons as well? That will leave us with a vanilla GNOME experience, but with Ubuntu branding. Am I the only one who would love to see this happen?

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You’re not the only one TonyS. I do like Adwaita as well/. It’s clear, neat and we have the choic,e either to have a clear, or a dark interface. Except the size of the header bar I like this theme. it’s simple and fits to the common user needs.
I do like also the proposal of the community, particulary the job of pojntfx and mister wfpaisa.
As JAgger said: “@wfpaisa, I really like your clean design, but personally would love to see it with a dark Ubuntu-style title bar and (flat) orange circle around the “x” button”. I do agree with that design. But none of you has built a complete dark theme!
Will it be still possible to switch from a clear to a dark interface with he new theme (as we can do so easily today with Adwaita)?
Will we vote to choose the theme for the next relaese?

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@marcosaillard , I think dark theme will come when light theme is ready.

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https://ubuntucommunity.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/optimized/2X/4/4dd9b36fd1eb6a751dd98fd47799ffa6bd44584e_1_690x388.png

Is it just me or the black text and sidebar border are a bit too harsh on the eyes ? Their contrast with the associated grey background and white folder area is a bit annoying to me.

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Your not alone mate . The only issue i have with awaita is the headerbar size .

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Thanks meetdilip, I see where you heading! But for now, we need to stick to the Gnome base and find a straight line thru the system.

Thanks pojntfx for further developing my concept of “Finding Ubuntu” - nice to see that it inspires you! I think you’re right when searching for new and better concepts, maybe my “Finding Ubuntu” concept is too close to Gnome, but also I don’t want to be too much of Windows. It’s hard these days to be original^^ Keep on searching!

That is very true, I tested the dark theme and it is a quite wonderful theme! It’s not completely flat, but I also don’t want to find an only flat design. What I think is, that we want to start something original and not start to rewrite other stuff. That sometimes brings a lot of tuning but also gives us the opportunity to be much more “Ubuntu like”.

Now Adobe XD (not perfect rendering but really fast for prototyping) or Indesign, Illustrator for icons and so on.

For my understanding it is for now just a theme, so we should stick close to the upstream. But like the Ubuntu theme in 17.10 there are some possibilities to change certain things to be more Ubuntu and more usable. It makes not so much sense for me to just repaint Gnome because in that case you just can use Gnome.
Personally, I like the dock because of the quick overview and the common workflow. I also like the window min/max buttons (like a lot of ordinary users). Maybe we can fix some flaws, but for me it’s clear, that we don’t need two similar working Gnome.

For now we only work on the dark theme^^

Thanks for your input, it should be clear it is work in progress and the window content was just a copy of the original “Files”. It’s already updated but like said before, this will need a lot of testing and finetuning.

Of course this is the place to suggest that for default but, for users who desparately want a more vanilla GNOME session, you should just run sudo apt install gnome-session and customize from there. Many users really hate vanilla GNOME and want more customizations. But yes, I understand that it is Ubuntu’s desire (according to didrocks’ blog) to move closer to vanilla GNOME… But perhaps more moves in that direction should be made by 20.04 LTS rather than 18.04 LTS, and maybe the direction will change by then, if people really like Ubuntu’s customizations.

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