Mockups/new design discussions

In my experience, voting on UI encourages poor design. (Because voters don’t consider all the edge cases, like accessibility for example.)

Yes. Even if no system dialogs currently have either of the two exceptions I mentioned, some app dialogs do have them. And even if it’s a good idea to distinguish app dialogs vs. system dialogs, :man_shrugging: there are many more coherent ways to do it than changing the shape and size and layout and colour of the buttons all at once! Having a difference in all those things at once is likely to make users think that they were designed by different people who weren’t communicating.

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I agree about the voting.

I think the most important thing is that the buttons are consistent in their category and that we don’t have too much categories. All app dialogs should have the same button and all shell dialogs should have the same button, but I don’t see an issue in having big differences between app and shell dialog buttons, as long as it makes sense: all UI elements of shell are flat, for example, so it makes sense to also have shell buttons be flat. Most app elements have some depth in them, so it makes sense for all app buttons to also have some depth in them. The header bar, being something in-between, is thus semi-flat…?

I’m not really proposing anything, I’m just saying that I think it’s ok to have big differences between categories, as long as it’s consistently applied to everything in the category and as long as there aren’t too much categories.?

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Since we don’t have enough topics to discuss :smile: and since most of us weren’t happy with the new transparencies in gnome-shell, here’s a link to some example about top bar transparency and shadow. You can discuss on the link as well, but to keep this as open as possible, let’s keep the discussion here

https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Top-bar-transparency-and-shadow-2-VXfHqRr5PIYtzdEb5jUtE?_tk=share_copylink

(note: I used dropbox paper just because it has a very nice presentation view, that helps comparison)

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This is great work and presenting those options really helps!

However, It’s a little bit hard to tell via this link as you zoned the screenshot and not take a full screen. (At least, I have harder time to realize the entire desktop with it ;)).

I would be, though, in favor of: box-shadow 1px, 2px blur, spread 1 or 2px (don’t need to be too noticeable).

For the Dark panel version, I really think it should be solid, without opacity, and so I like your proposal of box-shadow: 0 1px 2px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3) here.

What do other people think?

I understand, but I preferred a side by side comparison

I can’t check now, but current version should be of box-shadow should be 1px 2px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.3) :+1:

So I’m the only one who loves the high transparency :smiley:

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Here is a recap of what are the objects of discussion with light and dark screenshots.

It is totally possible that the winner of this poll might not be the one shipping with 18.10

The switchers are three different parts of the shell but I merged them as one thing in this poll because they behave almost exactly the same:

So please vote in this public poll:

  • Everything dark
  • Dark popups, dark app/workspace/video-input switcher, dark OSD, dark dialogues, light notifications
  • Dark popups, dark app/workspace/video-input switcher, dark OSD, light dialogues, light notifications
  • Dark popups, dark app/workspace/video-input switcher, light OSD, light dialogues, light notifications
  • Dark popups, light app/workspace/video-input switcher, light OSD, light dialogues, light notifications
  • Everything light

0 voters

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New iteration on GNOME shell panel and dock. At this link you’ll find some mockups with solution proposed:

  • a desperate last attempt to keep transparency :smiley:
  • some darker top panel
  • some lighter top panel

I think you can even comment on the link, but better do it on this thread.
Note: on the link, double click on the pictures or they will be too small to see anything

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I think the panel should become opaque when the window is maximized. How about we leave transparency on the dock instead?

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I agree. If we have to keep the full solid top panel we should at least keep the transparency on the dock. The full solid dock looks very unsatisfying :smile:

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I remember this difference between dock and panel was the first we decided to remove.
I am not convinced this will solve current design, IMO it makes the screen a bit irregular and does not give us back the nice light from the wallpaper.

I think this one (without the orange) looks really good, but if you want something else @frederik-f has some nice suggestions in the issue here. Also, I don’t think we have to do something just because popular themes does it :wink:

image

+1
I know the reasons, but transparency does add a modern feel to it.
@godlyranchdressing just look at the United theme :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’ve tried to communicate this a few times, but just to be clear:
I’m -500 for polls in the future! I made a “what do you expect to see: A, B, C,…” to get an impression of what people felt belonged to the application. Maybe I didn’t make it clear that we wouldn’t implement the design that got the most votes - lesson learned! :expressionless:

+1 It looked better before.

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Hem, that’s what the 17.10 and 18.04 quickly crafted theme did :wink:

Agreed, especially with Intellihide.

Alright, I’ll prepare some mockups so we (mostly myself :D) can have a better view

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New series of mockups with dock transparency only

This time I anticipate that I am not convinced with this solution for the following reasons:

  • with dock on the right side (or with window controls on the left side) it is still possible to have some important window button under the dock and so visible to the user, but not clickable. Basically we’re going to have the same problem we had with the top panel
  • it looks out of place and a bit messy (but I agree this is not objective). Probably because it’s a simple flat panel, or because of the position (at the bottom of the screen, or with some blurriness, would be totally different).

EDIT: link fixed

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The popover alpha value is quiet low at the moment at 0.015. Increasing it by only 0.01 to 0.025 is a noticeable yet still usable change. Everything above makes it too transparent - the following is 0.025 (maybe even this is too much):

And to answer why this should not be used for notifications is that somehow this value is again far too low for a white background as you won’t notice any transparency at all on the notifications then (no idea why the alpha value has different results on dark and light backgrounds):
Current notification alpha 0.1 first without and then with mousover:


With popover_alph_value first without and then with mousover (no visible transparency):

Sorry to deviate a little, but are the popups more transparent on mouseover? Shouldn’t it be the opposite?

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I would fav 0.1 or 0.2. 0.3 seems too much imho
Very nice comparison!

:smile: ha that’s funny! @madsrh wished it this way =D It was the opposite before.

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oops, I should’ve missed that :slight_smile:

Uhm, What does not convince you about my observations against the dock transparency? :smiley:

Sorry, here we go: I fear this is the outcome of our “downstream” dock, which is has not been planed by the gnome designers. How does the ambiance shell does this?
I think it does not look messy with 0.1 because we now have the thin line at the edge of the maximized windows. Yet I understand that some might find the three colored areas (top panel, dock and window) to look odd.