unity-design team mailing list archive

[Sam Hulick <samh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2/20/14 2:35 PM, Levan wrote:
> On 02/20/2014 17:45, Evan Huus wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 6:26 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas 
> > <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA1
> > >
> > > Sam Hulick wrote on 18/02/14 23:57:
> > > >  From a design standpoint, I have to disagree with multi-color tabs.
> > > > For Ubuntu it would be a step backwards, IMO, in trying to achieve
> > > > a cleaner, more modern look, which I know is one of their goals
> > > > lately.
> > > It's a good exercise, whenever tempted to describe an interface as
> > > "clean" or "modern", to try being more specific. ("Modern" in
> > > particular is a kind of fallacious appeal to novelty.)
> > >
> > > One specific problem with multi-colored tabs is that they would
> > > often be the most colorful thing on the screen, while being one of the
> > > least important things on the screen.
> > >
> > > > My suggestion would be to thicken the borders and/or shadows
> > > > between tabs to make them more distinct. Or possibly dim all but
> > > > the selected tab. In your first screenshot, it's visually
> > > > difficult to tell at a glance what my current tab is. There needs
> > > > to be some way to call out that tab.
> > > This is "Difficult to distinguish which tab is selected"
> > > <http://launchpad.net/bugs/762349>. It's not a problem for Radiance,
> > > where inactive tabs are darker. I don't know how it could be fixed for
> > > Ambiance, where the active tab is already nearly black. Mockups 
> > > welcome!
> > In the development version of Ambiance (running the latest 14.04 dev
> > version) the tabs are white and the active tab is nearly
> > indistinguishable even to my relatively good eyes. See, for example,
> > the screenshot in comment #14 of bug #762349. Simply darkening the
> > active tab (or adding an Ubuntu-orange highlight stripe or something)
> > is quite feasible and would alleviate much of the problem.
> >
> > Evan
> Just Like I mentioned in my first post I think we should make 
> colourful tabs something like this
>
> http://i.imgur.com/w2iNzJj.png   or http://i.imgur.com/0KvwSmO.png
>
> because It takes me more time then I want to spend on my tabs.
>
>  Sure it might not look great but I will take productivity over looks.
"Sure it might not look great" - That's not really fair to the general 
user base or overall design goals of Ubuntu. It should and can look 
great and still be highly usable. But that's the challenge of good UI/UX 
design, isn't it? :) I'd say if people insist having colored tabs, make 
it an option, and one that's not activated by default.

Evan: I don't think darkening the current tab is standard. Computer 
users are used to seeing things light up when active, not the opposite. 
Just a couple examples:

Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/1JnmWHX.jpg
Thunderbird: http://i.imgur.com/GzcDajA.jpg
OS X Mavericks: http://i.imgur.com/Ju5Pkcz.jpg

An important aspect of UX is keeping in line (to some extent) with what 
people find familiar.

-Sam