[plasmashell] [Bug 427030] Move Taskmanager background highlight bar to the opposite side

[Claudius Ellsel]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427030

--- Comment #18 from Claudius Ellsel <claudius.ellsel at live.de> ---
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #17)
> > Other arguments include that there might be good other reasons why the
> > opposite style is used that extensively and that "Plasma" itself uses this
> > opposite style for the highlight of list (?) items - see the attachment.
> If we don't know the reason, then we'd be blindly copying them on the
> assumption that they're right and we're wrong. Without concrete evidence
> that it is actually better, "everyone else is doing it" isn't a valid reason.

It would be some kind of educated guessing, so not exactly blindly. But I
totally understand your point and that is why I didn't want to present it to
you as an argument in the first place (I hope I made that clear).

You did not address the argument that it is currently proposed to use that
style for selecting things in sidebars like dolphin for Breeze.

> (In reply to Claudius Ellsel from comment #16)
> > The main argument was that users are probably accustomed to the opposite
> > style, yes.
> Got it. So this would be the "user familiarity" argument.
> 
> 
> While there is an inherent Jakob's Law argument that consistency with what
> people are familiar with is good, this only goes so far; it cannot be taken
> to its logical conclusion that even minor aesthetic choices must be copied,
> or else we will be drawn to copy 100% of Windows or Android or whatever just
> because it's probably what everyone else is familiar with. This makes us a
> cheap and inferior copy and there is no reason not to simply use the
> original instead. See also
> https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Design/Lessons_Learned#Copying_Apple

Understood. I'd argue that it is not about copying them, but to use the common
style for selection highlighting which is not only used by Windows, but all
over the place as I hopefully layed out quite exhaustively. So stating this
would result in a copy of any specific thing is not justified by that
argumentation I think. To me this still feels like some design principle and
not just an aesthetic choice (but that are my feelings not really backed by
hard facts). Arguing that this is some minor thing might be true, though.

> I don't think this very minor aesthetic thing is worth changing. If you
> disagree and prefer the opposite style where the indicator bar is far from
> the content area rather than close to it, you're welcome to create a Plasma
> theme that does so. That's why we have theming: so that people who don't
> agree with the default aesthetic choices can self-satisfy. Who knows, maybe
> it will be so popular that lots of people will start using it and distros
> will ship it by default and we'll be encouraged to accept the change.
> Stranger things have happened. :)

I don't like moving away from upstream in general. My approach is to improve
upstream. But I see that this is not broadly seen as an improvement, fair
enough. On a side note (not sure whether this is true it seems to be only a
rough eastimation), a person on your blog complaining about this stated that
99% of Plasma themes have the highlight on the other side than the default.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.