Release Mode

[Andreas Hartmetz]

Am Samstag 17 November 2007 22:28:12 schrieb Eike Hein:
> Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > i have, and imo it looks waaaay better without the splitters jumping out
> > and smacking me across the face. some of the more popular kde3 styles
> > also did similarly.
>
> True dat. Here's a few shots of Michael Lentner's excellent
> Domino style engine, which currently represents the state
> of the art in KDE 3 style engines in terms of graphical
> sophistication and meeting modern expectations of cohesive-
> ness rather than "blockyness":
>
> http://www.eikehein.com/konq-domino.png
> http://www.eikehein.com/korganizer-domino.png
> http://www.eikehein.com/kcmstyle-domino.png
>
> IMO it makes a pretty good case for a rather "line-free"
> look. I'm happy that Oxygen follows that lead, and improves
> over Domino with a number of unique characteristics that
> give it (and thus KDE) visual identity, such as the original
> group box design. There's obviously work left to be done, a
> lot even, but the direction is strategically sound.
>
My take on this:
All the little lines and frames in the average KDE 3 style are unhelpful 
because there are far too many of them. The clutter doesn't make the styles 
look good either.
Compare a typical KDE 3 style to a newspaper page. It's easy to tell apart the 
different parts of the newspaper without (or with very few) frames. Imagine 
how ugly the newspaper would be with the amount of frames we have in KDE 3.
Small differences in spacing (or background color - you cannot do this in a 
newspaper) are apparently easily perceivable and they look so much better 
than frames. You also often recognize that elements belong together because 
that immediately makes sense, not because they are in the same frame.
I think that a newspaper page is a valid analogy because it has historically 
always been a goal to fit as much information on a single page as possible.
I assume that newspapers (tabloids excluded) are well-designed because they 
have been refined for such a long time.

-> Hooray for no frames!