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Refine GUI look and feel?

Open Splitwirez opened this issue 4 years ago • 17 comments

Currently, Jaya uses the default Avalonia theme as its default theme. Personally, I think we could do better. Normally my taste is stuck in 2003, but I decided to try to put that aside, and created this mockup: I was aiming for a more refined version of what Windows 10's File Explorer seems to be going for. Thoughts?

(also no, I'm not suggesting we steal Windows 10's icons, I just hadn't yet figured out what to do instead)

Splitwirez avatar May 26 '20 16:05 Splitwirez

Install something like expandrive or cyberduck and see the differencies. I miss something but i don't know.

giorgiozoppi avatar May 27 '20 19:05 giorgiozoppi

Er...CyberDuck seems to just use standard Windows visual styles, and ExpanDrive literally inserts itself into File Explorer...are you implying we should try to mimic Windows 10's appearance exactly?

Splitwirez avatar May 27 '20 22:05 Splitwirez

No, we should evaluate the competitors and see what strategy fits better to us. So i will ask you a reserarch on different file manager and produce a kind of presentation. Does it make sense?

giorgiozoppi avatar May 28 '20 06:05 giorgiozoppi

Yeah, this makes sense but as of now we are just 3 people on this project unless we have someone willing to conduct extensive market research to rule out good features from file managers in market which we shall also provide. The initial inspiration for me was Windows 10 file manager as of in UI and feature set it provides, so we have been trying to take in research what MS has already done for us.

waliarubal avatar May 29 '20 06:05 waliarubal

True...but this particular issue post isn't about features. It's just about the app's appearance.

Do you two want Jaya to be visually pleasing, or is that just me?

Splitwirez avatar May 29 '20 14:05 Splitwirez

Well I want it to be visually pleasing just like Windows 10 file explorer. People do care about UI and UX. Well, that's my take of it.

waliarubal avatar May 29 '20 15:05 waliarubal

Hm...I'd like if we could all agree on a single design to aim for, as that would allow me to get started and know exactly what I'm working towards. Does that make sense to you?

Splitwirez avatar May 29 '20 16:05 Splitwirez

An alternative proposed style was raised on Gitter:

I'll be preparing a Jaya mockup based on this look fairly soon.

Splitwirez avatar May 29 '20 17:05 Splitwirez

corresponding mockup, as promised.

Splitwirez avatar May 29 '20 21:05 Splitwirez

@Splitwirez this is far better. I will put optional recent files in order to have more space.

giorgiozoppi avatar May 29 '20 21:05 giorgiozoppi

@Splitwirez this seems to me perfect solution for presenting tabbed interface. We may put up some minor tweaks, excellent for starting things up. Nicely done, what about the dark theme part of it?

Dark is the new blew these days!

waliarubal avatar Jun 01 '20 08:06 waliarubal

@Splitwirez and what about the toolbar interface which we are already providing? Will that be included?

waliarubal avatar Jun 01 '20 08:06 waliarubal

@Splitwirez this seems to me perfect solution for presenting tabbed interface. We may put up some minor tweaks, excellent for starting things up. Nicely done, what about the dark theme part of it?

Excellent. Now that you've approved the light theme, I'll get started on a corresponding dark variant.

@Splitwirez and what about the toolbar interface which we are already providing? Will that be included?

I definitely think we should keep the Toolbar option...though I think there's ample room for improvement over Jaya's existing Toolbar UI. I guess that's another mockup for me to make.

Splitwirez avatar Jun 01 '20 13:06 Splitwirez

How does this look for the dark variant?

Splitwirez avatar Jun 01 '20 14:06 Splitwirez

This seems OK to me, what about yourself @giorgiozoppi?

waliarubal avatar Jun 01 '20 15:06 waliarubal

@waliarubal ok

giorgiozoppi avatar Jun 01 '20 15:06 giorgiozoppi

Alrighty, here's the winning pair of mockups: I'll be starting work on implementing this look now.

Splitwirez avatar Jun 03 '20 00:06 Splitwirez