A look at GNOME 2.14, comparison to KDE

[Leo Savernik]

Am Mittwoch, 22. Februar 2006 20:45 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> On Wednesday 22 February 2006 10:44, Leo Savernik wrote:
> > This makes up for a blurry, not distinct, not clearly visually separable
> > transition, causing the impression of a lack of polish.
>
> well, i find most of our "must have a clear visual separation between every
> element" to be highly distasteful. it leaves us with dozens of 1px and 2px
> lines everywhere that look just awful. while a draftsman may appreciate the
> radical approach to delineation ;) , many (myself included) find it ugly.

Agreed, 2px is too heavy at any rate. 1px is only heavy if the contrast to the 
adjacent color is too big (e. g. black line on light gray bg). Selecting a 
lighter frame color will make it visible enough to serve its separating means 
yet it won't "jump into your face".
>
> but we're ok in this instance anyways because:
> > I'll demonstrate the issue on the images you provided. Looking at
> > http://bddf.ca/~aseigo/konqi_deframed3.png, you can see the status bar
> > blur into the content area (attachment statusbar-blur.png).
>
> this was due to my using lipstik rather than the default plastik for the
> widget style. i had turned off taskbar frames because our overuse of frames
> in some apps like konq made the removal of them nice. if you turn on
> statusbar frames it looks "proper" again.
>
> here is the konqi_deframed3.png with the default plastik:
>
> http://bddf.ca/~aseigo/konqi_deframed6.png

"Ahh! Much better!"*

Then please go ahead and commit it. This will finally make Konq's fullscreen 
mode adhere to fitt's law. (Wait, no it doesn't because the fscking tabwidget 
does have a border, too. But we're on the right track :-) )
>
> it looks similarly nice with lipstik with statusbar frames turned on. in
> fact, with "flat" headers in listpik, i think it looks even nicer than
> plastik since it makes the headers, which aren't the most informationally
> important part of the window (the file listing is), not as prominent.

I also consider lipstik's lightweight listpik frames much more pleasing to the 
eye than the default black frames of plastik. However, doing totally without 
frames degrades the look again if the background colors of the adjacent 
widgets are too similar.

Therefore, I propose for the upcoming visual design goals that for the 
adjacency of two different colors a minimum contrast is to be maintained.
>
[...]
> > Well, my point is: Either you do the whole amount of work to make KDE
> > really shine, or you leave it as is. Fixing one visual glitch by opening
> > up another is not the way to enhance a stable release.
>
> this is quite different than just saying "punt". and i'd much rather have a
> lesser visual defect than a greater one. 

I just feel it to be the other way round. I need structured visualisation. 
Blurry lines make my head ache ;-)

mfg
	Leo

* courtesy of Duke Nukem. DN4ever to be released next year along with GNU 
Hurd ;-)