D16937: Make Kickoff separators leaner (less opaque) and narrower (the length of a highlighted menu item)

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  If we had a discussion on the level of the community on general approaches to design in the future, that would really allow for better orientation in changes like these.
  
  It seems that excessive minimalism is something that is going to be overcome, but there is also no going back.
  
  Fluidity in design, as often brought to life through means of transparency and blurring, is not going away and is popular with users. We should pay attention to the fact a probably non-significant percentage of users actually likes making Plasma more fluid than in already is (and that said users sometimes have to resort to Kvantum to fully fulfill these desires). As an indicator of this, for instance, we can observe the designs utilized in top posts in r/unixporn:
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/search?q=plasma&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=top&t=all
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/search?q=kde&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&sort=top
  
  But it's not just the users; there's e.g. Microsoft Fluent Design and there's even a very fluid and interesting example in the Linux world. <https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/11/15/deepin15-8/>. This screenshot <https://www.deepin.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/02_en.jpg> in particular can be really useful as an example of how to subtly create distinction in the UI.
  
  Why is it important to reflect on this in this specific case?
  
  Drawing prominent separators from edge to edge with the explicit goal of wanting to break up a potentially transparent UI into pieces is going against the aforementioned fluidity. As an illustration, the Opal theme from the previous screenshot stands to lose some of its visual appeal as a result. It's precisely the edge-to-edge placement that is a sure-shot way or breaking up the UI... we need to be really careful not to do go the old route of ridigly separating UI elements. Separators could nonetheless work if they're subtle and I believe they can still add structure, even if they're not drawn edge-to-edge.

REPOSITORY
  R119 Plasma Desktop

REVISION DETAIL
  https://phabricator.kde.org/D16937

To: rooty, ngraham, #vdg
Cc: romangg, filipf, plasma-devel, ragreen, Pitel, ZrenBot, lesliezhai, ali-mohamed, jensreuterberg, abetts, sebas, apol, mart
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