KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/containments/folderview

[Marco Martin]

2008/5/26 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>:
> On Sunday 25 May 2008, Marco Martin wrote:
>> On Saturday 24 May 2008, Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
>> > That's art issue, I don't want to sound harsh... but it's not really his
>> > field. =)
>
> i don't know how to put this kindly. the current artwork in plasma is really
> not that good.

think it's more important to come up with something at least good
enough for 4.1 than to be kind,
 once that thing is done, valium for all! :)
it's really bad that this problem emerged only now and not say, one month ago :(

now, the new theme designed by nuno has been mostly secret for a while
(by fear of publishing it too early will look old already by 4.1
release, sigh), i will talk to him about these problems and will
publish it somewhere to make it possible to discuss it and reach a
more agreed position.
think btw changing it too much would be bad because it shares the
design with the new kdm theme.

> now, you're right that i'm not an artist in that i'm not someone who can fire
> up inkscape and draw something. however, i have an aesthetic sense and i've
> been involved in more than a few corporate projects (both as participant as
> well as in a directorial role).
>
> now, i've been sitting back hoping that someone with some real aesthetic sense
> would actually step up and start playing art director.
>
> because that's really what's needed: someone to provide some visual design
> that can step above the "hm... this one particular widget over here needs
> this particular tweak" mentality and start thinking of the whole.
don't really think one background "one size fits all" will ever be possible,
if the scope and look of two applets is really different probably the
background has to be different,
with a similar stile but still. and probably really two or three
categories would be needed, no more

> it'd be a lot less work than maintianing the current patchwork or art we have
> right now.
>
> it would also require the ability to think about things from an interaction
> perspective. Sebas already covered the interaction implications of this
> particular change. that's the kind of thought that needs to augment the
> aesthetic sensibilities.
>
>> > Plus, we're currently redoing that background...
>>
>> yeah, the new background (at least the last iteration i know of) is very
>> black and very opaque ond loooks really nice also because of that.
>
> great, we're heading further in the direction of ugly. i'm really not sure at
> what point someone thought that using a mostly black screen would be
> something everyone would think is cool. this isn't a turtleneck sweater and
> this isn't a beatnick party.
>
>> for most of the applets, especially those myth much text a theme like
>> glassified that is very transparent is simply a no-no, not enough contrast
>> and well, it looks odd.
>
> with a more translucent background (it's not transparent, btw) one relies on
> the wallpaper more.
>
> but, low and behold, we've been relying on wallpapers for.. how long now?
> right: for ever. to be able to read icon texts.
>
> what *would* be better is if we could have some nice (performant) bluring
> done, but we won't get that in 4.1 due to some odd limitations in Qt.

yeah, but i really can't imagine an applet like twitter with all that
text blurred, it would really be terrible
or the taskbar with all blurred text behind it.. what would happen
instead is that all applets would start to
 draw their opaque background over the background, so a similar situation.

>> i am for a transparent background just for this applet with this
>> http://reviewboard.vidsolbach.de/r/17/
>> (temporary ugly artwork but that's the concept)
>
> this is at least better. i'm still not impressed, so i don't expect users to
> be either, but it gives us something more than transparency.
>
>> or,  maybe even better using that background for a certain category of
>> applets (let's say big, with more graphics than text) with something like
>> setBackgroundHints(Applet::LightBackground) so the applet class loads
>> another svg
>> how does that sounds?
>
> marginally better.
>
> it all smacks of "throw darts at the solution board and see what we hit"
> though. it also smacks of "yeah, it's an artwork issue, but let's solve it
> with more code."

now http://reviewboard.vidsolbach.de/r/17/ uses this way now,
yeah, i see problems with it but i still kinda prefer it

> mostly i'm just very disapointed that this particular change made it into the
> code base. if it isn't out before i leave for my flight tomorrow, i will be
> removing it directly myself.
reverted already iirc.


Cheers,
Marco Martin
> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
> GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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