Actually, and I already mentioned this to Phong, but that isn't a mockup,, rather what my panel looks like after tweaking my Ambiance theme. The Panel does follow the user preferences.
I don't feel like the unity pane and the window titlebar are the same thing, rather the panel provides titlebar-like functionality in the case of a maximized window with focus. All other times, the panel serves as a place for indicators, the menu, and the dash button. Additionally, it continues to serve this purpose while holding the window controls for maximized windows, which I feel keeps it further separate from the titlebar. The panel isn't a titlebar, it's more. In this case, it's a part of unity, and should be visually consistent with it.
In any case, it's visually inconsistent with everything when there is transparency set, since it matches neither unity nor the titlebar.
I guess what really needs to happen is that the panel, launcher, and dash all need to follow the user's theme preferences. Then, this (and similarly changed Radiance) would be default.
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 12:54, Conscious User
<conscioususer@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Additionally, with the window title and controls visible in the panel
> for maximized windows, I don't feel it's confusing for a user to
> understand that the panel *is* the title bar in that case. A panel
> that looks like the title bar is not required for this distinction to
> be apparent; the functionality takes care of this quite nicely.
I don't think Phong said anything about being confusing to the user.
I think he was simply talking about visual consistency, the same
motivation that made you write your first email.
In fact, in my personal opinion what you are proposing is *less*
consistent than what we currently have because the panel and the
launcher are currently different visually but at least they *are*
different things. What you are proposing will bring two different
visuals to *the same thing* (the titlebar).
Anyway, this whole discussion is not very relevant for the moment
because it is being based on the currently visual of the panel,
which is hardcoded. Much more important right now is making the
launcher themable by the Gtk theme. After that, discussions about
consistency can be brought up to the theme designers in the form
of bug reports.
Right now, with no theme support on the launcher, it doesn't
matter how great it would be making the launcher and the panel
consistent if they both look good on Ambiance but horrible on
Luminance.
--
Ian Santopietro
CEO - Prodigy Games
"Eala Earendel enlga beorohtast
Ofer middangeard monnum sended"
Pa gur yv y porthaur?