unity-design team mailing list archive

[Charlie Kravetz <cjk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:56:23 +0100
Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Personally another earthy colour scheme isn't what im looking for. I
> like notify-osd I think its slick but at the moment its a little out
> of place with the desktop look. So in that way maybe making a darker
> theme to match might work well but not brown please not brown. Like a
> light grey might be nice IMO. 
> The gnome-colors thing sounds very interesting I think it should be
> looked into. It would solve the issues of themes and colour. It seems
> a little limited though it only has 6 different colours but it is a
> step in the right direction. The one thing we have to keep in mind
> that space on the cd is limited so anything we add will have to be
> fairly small. 
> 
> Regards 
> Shane_Fagan
> 
> On Sun, 2009-06-21 at 21:24 +0800, Allan Caeg wrote:
> > I forgot to mention. I am also suggesting adjusting the current
> > Human theme to something more "chocolate-ey" if including the
> > themes under discussion would not be possible. 
> > 
> > I failed to add the links to the project I was referring to. Sorry.
> > 
> > Here it is http://code.google.com/p/gnome-colors/
> > 
> > Shiki-Colors gtk
> > http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Shiki-Colors?content=86717
> > 
> > GNOME-Colors icon theme
> > http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/GNOME-colors?content=82562
> > 
> > 
> > On Sun, 2009-06-21 at 21:17 +0800, Allan Caeg wrote:
> > > Ubuntu always had an earthy color scheme, one with brown and
> > > orange. There have been a lot of discussions about this because
> > > many users have violent reactions. However, it is difficult to
> > > veer away from the color scheme because it defines Ubuntu very
> > > much and the rationale behind it is reasonable. 
> > > 
> > > Perfectska04 has a famous GNOME theme suite. Probably, a lot of
> > > you are familiar to it and are using it. He has a set of icon
> > > themes, GDM themes, and gtk themes that have different color
> > > schemes. His latest color scheme is the "Dust" variant. This
> > > scheme's look and feel is based on the color of chocolate. Prior
> > > to that, he always had a "Human" variant, which is orange. The
> > > Dust variant feels more earthy and looks much more elegant. For
> > > some reason, I am much more comfortable with the chocolate feel.
> > > Maybe because orange really feels cheaper. It has always been
> > > associated with low end products and services while a dark shade
> > > of brown, in my opinion, reminds the user of chocolate and
> > > leather. 
> > > 
> > > Shiki-Dust and GNOME-Dust fit the Ubuntu desktop very well
> > > because of the look and feel that they create. It is earthy like
> > > the Human theme, just more elegant, in my opinion. There may be
> > > some usability issues because of the dark elements of the theme
> > > but the only known bug due to its dark nature is a small color
> > > issue in Firefox which is fixed by adding a user style mentioned
> > > in
> > > http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Shiki-Colors?content=86717 . 
> > > 
> > > Jaunty included Dust and New Wave as alternative themes. I
> > > believe that Shiki is much more bug-free and elegant than most
> > > themes and it is in very active development. In fact, OpenSuSE
> > > 11.2's default theme (Sonar) is based on the green variant,
> > > GNOME-Wise, of the theme suite. I suggest at least including the
> > > Dust variant of GNOME-Colors to the future versions of Ubuntu as
> > > an alternative theme to Human, if not as a default. I understand
> > > that it has a little different set of principles from the Human
> > > icon theme as it includes application icons. This can easily be
> > > fixed by not including those icons, though. 
> > > 
> > > I am sending this to the Ubuntu Artwork Theme and Ayatana
> > > discussion because its an artwork issue that can be included in
> > > the 100 papercuts. 
> > > 
> > > Here is a link to the screenshot of my desktop with the GNOME-Dust
> > > theme. http://g.imagehost.org/view/0082/Screenshot
> > > 
> > > Best Regards 

While we are discussing these darker themes, could we *please* keep
accessibility in mind. Having visual impairments does not always mean
blind. Some of us can not read certain combinations. 

For example, with my eyes and impairments, I can not read white text
on black background without a lot of work. It just blurs, and takes
several minutes to distinguish the letters. Others can read white on
black. There are other colors just as bad. I can log in on the new GDM
screen, because I am very familiar with it and know that is what the
big white box wants. I type my name, hit enter, type my password, hit
enter, and wait. If it doesn't log in, I must have made a mistake. It
would be nice to know that because it said so, but I can not read white
on black. 

I can not read a blog or website that uses black background most of the
time. This is very much an accessibility item, I think. If not, it most
definitely is a usability, since I can not use that color combination. 

This may be why I dislike the OSD notifications, also. I really can not
read them.

-- 
Charlie Kravetz 
Linux Registered User Number 425914          [http://counter.li.org/]
Never let anyone steal your DREAM.           [http://keepingdreams.com]