Re: Re: Look and Feel

[Jason Clouse]

On 2005-02-17 07:33:47 -0500 MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:

> What proportion is "large number"? Are there any metrics on
> the discussion which illustrate this, or do you expect everyone
> to go read over 400 comments to see if they think it's true? As
> I wrote, it looked at first glance like a larger number want
> objective C++ and ACPI fixes.

I didn't see anything about that.  I've seen plenty of requests for 
the end of "battleship grey."

> Huh? People who like things to "look very slick" using XFCE? Has it
> changed a lot since the screenshots on www.xfce.org then?

I just threw XFCE in there for completeness.  But you make a fine 
point: XFCE looks much more modern than the old UI.  I'm not talking 
about transparent windows and little doodads popping up all over the 
place.  Just a little more color and a little less monochrome.

> Anyway, I think the typical slashdotter is a former windowmaker
> or afterstep user (mainly because of the easy wallpaper-based
> "themes") who now uses a pixmapped theme for KDE, right down
> to the widgets. Changing the default theme probably would only
> help to attract them because of their unwillingness to read
> instructions.

If Camaelon is bundled with -core and the option to change theme is 
the first thing a user sees, fine.  If someone downloads a tarball, 
installs it, and sees nothing but grey, they'll be disappointed.

> Good web browsers and mail clients may be more
> important to attract them.

I'm not talking about attracting them.  I'm talking about not 
repelling them.  Different thing.

> Their former steppish window manager love may
> even mean that we shouldn't change the look too much.

They don't have any steppish love.  If they did, I wouldn't be 
suggesting this.  These are the people who have never used anything 
but Windows, Mac OS X, and KDE or GNOME.  The world has moved on and 
people would like some color in their interfaces.  At any rate, I 
think we've used this topic up.  People will not see a fresh GUI on 
first run and that's just the way it is.