budgie-rd
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solus-project
Budgie 11 HIG & mockups discussion (continued)
This is a follow up/continued discussion for Budgie 11 styling/theming. Previous discussion was on the budgie-desktop repo issue #763. For more background and already discussed ideas/mockups I suggest you to check it out.
Let's make Budgie 11 look great (again)!
Cheers for starting the new thread! Ok so from my perspective there are 2 clear things to avoid for us (aesthetically)
- Mimicking macOS
- Mimicking KDE
Ideally we want a new Budgie (Shell) specific theming component, with at least:
- Global control on UI accents
- Global toggle for dark/light mode
The rest should be well defined, and we need a palette. Personally I'm kinda tired of blue, it's overused as the de facto "this is professional" colour. Personally I'm hoping for something "light" and "fresh". If possible, I'm open to green. Psychologically speaking we kinda crave these things, and being sat in front of the computer for long periods, well, we should make sure our users "feel" good.
I'd like to avoid information overload, favouring progressive disclosure for settings and such. As the core mantra (and cliché) we want to keep out of the users way, but also look after them. Additionally the users need to own their experience, but with sane defaults. So it should be customisable at it's core.
Transparency and blur are nice when used sparingly, and when the user interface isn't modified solely to show off these blurs, rather it should take advantage of it. I'm in favour of a "nearly flat" UI approach as opposed to complete flat (depth + shadow are critical visual cues), as well as obvious layouts. You'll notice in more modern UIs the focus is on clear separation in column layouts.
I think its safe to say we also need to account for applications to some regard, so think of the "OS basics" and the System Settings (we won't be using GNOME Control Center).
Hopefully this opens the floor to a more open discussion and frees up some constraints (i.e we're not just focusing on the shell chrome, but more of a formal HIG.
To assist me (codemonkey) in implementing mockups, please provide hexadecimal colour schemes along with the various layout critical pieces (padding, font point sizes, etc.)
When I read that you were personally tired of blue, this is the color that immediately crossed my mind. And there it is in your very next line - "Green".
I think it might be worth us exposing parts of the palette to allow several "add-on" palettes. A typical pattern we see in GNOME applications is the use of red + blue for suggested-action and destructive-action. Unfortunately those are kinda no-go areas for colour blindness, etc.
So while we could use those in the core palette, a mechanism to change to another well defined palette is a must imho. Only core concepts such as accent, suggested (primary) and destructive (deletion). I think for much of Budgie we should at least provide undo mechanisms for dangerous actions instead of relying on scary "DON'T DO THIS" red buttons though.
If gnome settings not used, what will be used? Native or kde settings? As far as I know KDE is revamping their settings menu through QML. As budgie is going qt, latte dock can be considered for docking. It is well maintained.
We're not using KDE apps. We'll have our own settings application. Latte dock is separate and shouldn't be considered part of our project scope. It's third party.
We're still going to provide a full transition from Budgie 10 to Budgie 11, which means we still have a configurable and powerful panels system, Raven, etc.
@ikeydoherty If I may ask, why did you name it Raven? Were you reading Poe at the time? I do agree that the computing world (mobile, Windows, Linux. Mac) is very blue heavy (well, except for Ubuntu). Help us move towards greener fields. :smile:
Actually John McCormack helped name that. Basic idea was around the delivery of information and intelligence. Plus it kept the avian theme going.
Kaka parrot to the rescue http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/sites/all/files/Kaka%20on%20kowhai%20Wilton%20Sep%202013.jpg
Hope this may help adjust colour contrast: https://color.adobe.com/explore/?filter=newest
I like the theme right now. I think the shades of blue that were chosen are nice. For whatever reason I just think of SUSE when I think green. I do not know why it turns me off the color it just does. EDIT: ALso I feel that blue looks better with the Solus logo!
Since this is a open discussion :) I really like the thought of a global dark/white theme. The accent color is also important, I would however not focus so much on a specific standard color (blue, green etc) - I probably would want to change it anyway to match my desktop background. So to be able to change the accent color - I am thinking a few presets but also the ability to add your own hexadecimal values as well - would just add a little little extra for me. Of course there is always the option to create your own theme, "the Linux way" . But I think that is silly when you only want to change the accent color...
Reply to Ikey's "... use of red + blue ...colour blindness, etc." But could you use those colour concepts and get a colour blind persons input and add perhaps a subtle pattern. Thus enhancing the colour blind person experience and maintaining a "standard".
http://www.dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/psychology-of-color.png
I say red accents and a partnership with McDonalds lol! But seriously may be something to consider when picking colors, I personally like the blue but if there is going to be a true dark and light theme id say just invert the accents. Other than that you really can't go orange because many will think Ubuntu and green is okay if done right and in the right shade (Android system icons before they went blue) don't need people think Linux Mint when using Solus. And red isn't really a neutral color and is often used for a sign of importance or warning I can see the wide spread panic amongst users that don't read messages when a lot of red buttons come popping up 🤔
And stay away from yellow unless you want Solus to be known as the OS that makes babies cry lol!!
https://goo.gl/photos/pYPEdEn7fkEootzt5 I know it's Android but it's the closet device I had at the time but just wanted to give an example of how white and black could work and in a dark theme id say just invert the colors.
Like the retro look displayed above, seems like that could be very theme friendly, I actually think a legit theme engine in Solus would be something to consider. Not just something that stores and displays themes installed but something that would allow the user to tweak accents and background colors along with icons for system apps, notification drawer and application icons. Could be built in with budge settings or whatever settings manager is used in Budgie 11. Too bad icons built for Android can't be crossed over to Linux 🤔 Yeah pipe dreaming at the moment. But yeah I think user control would be the way to go and just have several accents to choose from like zorin without the need of paying for it.
One suggestion I'd like to see would be an improved alt-tab dialog. It's entirely functional at this point, but I feel it needs to be refined a bit.
For instance, it'd be nice if the alt-tab box were to auto-size to the number of windows opened. If I only have 2 windows open, for example, there's a ton of empty space on the right-hand side.
While that is primarily about design, in regards to behavior it'd be nice if we had the option to click-to-raise: currently, when you hover your mouse over the icons, nothing happens, when I'd expect it to be more like GNOME/Cinnamon/Windows/MacOS, which is that hovering will select an icon, and then clicking brings it to focus immediately. Current behavior is:
Hit alt-tab, dialog opens While holding alt, you can click an icon thereby selecting it The application in question does not come forward until you let go of alt
I personally think that it'd be more expected behavior to have hovering the mouse to select the icon, then releasing alt OR clicking the icon would bring it forward immediately. (So if you clicked it you wouldn't have to release the alt key)
Is there a plan to edit the Solus and Budgie logos as well? They currently have an "Arc" theme with the grey and blue (intentional?).
Sea greens, blues and greys to fit the nautical logo theme seems appropriate. Anyone own a Pantone swatch kit on the island? Go forth! Compare and record.
I would love to see a theme with these styles: flat with transparent elements or flat and morder style
I agree with @mrkucho, the second theme(https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1187179/) is just amazing.
It looks like a modern arc theme mixed with adapta, so this way budgie 11 style would still be very familiar and modernized. The green color is also perfect (named teal), as it is so material.
A simple wireframe idea for the "do not disturb" switch design (no icons of course, can be adapted to most design guidelines) vs. the current simple, somewhat Apple-like "do not disturb" Raven switch in the current budgie-rd build. Cheers!
@cunidev could you elaborate what would be the diffeerence between silent and do not disturb? I could think on a few possibilities...
- "silent" show in systray & raven, but not showing a popup.
- "silent" show only in raven, but don't indicate in systray, no popup as well.
- "dnd" dismiss all notifications, so no popup, nothing in tray, nothing in raven.
- "dnd" show in raven, no popup, no indicator etc.
While I personally dislike red in designs (too fretful for my taste, I get uneasy if something is red on my desktop), I've checked with a colleague who's red/green blind, and the design @mrkucho and @yaymalaga seem to prefer (Matcha) works. I'd certainly prefer it without red though.
@STiAT I was also thinking of separate switches for sound and popups, but then I thought I might be overcomplicating it for nothing.
So my idea was:
Normal: sound, popups, raven Silent: popups, raven DND (or maybe something like "Immersive" mode?): raven only
Not showing notifications even in Raven looks kinda pointless to me, as we'd basically be throwing them away for nothing. The systray icon should remain as it is, except maybe show a half-moon icon instead of a white or red bell to symbolize that there might be or not notifications, but you won't be bothered unless you check manually. Is the systray icon gonna remain anyway? Looks somewhat redundant, I'd rather have the unread notifications number near the Raven trigger...