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

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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@didrocks pointed out that GNOME is eventually going to scrap the dark theme. I don’t know the specifics of it. In any case, making a dark theme would really only require changing some values:

$bg_color: if($variant == 'light', #e8e8e7, #33393b);
$fg_color: if($variant == 'light', #2e3436, #eeeeec);

Many of the other colors in a theme are usually based on those (the border color in Adwaita is just $bg_color darkened a bit) so it’s not an either/or kind of situation.

And of course, there’s nothing to stop anyone from forking the end result and making whatever tweaks they like.

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Hi.

I’m really liking all the progress so far.

The newer dark mode posted on the design mockups thread is really looking good.

I have an question: On the login screens that I’ve seen so far the Ubuntu logo have the circle above the “u” colored. Is this mandatory? Wouldn’t you guys think it would look better being monochrome?

Has anybody considered that a completely translucent dock does work well with a dark theme ?


I personally think a lot of this would be easier if the ubuntu dock had all the functionality that d2d has .

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A lot of the shell mockups have the launcher and header quite dark when the window is not maximised. I actually like the current shell theme, which has them very transparent. The change when they fade to much darker colours is a mini “wow” moment when you maximise. In terms of the colours, all I would change from the 17.10 shell is to make the top bar flat and black (or very dark grey) when maximised, to go with the modern theme.

Really like how the windows are shaping up in the mockups thread - looks like the designers are circling around a flatter version of the Ambiance scheme (light window with dark header bar) which is exactly what I hoped for :slight_smile:

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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Dash to Dock merits and support

Thanks for the reply. I am aware of all that and have logged a bug report about it . specifically the ability to move the apps button .
The Ubuntu desktop team can’t possibly support all the config options of dash-to-dock, that’s why they are hidden. You can change them yourself, but know that it’s a config that is not tested by Ubuntu QA.
I dont even know why this is an issue . And the end user should have an easy way to theme their ui to their liking . Im an end user with higher than average skills and i dont want to have to fire up dconf to change things either.
But back to the theme . I think a transparent dock has great eye appeal and is less distracting all at the same time , but when over a light background the icons can be lost. if when the dock comes into contact or pops out over a window it should become smoky to provide a better focus on the icons.

@godlyranchdressing’s recent screenshot showing a maximised window looks great - I’d be very happy with that!

What if we tried icons that behaved in a similar way to Windows 10’s Start Menu when they have alerts? Not by way of 3D animations but even just a simple icon overlay. If an application (say Thunderbird) had a notification (new email), a simple Gaussian blur would cover the image and the number of waiting alerts on top.

To continue the Thunderbird example, when an email arrives in my inbox, the overlay would appear and drop a nice little 1 on top of the blur. This effect would last for maybe 3-5 seconds and then would disappear. For every new email after that the number would increase until the application is noticed.

I’m working on a concept in Premiere as we speak.

Gentle reminder: This thread is about a community-led Ubuntu default theme.

I have migrated all the D2D discussion to a new thread.

Please try to avoid hijacking threads. It discourages contribution by others, and lowers your reputation with the group. We don’t want that.

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Hi all,

Further to my last post… I’ve been playing around with animations. I wonder if the launcher was darkened in some mockups to evoke Unity 8? I think the current shell (with the very transparent launcher) and fade effect also work with an orange Ubuntu logo, and the combination resembles Unity 8 (a little!) when a window is maximised.

Anyway, excuse the lousy quality, but I made an animated mockup and filmed it on my phone, lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mTyVpjo_e4

I don’t actually think the grid of dots needs to be replaced with an Ubuntu logo - but I think it works either way.

@ThemeRefresh

Can’t we use this for breadcrumbs ? Looks much better than we have in latest mockups

Ref :https://community.ubuntu.com/t/design-mockups-updates-designer-only/2053/43?u=meetdilip

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