Tango Project to Make Open Source Beautiful?

DW writes "Steven Garrity has announced the Tango Project, fronted by himself and Jakub Steiner of Novell. The Tango Project is a collaborative effort of a variety of free/open-source software designers and artists to work towards unifying the visual style of the free (mostly Linux) desktop."

Comments

My Question

[AAeyers]

Tango Project to Make Open Source Beautiful?

What could be more beautiful? Is it not?

Re:My Question

[linuxfanatic1024]

3. Download themes for crappy programs to make them look like Windows or Mac programs

Since when is Windows beautiful?

Re:My Question

[Itchy Rich]

Since when is Windows beautiful?

I'm not sure whether this was intended as a joke or not, but assuming you're serious then you're misunderstanding the nature of the word beautiful.

Re:My Question

[FauxPasIII]

> I'm not sure whether this was intended as a joke or not, but assuming you're
> serious then you're misunderstanding the nature of the word beautiful.

In the context of software, I'd guess it means either "nice to look at" or "nice to use".
Windows is neither of those things. If you disagree, then why would you even bother with
Linux/Open Source in the first place?

Re:My Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: I like to see all the options. Last year, I tried a couple of Linux distros, and after fighting for weeks trying to get the sound card working, the wireless set up, and movies to play, I went back to Windows. Not even an hour later, I had all these things working. Now that's beautiful. Look, if you have the time and inclination to mess around with Linux getting all your modern hardware to run, great. I was working on a Ph.D. at the time, and I didn't have time to wrestle with my operating system. Is Linux easy to use for you? Ask yourself how much time you had to put in to get it that way.

Re:My Question

[bogado]

Well as far as I know beautifull is a matter of taste. And taste usually follows what you are more used too see. I think windows is very ugly, as matter of fact I think some UIs widget sets from apple also ugly (I don't know the name but it is the one that everyone in the OS tries to copy, whitish with little colered balls for the window buttons). I like gnome, some of the things I see in KDE.

Re:My Question

[FauxPasIII]

>> Is Linux easy to use for you?

Yes. Otherwise I wouldn't use it. If Windows was easier, I'd use that.

>> Ask yourself how much time you had to put in to get it that way.

It used to take me a while, takes about 30 minutes these days. The time
I put into learning Linux has been paid back a thousandfold in increased
productivity in the 9 years I've been using it, though.

The question of ease of installation is a valid one. I recognize Linux
isn't trivially easy for the inexperienced to get set up. Preinstalled
Linux is what I do for a living. Most people
get their Windows preinstalled too, though, so the more interesting
question to me is ease of use of a properly configured system, and Linux
wins by a mile there.

Personally, I find Windows to be MUCH more stressful and difficult to
get set up properly. I had a whole multi-paragraph rant typed out
about how impossible it is to get movie playback set up in Windows vs.
how relatively easy it is in Linux, the ease with which I can get my
system 100% up to date (which is basically impossible in Windows as
far as I know), and how dealing with antiviruses and half a dozen
different spyware cleaners is the exact opposite of "beautiful" in my
estimation. But I won't bore you with it. ;)

After thinking it over, I was only able to think of two things that I
use which Windows does better. It's much easier to get Civilization 3
going in Windows, a fact which I take as a personal insult. ;)
And, the wireless network scanner is better in Windows, which is why
we're actively hacking on it to improve the one in Linux. Everything
else is more sane, stable, and beautiful in Linux, by a wide margin.

Re:My Question

[Em Adespoton]

Everything else is more sane, stable, and beautiful in Linux, by a wide margin.

Including clipboard/buffer management? Windows does a horrible job of it, and still manages to do it better than Linux. How about audio support? If all software worked with a single standard (like ALSA), everything would be fine; but this isn't the case.

Re:My Question

[FauxPasIII]

> Including clipboard/buffer management?

I like the Linux copy/paste methodology much better, and have posted
several times here defending it. As for being able to have richer
types of content in the clipboard, well... I've never used that in
my life in any OS, but I guess if you used it you would miss it in
Linux. I can only speak intelligently about things I use. =)

> How about audio support? If all software worked with a single
> standard (like ALSA), everything would be fine; but this isn't
> the case.

Heh, I can often be heard around the office to opine "GDMF, sound
sucks in Linux!", but it's mostly in jest. Alsa with dmix combined
with esound make every semi-modern program "just work" and software
mix with good quality and reasonable latency. Certainly good enough
for most desktop users. The only app I occasionally use that still
wants OSS is audacity, and some day I'm going to find out what the
"new hotness" to audacity's "old and busted" is. (Please feel free
to post suggestions! =)

Re:My Question

[Em Adespoton]

I like the Linux copy/paste methodology much better, and have posted several times here defending it. As for being able to have richer types of content in the clipboard, well... I've never used that in my life in any OS, but I guess if you used it you would miss it in Linux. I can only speak intelligently about things I use. =)

Which Linux copy/paste methodology? The one in GNOME/KDE apps where you control-c/v, the one in a terminal where you select and have it auto-buffered, the x-windows buffer management system? The problem is that these are all mutually exclusive, and often work together in unpredictable ways.

Then there's the rich content buffer issue you mentioned; however, I rarely need it for rich text content; usually I use the buffer for copying bitmap content, or filepaths (which I want to be handled as text in some programs, but as file descriptors in others... you never know how it's going to end up in Linux [text, reference, not available] until you've used that kind of content buffer in that specific app.

I guess the main thing about Linux UI is that you are required to learn the UI for each program you use, and how it interfaces with your window manager and the OS as a whole. If you use a limited set of programs, and understand how they all work together, Linux can be very efficient -- but anyone else using your specific configuration can get very lost very quickly, as something fails to work "as expected." I generally find I spend time tweaking each new program I install to work using common workflow paradigms, so that I can use the same muscle reflex actions no matter which window is frontmost at the time.

Maybe what FreeDesktop and Tango to do is create a workflow database, which individual programs (including desktop managers) could refer to in order to configure themselves - the coders would just have to include a workflow stub, and that would define how menus, button layout, clipboard buffers, etc. work in the program; if there's no defined global for that specific workflow element, the program's default would be used.

Re:My Question

[camcorder]

if you try to run hardware designed to work on windows (your wireless card for example) of course it won't work on linux. Linux kernel developers are not machoistic people with lots of free time to get every hardware and try to support them with their closed specs.

Try installing linux with linux-friendly hardware and you won't even need to try to install drivers or any other useless and pointless things. Windows make people belive hardware support should be like that and every computer user today think that they should make windows detect their hardware with its drivers. By the way, have you heard stories of windows users which has hardware they can't run on Windows XP because they only got windows 98 drivers? if you haven't, I can swear that I heard lots of these stories and they are increasing every day. People have to BUY/REPLACE their already working hardware because simply their vendor went out of bussiness or vendors using this silly (but unfortunately working) tactic to increase sales.

Well before comparing Linux hardware support with MS hardware support think about these. And next time buying a new hardware visit sites like linuxhardware.org or similar sites that you get get idea if hardware is compatible with linux, or just ask vendor.

Apart from that, everytime I install any linux distro kernel can detect my hardware without any problem and serve it as it should be. That's a lot more user friendly than pressing next button several times for new hardware I put onto my windows XP box.

Re:My Question

[camcorder]

I don't know what you're talking about learning UI for every program but on GNOME every application look alike. And due to nature of GTK library it's much more same than it is in Windows (I might be making mistakes on names but I think you have MFC, AFT, .net framework widgets etc. etc.). So that diversity is much more in Windows.

On linux if you use GNOME as Desktop Manager you much more likely to get similar UI for every GNOME application. And on KDE it's almost same. Of course if you mix your Window Managers and your UI toolkits you'll have different GUI, but that's not the way default dekstop use of linux today. Distro's even make different variety of applications (like OO.o and Firefox) look similar to GNOME desktop for example due to their open source nature.

Re:My Question

[Em Adespoton]

Please read the parent, grandparent, and great-grandparent again; I wasn't talking about the GUI in Linux, I was talking about workflow. User interface is more than the pretty graphics; some of the best UIs I've used have been purely text-based. Also, you seem to assume I'm a Windows user, despite my signature ;)

In fact, I use quite a few OSes, and was referring to the current shortcomings in Linux -- noting that Windows isn't that hot either in the clipboard management area, OR in unified widget interface. Windows' failings, however, have nothing to do with Linux; it should be able to stand or fall based on its own strengths and weaknesses.

To get back to my previous comment, I wasn't talking about learning the GUI for each program; I was talking about customizing a workflow on the computer, where the same keystrokes, mouse actions, and visual feedback transfer smoothly through the system, no matter what I'm trying to do. You'll also notice I didn't say this was impossible on Linux, as I said it's what I do myself; it's just not easy to configure, and could be made easier, as I also mentioned.

Then again, I'm starting to think you accidentally replied to the wrong level in the thread; I'll stop defending the obvious now :)

Re:My Question

[EternityInterface]

I tried to make winXP something else than the grey I use, some strong colours (ugh). Even if it happened to look good (not), it fucked up so many websites and apps, which rely on you having a grey/white (and with XP, slight yellow) theme. And it (the colour crap) took attention away from what I was trying to do, so crappy themes are just for people which don't use their computer for anything. (Sir that's logical, shut up. And then I look up, and see the "shitty slight yellow with grey" slashdot theme)

Re:My Question

[linuxfanatic1024]

I'm not sure whether this was intended as a joke or not, but assuming you're serious then you're misunderstanding the nature of the word beautiful.

Yes, it is a joke.

Nice

[wangxiaohu]

Is this the first project for standardizing the open source desktops?

Re:Nice

[idlemachine]

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/ predates it by quite some time. It appears that Tango's focus is more on the visual appearance, while freedesktop.org aims to provide at least a loose level of standardisation for linux desktops. The two projects definitely compliment each other nicely.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

complEment each other. complIment = pay each other complIments complEment = complEte each other.

Re:Nice

[renderhead]

The two projects definitely compliment each other nicely.

Freedesktop.org: My, Tango! You certainly do look lovely today!

Tango: Why, thank you! And allow me to say that I find your consistency bold and refreshing!

Freedesktop.org: (blushing) You are too kind!

Oh no, not again.

[spankfish]

Tango is also the name of the ugliest excuse for a web development platform on this green earth. It is, hands down, the most putrid language I have ever seen. Kind of like a mutant offspring of BASIC, RPG, and old ColdFusion.

These guys should seriously consider a name change.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Jambon]

These guys should seriously consider a name change.

How about Salsa? Cha Cha? Macarena? Merengue? Polka? Any on this list could be possible candidates.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[mfearby]

Tango, the evil, MS Access loving, pathetic excuse for a RAD environment for web page development, has well and truly tarnished the name "Tango" and anything misfortunate enough to even have any connotations with the South American dancing style. Every time I hear the word "Tango", I and my colleagues want to puke (that is, after we piss ourselves laughing)!!!

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Sponge Bath]

Tango is also the name of the ugliest excuse for a web development platform on this green earth.

Tango is also the name of a defunct night club in Dallas, Texas. It had a collection of giant, brightly colored frog sculptures posed dancing near its entrance. After its demise, some of the frogs were moved to the roof of 'Carl's Truck Stop' along I-35 between Dallas and Waco. (I'm not making this up.)

The point?
Don't get too worked up about naming coincidence, and focus on the project.
Which sounds a little like Eazel, but what the hell.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[rbanffy]

The first thing to come to my mind was the circuit lay-out program. The second and third were the music of Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla.

All good names have been taken. Many times.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like a mutant offspring of BASIC, RPG, and old ColdFusion.

And Perl. /did not RTFA

Re:Oh no, not again.

[strstrep]

SALSA has already been done ... it's essentially a distributed system framework for Java.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[deanj]

Do you mean this Tango, or something else?

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Bug-Y2K]

>Tango is also the name of the ugliest excuse for a web development platform on this green earth.

Tango was abandoned by Pervasive Software in 2001 IIRC. It is funny to still see ".taf" in URLs on occasion, meaning the site was developed and is still served with Tango's CGI.

Last I heard, there are a group of developers in Australia that somehow have captured the source and are selling Tango still, under the name Witango.

I agree though... they should probably change the name.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Afrosheen]

The name is actually funny because it's got 2 dudes running it. Of course, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango.

  I don't think the *nix desktop itself needs to look 'integrated' or 'standardized', it's the apps. KDE and Gnome stuff generally looks the same in each environment, but take them out of that environment and occasionally either set of apps looks out of place.

  What *nix needs is a gui guideline set similar to the Platinum spec that Apple used before. You could sit down at nearly any MacOS 7.x or 8.x or 9.x app and feel right at home, even if you've never seen it before. You knew where options were (edit-preferences), where your window management stuff was, where help was, etc. Everything looked consistent regardless of the company that coded it.

  If this spec gets hammered out (and yes it may involve *gasp* focus groups) it'll be a miracle if everyone follows it when coding a frontend to x, y and z, but it'll go a long way towards unifying 'the desktop'. Gnome and KDE both probably have guidelines for 'native' apps, but that's not good enough. EVERYTHING that you see on the screen needs to be consistent regardless of the widget set it was made for.

  Maybe it really is time for some monolithic distro to come along and unify all these pieces.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[timmarhy]

yes because people never write anything that uses a dis similar interface for apple or MS platforms. people will write their apps the way they want them to look for better or worse.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Afrosheen]

Actually, I fault Bryce for breaking GUI guidelines on Mac. It was intuitive once you got to know it, but the familiarity of the environment was just absent. Since then, other apps like Poser, etc. have all gone their own route in taking GUI look and feel into their own hands.

  At the end of the day, if everyone follows the guidelines, and the guidelines are good, end users are better equipped to cope with software in general. Consistency is the key for alot of businesses. Take restaurants for example. I've eaten improper Thai food at many restaurants, but they stay open, which means they have customers. I bet if any of those restaurants ever changed their recipes to be proper, real Thai-style food, they'd get alot of complaints. Why? They were always doing it wrong, HOWEVER, their customers expected wrong. When something is improved to be more fitting with another style, everyone panics. "This is not what I'm used to, give me the old one back" is generally the public's initial reaction. Over time, people can learn to deal with something that's different than what they expect, but the comfort zone sure is a sweet spot.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The name is actually funny because it's got 2 dudes running it. Of course, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango."

Oh my God, this is so homoerotic.

2 dudes + tango = Blue Oyster Bar!

http://www.chepo.net/2005/06/blue-oyster-time.html

Re:Oh no, not again.

[linuxfanatic1024]

Did you ever hear about GTK-QT? This is a theme engine for GTK 2.x that makes GTK 2.x apps use the current KDE or QT style. It is geared (pun intended) towards KDE users; it provides a control panel in the KDE control center to configure this. The control module lets you choose GTK 2 themes and fonts, but it also lets you choose to use your KDE themes and fonts instead. It still has its bugs, but it works quite well. I like the fact that GTK 2 programs don't look out of place on my KDE desktop.

In my opinion, this is a great first step to unifying the look and feel of our software while still letting programmers use the libraries they want to use.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[letdinosaursdie]

Something else... This is the company that bought it... still alive and horrible

Re:Oh no, not again.

[AvantLegion]

Tango is also the name of a dance.

So I'm told.

Nobody dances with me. :(

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Kethinov]

This project will probably get sued by the people who made the Tango web development platform. Then they'll change their name to Swing and get sued by the people who make the Swing toolkit for Java. They'll then change their name to Foxtrot, but get sued by the Firefox crew for having the word "fox" in their name, which they'll see as an insult to all the name changes they had to endure, at which point Foxtrot will become Waltz, get patented, engraved in stone, bathed in holy water, and otherwise sanctified for all the rest of time. They might also have to sacrifice two chickens on a holy alter whilst performing an African rain dance to prevent further litigation. The Firefox crew really should have tried that.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[frankvl]

The tango is also one of the ugliest ways to start the human mating process

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it work the other way around -- can it make Qt-using apps look like GTK 2 apps? Then I'd be interested :)

(I much prefer Gnome to KDE as far as dekstops go. To each their own, of course.)

Re:Oh no, not again.

[stor]

What *nix needs is a gui guideline set similar to the Platinum spec that Apple used before.

Agreed and work towards this is happening at freedesktop.org.

However you also need some *designers* to realise a spec effectively. You can't get developers to "implement an icon from a spec", well you might but I wouldn't expect stellar results.

This seems to be more about the actual practical work of beautifying icons, widgets, etc. Getting palletes not only standardised but nicely utilised in aesthetically-pleasing graphics. It's really important work. Kudos to these dudes for their efforts: I am really glad they're doing it.

Cheers
Stor

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

The name is actually funny because it's got 2 dudes running it.

Is the other one called Cash?

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Witango for 3 years... it does lack some COM capabilities, but it's the best RAD tool I've come across to date. As for the political hype around the product, cheers to the two that still Tango!

Re:Oh no, not again.

[ConceptJunkie]

I think high-color graphics cards, Photoshop and the Web did more damage than Bryce or Kai could ever dream of. I find it ironic that with all the "skinning" available that apps look crappier than ever (this is on the Windows platform), and standards have been all but abandoned, even by MS, who should know better.

UI design has been in free-fall since about the late 90's... because of this I think the various Linux desktops became better looking and more "beautiful" by doing nothing while Microsoft thinks UI "innovation" is letting you make WMP look like eyeballs.

p.s. I mean the _use_ of Photoshop, not its UI.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[baadger]

The first thing that came to mind for me was the Britvic Tango drink. A fizzy orangey drink much like Coca Cola's Fanta [1].

I'm was rather surprised noone else has mentioned this until I did a quick Google search and found out it's a British thing. Over here it pretty much dominates the market in fizzy fruit drinks (atleast in terms of brand awareness). Obviously I don't have any figures but Fanta is seemingly much less popular.

It's always nice to come across differences in brand awareness across the globe. :)

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tango is also my dog's name.

He's a lovely Australian Shepherd.

Can he be mascot?

Re:Oh no, not again.

[xenocide2]

If the crazy ass instructor/composer/genius my high school orchestra director brought in is reliable, then actually, it's quite accurate. Said crazy-man claimed the Tango was invented in Central and South America as a form of dance between the male laborers that migrated to earn money to send home. Massive influx of men but no women lead to: two men to Tango!

Remember, the man is totally crazy. I believe this is actually a requirement in the handbook of teaching music theory in two hour lectures to high school students in your time off from composing and conducting pieces with a professional orchestra.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Ithika]

How about Samba? Nah, that would never work as an open source project...

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Jesus_666]

You know you're a geek when the first thing to come to your mind is a support character in an old Mega Man game.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Haelyn]

Oh my God, this is so homoerotic.

Originally, tango was meant to be danced by men only.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how to program in any reasonable language? If you did, you probably'd think differently.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[linuxfanatic1024]

Unfortunately, no. I do actually agree with you that it should also be the other way around partially because I use XFCE a lot as well, which is GTK-based. If you do use GNOME or XFCE, though, you can still use qtconfig to configure QT programs, but you still must use KDE's control center to configure KDE's look and feel.

Will it be usable?

[CyricZ]

My big question is whether or not it will be usable. I get the impression that it will end up looking like a cross between Windows XP and Mac OS X. It'll be bubbly, and wasteful of screen real estate.

I find I usually use a NeXTSTEP-inspired theme, no matter if I'm using GNOME, KDE, or XFCE. That's because such a theme is all about usability, and less about just looking "pretty". In the Linux, *BSD and Solaris worlds, the focus is on productivity. So I think there may be some conflict between creating a GUI that emulates the bubbliness of Windows and OS X, and creating a GUI that allows people to get work done efficiently and effectively.

Re:Will it be usable?

[BHearsum]

This is EXACTLY why this project will never succeed. The userbase they are targeting has such a wide variety of preferences that a consensus will never be reached.

Re:Will it be usable?

[clackerd]

CyricZ:

the focus is on productivity with the windows and macos interfaces too, probably moreso than the free desktops and their themes. apple spends a ton on research for this type of stuff, and i am pretty sure microsoft does too. i suspect you'd be happier in front of a cli than any gui anyway.

i am all for flair in an os, and i think as graphics get better, so should the cool effects. we are using computers, for pete's sake! they are supposed to look cool! and all the bubbly options on my mac that waste screen real estate are easily toggled off.

and, i distinctly remember linux distros for PPC (I think LinuxPPC, actually) that had the most ridiculously cool watery window reflection visual that devoured RAM and did nothing useful except entertain me. maybe that is more of a gnome or kde thing than linux per se, but you get the point. as long as you can turn them off, i am pro-them. if you have the resources, why not?

besides, this new agreement won't do much. there will be someone else in linux-land who will make an alternative to this new scheme and neither will end up the standard, and the whole linux platform will remain pretty much the same as it is now.

Re:Will it be usable?

[mboverload]

Exactly. As long as the interface is useable, you might as well make it pretty, too.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because such a theme is all about usability, and less about just looking "pretty".

People often mistake effiency with productivity. A command line interface might be the most efficient way of doing many tasks, but it is not necessarily the most usable. Attractive GUIs and usability need not be mutually exclusive.

In the Linux, *BSD and Solaris worlds, the focus is on productivity.

Since when? There are many examples of incredibly bad interface design and usability engineering in the common linux desktops and applications. Inconsistancy in these interfaces in one of the major problems, and I think the goal of the project in the article is to address that.

Re:Will it be usable?

[cgenman]

While flashy, a lot of the OSX interface helps productivity in subtle ways. For example, because of icon scaling on the dock you can set your dock to be really, really small and still have it usable. Because windows "genie" themselves back into a specific spot on the dock, there is never a question of where to go to find the window. Because interface elements are always subtly textured, you quickly learn to ignore those portions of the screen when looking for content. The bubbliest thing you can do when using OSX is press the F10 key, but that pulls back all of the windows so you can select the one you want by what it looks like. (F9 does that in the current application, and F11 reveals the desktop)

I used to run WindowMaker (NeXT) on Linux as well. The minimalist aesthetic appealed to me, even though it seemed like just a flashy way to open a lot of XTerms. And while NeXT was all about usability, it was also created under the eye of Steve Jobs. People forget that Apple's designs are created to be usable first and sexy second. The touch sensitive scroll wheel on the iPod may be luscious and indulgent, but I'll be damned if I can find a better way to scroll through a long list of songs (maybe Sony's click wheel, but that's patented).

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you high? This isn't about a concensus. It's about a standard. It's about a direction. It's about putting a cohesive package together that might not be ass-ugly. Oh yeah...and to say that you can't have function and attractive aesthetic is just silly. In fact, good visual design in a GUI *improves* usability.

Of course everyone isn't going to like the same thing. But, finally someone is making an effort instead of siting back and bitching about what everyone else is isn't doing.

my. $0.02 ;)

Re:Will it be usable?

[Eccles]

I also love the bouncing icons when starting an app in Mac OS X, which at first I thought was silly eye candy. In contrast on XP, my impatient 8-year-old often has a half-dozen firefox windows when it finally opens, because she clicked the firefox desktop icon and didn't see any response (and again, and again...)

Re:Will it be usable?

[CyricZ]

Indeed, I have been using computers for over 30+ years now. Probably longer than a lot of people here have even been alive. And the only real innovation was from NeXT. They produced the only GUI really worth using. Apple has bastardized it somewhat, to make it appeal to those who aren't very computer-oriented.

"Looking cool" is pointless if it interferes with productivity. Even if it's just sending an email to a friend, today's GUIs offer far too much distraction. Thankfully most Linux GUIs offer a way to eliminate most of that by using a NeXTSTEP- or CDE-like theme. It's unfortunate that that isn't the case with Windows and Mac OS X.

Re:Will it be usable?

[hkb]

Uhm Window Maker isn't related to, derived from, or created by NeXT. It vaguely resembles NeXT's look (note I didn't say feel) and that's about it.

Using Window Maker does not make you clued about NeXT's OS, sorry. Completely different user experiences.

Re:Will it be usable?

[drsmithy]

Because windows "genie" themselves back into a specific spot on the dock, there is never a question of where to go to find the window.

Until you minimise and restore a few more windows (that all look the same) and change the order of the window list, that is.

The Dock is a UI freakin' train wreck, and no amount of flashy graphics will change that.

People forget that Apple's designs are created to be usable first and sexy second.

They *used* to be. However, it's plain to see that OS X/Aqua was built to be flashy first and usable second.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet millions of people, literally, use Macs every single day. Shockingly few of them tear their hair out over the dock, while you love to post fatalistic Chicken Littleisms about it on the Internet at every opportunity.

Troll? You're soaking in it.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that you know how to use your shift key, because you capitalized "PPC" and "RAM". Is it too much to ask that you also use it when you start a sentence, or type the word "I"? You aren't e e cummings, you know.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Lucractius]

I can agree with you on that. The NeXTSTEP layout is very high on my list of preffered desktops, as is CDE, but neither of them are the best, ive got an empty spot at the top of the list and nothing has ever filled it, No GUI ive seen has ever given me the flexibility AND ease of use to take it.

Im using an IDE, I want maximum screen realestate, i want to auto hide frequently accessed pannels and things like the start bar on the edges of the screens to make them ocupy less room. Im sitting at my deskstop about to begin working. I want a clean area, but it should allow me to configure a simple way to get access to lots of my frequently used program on the desktop. The closest ive come is a program called GeoShell that replaces the Windows GUI, the problem is that it lacks much default form, (when you first use it you have to begin making it functional to your level of requirements, it doesnt have much of a default) and it doesnt let me have the best of both worlds, a structured layout, with the ability to become free form and maximise the layouts usefulness to a particular task. But above all else, any freeform layout gui should include the ability to define "presets" that you can shift between. I havent seen one that does.

If something drives me to learn C++ and code a serious program, this problem is likely to be it. It drives me nuts.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Onan]

"Looking cool" is pointless if it interferes with productivity. Even if it's just sending an email to a friend, today's GUIs offer far too much distraction.

If an interface has been designed well, things which happen to look cool do so only secondarily to adding clarity and functionality.

For example, macosx windows have dropshadows that give the appearance of visual depth, causing the focused window to appear to stand out from the others. Could the focused window simply have been made hot pink, to further clarify which it is? Sure, but seeing that flash around every time you changed focus would be distracting. Working with your brain's normal spatial perception to focus your attention in ways of which you're probably not consciously aware is much more elegant and efficient.

I can't look at the project page right now (but it sure is an intuitive 404!), but if their focus is on thought-out interaction design along these lines, rather than just mimicking Windows, some real progress stands to be made.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Bastian]

because of icon scaling on the dock you can set your dock to be really, really small and still have it usable. Because windows "genie" themselves back into a specific spot on the dock, there is never a question of where to go to find the window. Because interface elements are always subtly textured, you quickly learn to ignore those portions of the screen when looking for content.

Because everything is frickin white, you find yourself constantly having to look away from the computer to give your eyes a break from the sensation of staring into a fluorescent light bulb for eight hours straight when you're at work.

Re:Will it be usable?

[rtb61]

Consensus on this is the same as always when the majority sort of agree and the feedback is generally postive. This is also about inclusion i.e. geeting those oustide of coding more involved in the open nature of Linux. Graphics artists can now have an input into the future of computer use, it will be interesting to see what will come out of this and to see how non-coders view the graphical user interface.

Re:Will it be usable?

[dodobh]

A keypad. Just start typing. Oh wait, iPod.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, Apple early discovered that the "look" and the "feel" has to fit for a usable system. Unfortunately many developers don't care for look&feel, only for functionality. This is understandable from their point of view since they are rather familiar with their own applications. From the users' point of view this is a real problem. So to help developers to make their applications usable for anyone there is now wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).

Re:Will it be usable?

[Itchy Rich]

They *used* to be. However, it's plain to see that OS X/Aqua was built to be flashy first and usable second.

I suspect both this and the parent are subjective interpretations of the situation. Apple's design team currently consider both graphic flashyness amd usability. At various points in the past they've done things which were attractive, unattractive, usable and unusable.

It's always going to be a vast simplification to say that Apple are/were '(insert adjective here)' because you're talking about a range of products designed and built by many different people at different times in different industries.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking Jakub Steiner makes some of the best and most usable icons ever.

Re:Will it be usable?

[ckaminski]

Ever try for Windows?

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

People forget that Apple's designs are created to be usable first and sexy second.

Yeah, like the Quicktime player with the round volume knob that you had to drag the mouse round in a circle to use? My mom, a lifetime Mac user, just couldn't manage it. She switched to Windows after that - Microsoft software may be butt-ugly, but at least it's easy to learn and intuitive to use.

Doubtless you loved it. The toolitude of fanboys knows no bounds.

Re:Will it be usable?

[hitmark]

how about ubericon: http://www.punksoftware.com/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=78&Itemid=174&ver=1.0.0 ? its a app that adds eyecandy effects to icons in win2k and xp.

kinda fun to play around with.

right now it have two effects, bounce and zoom.
but can be extended via plugins.

Re:Will it be usable?

[arkanes]

I bet $5 you can't name 5 objective reasons why a NeXT based theme (as opposed to NeXT UI guidelines) is "more productive" than any other theme, including the GNOME default. You should have just said "because thats what I'm used to".

I also bet you can't name 5 objective reasons why the Windows XP or OS X *themes*, as opposed to interface are less productive than any other theme. If the best you've got is "big title bars take up too much screen space", then you should just go home.

Re:Will it be usable?

[jdowland]

People forget that Apple's designs are created to be usable first and sexy second.

Not so much forget, as utterly disagree.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Geoff-with-a-G]

And yet millions of people, literally, use Macs every single day.

By that line of reasoning, Windows is more than ten times as usable as Mac OS X.

Re:Will it be usable?

[gentlemen_loser]

Look at the history of OS X. You'll find that it hails from interesting roots - NeXTStep. :)

Look at this.

I'm a recent convert to OS X from Linux (running WindowMaker). Try it before you knock it.

Re:Will it be usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try python first.

learning c++ and then writing a gui app is way, way hard

and c++ sucks

Re:Will it be usable?

[Lord Flipper]

Im using an IDE, I want maximum screen realestate, i want to auto hide frequently accessed pannels and things like the start bar on the edges of the screens to make them ocupy less room. Im sitting at my deskstop about to begin working. I want a clean area, but it should allow me to configure a simple way to get access to lots of my frequently used program on the desktop.

The setup you describe, there, is exactly, to a "tee", what I'm looking at every time I boot into Ubuntu (Gnome desk) on a ppc box. Exactly.

My panel at the screen top, is transparent. I keep it around because it only eats 23 pixels in vertical space. The bottom panel is a one-click-gone setup, but can be made show/hide, just like an old Windows box. Then there are the separate desktops...

I have to assume you've seen this setup, already, so I don't know what else to tell you. But the situation I'm looking at is like the best of aqua, some NeXT, and Windows features, combined, and easily dismissed from view, as a default.

Man, if Apple, or someone, released a "fix" for the Airport Extreme driver "problem", and Novell fixed "Evolution" and the multimedia situation on the linux-ppc distro caught up with the i386, I would be gone from OS X, for good.

Just as important

[zegebbers]

is accessibility. These days, a lot of people who use readers complain about programs using images of test for buttons instead of text etc. There needs to be an attitude of addressing people who use non visual techniques for using computers.

Re:Just as important

[Mark Gordon]

Images of meaningful text as UI are a bit of a no-no from an i18n/l10n standpoint as well.

By "meaningful text" I chiefly intend to exclude icons such as "T" and "T".

Re:Just as important

[orev]

"accessability" is not only for hearing/visually impaired people. Standardize keyboard shortcuts, specifically, are of great use to everyone.

Why?

[drijen]

Why would i want a "uniform" look? One of my big loves for Linux, is that i can fully customize whatever i like, when i like. I use Gnome, becuase it functions intuitively, and has built in programs (like cd-burning) that function much better than windows. I use flux, not only for its speed, but because i can make anything transparent and move windows around at my leisure. Not to mention the looks the people running XP give me :-p So my question is: Is it not *just* fine the way it is? Leave my desktop alone, thanks - i've had enough GUI control from XP/OSX.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use it then, idiot. Are they going to force you to use it?

You're a fucking moron.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want some sort of uniformness? Well, how about when you go work on your mom's computer, or your SO's computer, or your bosses computer, and you don't want to look like an illiterate fool when their choice of WM and mouse/keyboard behavior causes you to spawn new applications like crazy or just sit their clicking or typing and nothing happens. It's far too easy to customize your setup past the ability of other people to quickly pick up on it and use it. Imagine trying to offer tech support to hundreds of people with little UI quirks, not to mention setup file quirks.

Re:Why?

[drsquare]

Why would i want a "uniform" look?

You're saying you actually WANT an inconsistent interface? I can't think of a single reason why every other app should have a different interface. The worst is Linux file-selection dialogues. There are about a dozen different types of them.

This project can only help usability.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're reading this differently.

One way to read it is that the project is to make every app behave the same. Select a theme once, and it works for everything. You don't need graphics artists for that, so if this is the purpose of the project, why are they involved at all? Besides, the FreeDesktop project is already doing this.

The other way to read is, is that the project is to create one way for every computer to look, no matter who is going to use it. Just like "One Microsoft Way", or even worse, OSX which (I heard) doesn't even allow you to pick some colors that doesn't hurt to look at. This project would need artists to create icons, a color scheme and all that.

A is a good thing (consistence between applications).

B is a bad thing (consistence between users).

Re:Why?

[jedidiah]

The WHOLE POINT of the GUI concept is that the interface is readily discoverable.

        If you need to do the equivalent of subjecting everyone to WP 5.1 then you've just proved that GUI's are nothing more than eye candy that needlessly increases the minimum spec requirements on PCs.

        As far as "tech support" goes: that's the absolute last situation where you're going to be dinkering around in a GUI.

Tango Air?

[Jason1729]

Tango is the name of Air Canada's discount carrier.

Since Air Canada offers pathetically bad service to begin with, and Tango is their division with less service, the name does not conjure up good images.

Re:Tango Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tango is also a soft drink here in the UK. Tango tastes good too!

Re:Tango Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tango is the name of a hemorrhoid creme from Ghana. It is built on a base of lime juice and mustard seeds. It contains crushed up sea shells and the ashes of recycled paper (including the occasional rusty staple). Another prime ingredient is Yak stool -- you've never seen a Yak with hemorrhoids, so it must work. Just be sure to get it fresh before the parasite eggs (ringworm egg casings help the healing process) hatch.

Re:Tango Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ringworm isn't a worm. It's a fungus, and doesn't have eggs.

Re:Tango Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're lucky you never tried Canada 3000 while they was in business. Sure made me appreciate Air Canada. Canada 3000 employed cuter flight attendants, and they provided free alcohol in economy class... and they were so evil in other ways (for instance, less than industry standard baggage allowance, and nickle-and-dime fees for many things) that it didn't even help!

Re:Tango Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops, sorry. I meant pinworm instead.

Anyway, I suggest that the new name of the project resemble the proud and very lovely flower that grows among the banks of the Congo, the dingleberry. The plant is named after its flavorful berries that dingle in the wind.

Bragging Rights?

[Yehooti]

Nothing wrong with letting them brag. Help to open source is always welcome. Only time will tell if theirs is actually an asset though.

Office 12 and Vista

[DaHat]

I am forced to wonder how much time they will spend examining the completion including the upcoming Windows Vista and Office 12 given that they both dramatically affect the way software looks on different platforms and they are now showing us how most Windows software will look for the next 5+ years.

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[CyricZ]

I hope they do not draw inspiration from Office 12. The screenshots I have seen of it, with it's awful combined toolbar/menu monstrosity, sicken me. I do not want to use a Linux/BSD/Solaris desktop that uses a similar idea. It's nothing but a terrible waste of space.

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[DaHat]

If screenshots are all you have seen then it is no wonder they make you ill... I suggest watching a demonstration of it some time and it actually makes perfect sense.

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[NanoGator]

"If screenshots are all you have seen then it is no wonder they make you ill... I suggest watching a demonstration of it some time and it actually makes perfect sense."

Good advice, but since this is Slashdot, you can expect 9 out of the 10 people who see a demonstration will ignore the obvious benefits and cook up other petty reasons to not like the software. "I don't see why they're bothering with this, it won't work if the computer isn't on! (Score 5, Insightful)"

Just once I'd like to hear "Oh... well yeah I see why Microsoft did that. I'm not sure it'll work, but let's wait and see what happens when I've had a chance to actually try it."

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[NanoGator]

Troll? Right. Go back up and look at the reply below mine and tell me what I said was a troll again.

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

with it's awful combined toolbar/menu monstrosity

"its".

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[Minwee]

'Just once I'd like to hear "Oh... well yeah I see why Microsoft did that. I'm not sure it'll work, but let's wait and see what happens when I've had a chance to actually try it."'

Clearly you are a paid Microsoft shill to have said such things.

I've got the tar. Who has feathers?

Re:Office 12 and Vista

[Kehvarl]

Just once I'd like to hear "Oh... well yeah I see why Microsoft did that. I'm not sure it'll work, but let's wait and see what happens when I've had a chance to actually try it."

You must not be listening then.
Hear all those people who don't say anything in the threads about Office 12 and Vista? All of them are saying precisely that.

use fluxbox and never be bother by icons again

[t35t0r]

Use Fluxbox and never be bothered by pesky icons cluttering your desktop ever again

Re:use fluxbox and never be bother by icons again

[Dwonis]

Fluxbox? Real Users use ratpoison!

Re:use fluxbox and never be bother by icons again

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't.

Long overdue

[cgenman]

Creating a unified look and feel for graphical Linux apps has been long overdue. Say what you will about their own hideous violations of their own style guidelines, but Apple's style guidelines and freely available icons has helped ensure a consistent user experience across most applications for almost two decades. Such a thing would be great for Linux.

Why is this desirable? Quite simply, having a unified look and feel makes switching between applications faster and easier. There is no need to figure out where quit is hiding when quit is always the last option under the file menu. There is no need to search for the folder button when the folder button looks the same in your applications as it does in your shell as it does in your browser.

Of course, I would like to see this go farther, and define voluntary standards for hotkeys, splash screens, etc. But an icon base is a step in the right direction.

Re:Long overdue

[schwaang]

Why is this desirable? Quite simply, having a unified look and feel makes switching between applications faster and easier. There is no need to figure out where quit is hiding when quit is always the last option under the file menu. There is no need to search for the folder button when the folder button looks the same in your applications as it does in your shell as it does in your browser.

Yeah and apparently Tango is the "look" part of the equation - providing icons and color theme guidelines. The "feel" part is already covered (for gnome) by the Human Interface Guidelines.

I doubt anything in open-source space can attempt to be as athoritative as Apple's style guidelines, and IMO the Linux desktop has suffered for the lack of benevolent dictatorship.

Re:Long overdue

[Bastian]

Man, trying to standardize hotkeys in the *nix world is a dangerous thing. Do we really need to piss off the vi and emacs zealots yet again?

Re:Long overdue

[cyclomedia]

YES

i cant speak from much linux eperience so i dont know how standard these things are but on my winbox:

CTRL+X,CTRL+C,CTRL+V = cut,copy,paste on EVERY program ever*
but this breaks the CTRL+C (or CTRL+X) = break *nix setup, stuff it! make it ESC from now on ...hell people should write extensible interfaces so the user can decide the key combo used and the OS just sends the program a "COPY" or "BREAK" bytecode

* yeah this isnt really true for EVERY app but y'know i'm busy making rash generalisations here

Re:Long overdue

[zsau]

Actually, anything in the free-software world could be just as authoritative as Apple's Style Guidelines can be. Apple does not enforce their style guidelines in any method, and developers are free to design software that does not behave according to the guidelines. The style guidelines are enforced by the users: They choose which software they'll run and badger the developers enough that most software does follow the guidelines.

Likewise, if enough users choose to predominately use software that follows Gnome's HIG, then most software will be developed to follow it. Of course, that's less likely to happen in the free software world because many users of software have different priorities from Mac users, so much software will exist to cater for these users with diverse requirements.

(I'm not saying that HIGs are bad. Lots of software is made much more usable by following HIGs to a greater or lesser degree. But I don't think Emacs and Vim users would be nearly as productive if it followed Apple's Style guidelines to a tee.)

I suppose we might agree completely on this front, actually. Still, I tend to find that programs that want to intergrate with Gnome are a lot more consistent than other programs I use, so I'm not sure the lack of a benevolent dictator has really hurt much. It's more the fact that people haven't always cared (and still often don't care!) so much about Mac-style usability.

Re:Long overdue

[schwaang]

I think we do mostly agree. What you say is esp. true for individual apps developed by third parties (re: freedom to follow guidelines, input from users).

But at a distro level, Apple hired a bunch of smart UI guys and pretty much everything that came with the OS followed those guidelines. They were imposed top-down. Third parties are free to do what they want, but benefit by having a consistent OS to integrate into if they choose.

Linux distros have tended to be more hodge-podge, reflecting the wild-and-woolly OSS pseudo-merito-democracy. It has been up to the DEs (like gnome) to wrangle their apps into a consistent look-and-feel, and I agree that gnome apps pull it off pretty well.

The distros that intend to be serious desktop players (RedHat at least) seem to put some effort into presenting a consistent look (icons, themes, etc.), but since most of their apps aren't written by them, they can't exert even as much authority as Apple did.

At any rate, it's coming together now for Linux desktops, but it has been a long ride compared to what they could do at Apple. It seems to me that when it comes to imposing consistency across a wide swath of the OS, the dictatorship of proprietary development still has the advantage of expediency over OSS.

Too much detail?

[CyricZ]

I think that some of the icons are too detailed, and as such are difficult to interpret when 22x22 px or 16x16 px. The 16x16 px document-print icon, for instance, looks more like a filing cabinet drawer with a document coming out. If used in a toolbar, it could easily be misinterpreted as the "Open" action rather than the "Print" action.

For those who didn't RTFL

[Black Parrot]

It's actually about visual guidelines for icons, not for "the desktop".

I'd estimate that about 1% of my desktop is taken up by icons right now, though I do prefer nice icons to crappy ones.

Re:For those who didn't RTFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. No, I didn't RTFL, but I'll take your word for it. That's too bad. There is signficant difference between making things "pretty" vs. makeing things more "usable" - UI design is one of those rare combination of art, science, and intuition that I (an unwashed engineer) find it difficult to achieve but have come to appreciate a great deal. I realize icon design can be as much about usability, but, come on. Icons by themselves do not improve usability that much.

Re:For those who didn't RTFL

[jrcamp]

I'm inclined to believe that having two completely different icons for the "save" button, for instance, takes more time for the brain to locate and process. Having consistency increases usability for me because I don't have to switch from one "mode" to another, visually.

KDE's Appeal Project

[billybob2]

They should get in contact with KDE's Appeal Project, which has very similar goals, namely to provide:
Consistent User Experience
Breathtaking Beauty
Usability
Creativity and Innovation

and to do it all in an open, receptive, adaptive and friendly environment for contributors.

All the organizational effort companies like Novell are putting into bringing GUI developers together makes me really excited about the ever-accelerating Linux Desktop. Keep up the great work!

Re:KDE's Appeal Project

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Hmmm... one, two, three, four, five. I win buzzword bingo.

Re:KDE's Appeal Project

[letdinosaursdie]

Sure would be nice to see some screenshots immediately apparent... it's all text.

Re:KDE's Appeal Project

[Anonymous Coward]

They are actually already programming for their KDE 4.0 relaease. They have started by changing the way the panel and desktop work (internally from a programming perspective) and are working on news looks. They will deliver a new look for KDE, I hope it will also have style though.

As an aside, they should really get rid of their gazillions of toolbars in every app. Make it more like Simple KDE, which at least part of the KDE project is cooperating with.

Re:KDE's Appeal Project

[Anonymous Coward]

What is KDE ?

Usable vs. Pretty.

[ExileOnHoth]

First of all, this is a good idea. A Good Thing. Or, more accurately, A Good Start.

Tango, at first glance, does seem to be oriented toward visual style.

A Good thing. Now, in addition to visual goodies, I hope we will keep in mind when people say something is User-Friendly, or Easy To Use, they are not only talking about Pretty.

They are talking about Usability, which means user-friendly naming conventions, and user-centered use-cases that make it seem like the software is offering you, the user, just the very options you needed just at that moment.

Sometimes, I think some in the OSS community forget what it is that makes Mac OS X, for example, so popular with its devout users. It's not that Mac people love red blue and yellow jello-balls and silver gradients. It's that for the most part, Mac OS has engineered our interactions with the system so that the OS works for us and never the other way around.

Being Pretty, in this case, is just icing on the great usability cake. A Good Thing, but not enough by itself.

Re:Usable vs. Pretty.

[CanadianBoy]

Being Pretty, in this case, is just icing on the great usability cake. A Good Thing, but not enough by itself.

Interestingly Donald Norman makes an aregument in his book Emotional Design that people find things that are pretty easier to use. There was a study with ATMs where they arranged the buttons in different was and found that the ones people thought looked better were also the ones people found easier to use.

Re:Usable vs. Pretty.

[ratboy666]

Interesting.

But I would say that OSX has engineered users to it. Of course it doesn't get in the way. Because there isn't anything that can be done that hasn't been anticipated.

That's the nature of the "GUI". At least, in the Apple/Microsoft sense.

Of course, that's exactely what a great number of casual users want -- Email, web browsing, and maybe a letter. Maybe play some music or the latest game.

All of these are very constrained activities. If you add an activity, you add a program. Almost no "reuse" of tools goes on. Things are very concrete.

Very usable and pretty. It doesn't work as a model for a general purpose computer, which is what I want, but does work for a great many people.

So I agree that this option can be supported, as long as I don't have to bother with it. The beauty of Linux, revealed.

Ratboy.

Re:Usable vs. Pretty.

[ExileOnHoth]

Of course it doesn't get in the way. Because there isn't anything that can be done that hasn't been anticipated.

I would disagree with that assessment. In fact, the genius of the OS is that all the options are there, and unlike windows, anyway, they aren't jumping out at you, nor are they lurking in a popup labeled "Advanced..." behind a tab labeled "Options"

No, even the command line tools, like modifying default system options using

defaults write com.apple.Preferences ExposeHiddenPreferences Yes

etc.

The logical and elegant organization of all these command-line customization tools rivals anything on *nix or definitely windows.

And in terms of usability, it is better to hide these options from Grandma, and keep her interface simple, while allowing advanced users command-line access.

Why not?

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

I think it's a great concept. Think about it - OSX has aqua, which is arguably one of its most attractive parts, particularly for the non-geek. Windows doesn't really have anything quite like this, and it could really use it - the only thing is that companies already have their UIs all made up for their Windows products and won't want to change them. Since Linux is a) relatively new to the mass market and b) open source, it would be much easier to adopt a standard GUI style at this point, and it's not something that Microsoft is likely to implement for themselves anytime soon.

Re:Why not?

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

One thing I just realized I forgot to mention that's extremely important. Even though it's a great concept, a concept is nothing unless it's impletmented well. So this thing has great potential, but there's no guarantee that it'll work.

Re:Why not?

[master_p]

I agree that Linux needs a unified GUI style, but which GUI toolkit should be used for the theme? would it be Qt or GTK? Toolkit selection is important, because a) different toolkits offer different themeing capabilities and b) it affects the future of programs developed with them.

Because Novell fucking told you you want it!

[CyricZ]

Seriously, I couldn't agree more. The XP and OS X GUIs are perfect for ditzy teen girls. All round, bubbly and colourful. As such, they're more apt for looking at, rather than using. And I don't think that will fly in the Linux/BSD/Solaris world. Most users of UNIX use UNIX because they want to get work done. And getting work done is impeded by excessively round buttons and crap like that.

Indeed, your typical NeXTSTEP- or Motif/CDE-inspired theme often allows for the most productivity, with the minimal amount of confusion.

Re:Because Novell fucking told you you want it!

[clackerd]

"Indeed, your typical NeXTSTEP- or Motif/CDE-inspired theme often allows for the most productivity, with the minimal amount of confusion." ...for a computer scientist. i think this is more for non-elite power users, and people like grandma. remember: don't player hate, investigate.

cheers,
chris

Re:Because Novell fucking told you you want it!

[mboverload]

Tell me how round buttons effect productivity. At all. They are not even round. They are rounded sqaures and are EASY TO CLICK. If Windows has small close buttons and Linux came out with buttons that were 100px sqaure, would you be cumming yourself?

Sounds like your are so insecure in your geekness/masculinity that you worry over the color of a button. You can disable the Windows themes service with just a few clicks.

Re:Because Novell fucking told you you want it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really understand how you perceive the visual appearance, or the theme of a tool, as the deciding factor of the tool's usefulness. Yes, people want to use UNIX because they want to get work done, but it's the wide array of utilities and applications for UNIX that enable this, not its choice of Motif/CDE vs. Aqua.

Sometimes all that graphics crap even works out for the better -- Expose on OS X is a real time saver, and has no equivalent in the Windows or Linux world. (Note: I am not an Apple fanboy. I own a PC.)

Re:Because Novell fucking told you you want it!

[jedidiah]

It's a F*CKING GUI, the graphics are how the user interacts with the system. They govern what information is present and how clear it is. It also governs the nature of the controls available and how the user interacts with them. If the visual appearance were really that irrelevant to the overall usability of the system then there would be very little need for standardization in general.

It's not the look stupid!

[GiorgioG]

Give people a reason to use Linux instead of Windows. We all know the free-ness factor is not a driving factor to most people. The shiny-ness doesn't play a huge part anymore. People buy a PC, it comes with Windows. They don't associate paying $ with the OS.
XP / OS X are already 'very pretty' - being another runner-up or also-ran-as won't help.

Give people a killer app that doesn't exist in the Windows world. Something that the average joe will say 'wow, that saves so much time...' or 'wow, I didn't know it was that easy to do that'

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[abegetchell]

It is the look! Everything in Windows looks the same and can be expected to act the same - when you hit "Alt-F" the "File" menu opens and there are always (ok, not always, but the vast majority of the time) three little buttons in the upper right hand corner of the window that always do the same thing. That's what a typical end-user cares about. I personally believe that a unification in the look and feel of operating system and it's applications will go a long way towards having larger user-base embrace a Linux platform. I applaud this effort!

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[DoubleRing]

People buy a PC, it comes with Windows. They don't associate paying $ with the OS

Well, free-ness is a big factor for people. People's eyes grow big when they compare Photoshop ($600+) to Gimp or Final Cut ($1200+) to Cinerella or Alias (where's that infinity sign?) to Blender. Sure, sometimes they're not as powerful, but the average user frankly won't stumble upon that problem until later, when they've become advanced enough that they can work around it. The best example for me is 3ds max. Watching some tech demo's i became enthralled with 3d. Problem, I'm a high school student with very little income. What do i do? I think, well, i'll save up. I find blender, think "cool, i'll use this until i get 3ds max". I get sucked into the community, see the amazing work people have done and now, that money in the bank is waiting for something else.

I agree that there should be more killer apps for Linux, but remember, there are. There's the Apache server program (thats the best example), Cinerella, Rosegarden, and that's ignoring all the cross platform programs. Cross-platform programs are good in that they inform everyday users to the presence of OSS.

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[skepticult]

It is the look!

The look of horror that creeps across your face as you try to get all of your hardware working at the same level it does in Windows?

Yes, I agree.

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[i_should_be_working]

Give people a killer app that doesn't exist in the Windows world. Something that the average joe will say 'wow, that saves so much time...' or 'wow, I didn't know it was that easy to do that'

I actually do get Windows users looking at my desktop and saying stuff like that. Or a Windows user asks how I do something and I say something to the effect of "well in Linux I just blah blah blah, but I don't know how you'd do that in Windows" and they get a dissapointed look and I get a smug one ('cause I'm a jerk).

There may not be one killer app (although I still don't know of a good free IDE for Windows so that would keep me in Linux even if I wanted to switch) but there are alot of little things that add up.

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, I used to believe this until I saw how many people ooh'd and aah'd at OSX -- primarily because of how it looked/behaved.

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[arkanes]

The fact is that the typical Linux desktop is far more consistent than the typical Windows one. I have here an XP machine. I have, using only Microsoft applications, no fewer than *three* UI sets active. And thats not because I'm running ancient stuff from Windows 3.1 either. Although if you counted the old version of Access I have here (because you can't open Access 97 databases in Access 2000 without corrupting them, even if you don't save anything. Nice.), there'd be 4. And then you can count stuff like WMP and MSN messenger. Ooh, look, I opened a Windows Help document. Theres another one. And this one (still, 10 years after the fact...) breaks the offical UI guidelines by adding crap to the system menu, so when I try to close it by right clicking on the taskbar, I end up hitting "About HTML Help..." instead, because it breaks muscle memory.

Now, theres a variety of widget sets for Linux too, of course. But applications written in those widget sets tend to be highly internally consistent, and thanks to the efforts of distro packagers, all the applications in a distro will also tend to be consistent. The KDE and GNOME guys both do an excellent job of keeping consistency in thier "official" applications as well. Far better than Microsoft does, for example - the biggest Windows app in the world, Office, uses a custom widget library instead of standard ones.

Re:It's not the look stupid!

[Lord Flipper]

Well, free-ness is a big factor for people. People's eyes grow big when they compare Photoshop ($600+) to Gimp or Final Cut ($1200+) to Cinerella or Alias (where's that infinity sign?) to Blender. Sure, sometimes they're not as powerful, but the average user frankly won't stumble upon that problem until later, when they've become advanced enough that they can work around it.

Go to the head of the class young person, no kidding. I'm an old guy, I have a ton of cash locked up in Adobe and Apple and Office. On both of 'those' platforms. And the potential in the OpenSource movement is stunning, and obvious, to me, in just a little over three weeks running Ubuntu on a Powerbook

Despite the hardware issues, exacerbated by being on the ppc branch of things, with my Airport Extreme and spanned desktop down the tubes, for now, I am having the most fun I've had on a computer since NeXT.

The new OpenOffice is an amazing piece of collaboration. adherence to 'real' XML is music to my ears [SGML/XML coding, re-purposing is a 'sideline' for me]. The 'community', as fractious, and argumentative as it is, is hitting a huge number of the key issues, right on the head. It is an awesome time to be getting into it all, or, like me, really getting into it, again.

Pointless if people switch their icon set.

[CyricZ]

Such a guideline will be useless if nobody uses it. I mean, the first thing many KDE/GNOME/etc. users do is switch the theme they're using. So unless it's the only theme provided by default, chances are people will switch away from it for an icon set they prefer.

Re:Pointless if people switch their icon set.

[damiam]

Only power users even understand the concept of an icon set, let alone try to change it. Having a good-looking, well-integrated default icon set is important because 90% of users are not going to think about changing their icon set.

And obviously, people will only switch away from it if there's another theme they prefer. So if this icon set is well-done, I can imagine quite a lot of people using it.

Re:Pointless if people switch their icon set.

[Onan]

User interaction design has precious little to do with themes and icon sets.

It can be used for commercial purposes!

[Anonymous Coward]

All the icons available in the Tango Project are licenced under Creative Commons Share-Alike license. A short summary that describes this licence is available at:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

It says: "You are free to make commercial use of the work"

This excellent news! The icons are beautiful.

Re:It can be used for commercial purposes!

[Krimszon]

Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

That first note, fair enough, I'll put a comment in the code. The second one, I don't know. What does this mean for my project, it automatically becomes a CC licenced project? I might not want that.

KDE/Baghira is Free alternative to MAC OSX

[billybob2]

KDE with the Baghira theme is already a viable FOSS alternative to MAC OS X eyecandy.

Re:KDE/Baghira is Free alternative to MAC OSX

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Let me guess, you've never really used OS X, have you? When all I used was Linux I thought Baghira was cool. Since I've bought a Mac (PowerBook), though, I have to say that Baghira doesn't even come close. It sort of gets the look, but it the feel is nowhere near the real thing. The eyecandy in OS X is on another level.

However, I feel that Englightment DR17 is on that level. Try it out. It compiles fairly easy from source, at least on Mandriva 2005. You can watch the Video to get an idea.

I do like KDE, however, and use it on all of my Linux machines. I also use several KDE apps (Quanta, Kate, Konsole, and others) under OS X. IMHO, KDE blows away Windows. I love the network transparency in it, too. It's nice to be able to save directly to a webdav server with Kate, for example.

SuSe Puke Green

[N8F8]

I see the icons and palette both have a lot of the SuSe puke green look. In fact the palette even labels those colors "chameleon".

Hard to get excited about this...

[jhoger]

Basically at this point the Mac/Windows style interface is creaky and aging. Does your gut tell you that this style of interaction with the computer is really the best way to go?

I'd like to see some really innovative desktop environments... for myself I tend to experiment with the tabbed window managers that maintain your layout, for me Ion3 seems to be doing the job.

On top of that it would be nice if the interface was more naturally productive. Basically, your applications should be persistent and state should collect up as tasks... so if I'm working on a document, and I do some research in Google it would be good if there was a straightforward, natural way for this info to collect together, and save some history automatically.

Anytime I want to restart a task it should bring up my document, and history for the searches I was doing, etc. Why should I have to hunt around for documents and pop all those windows open again, rearrange them on screen in a productive way...

Productive is a lot more important to me than "usable" where usable means Mac- or Windows-like. Strategically it makes no sense to play follow the leader when we have an opportunity to get out in front.

-- John.

Guidelines, not just icons?

[jdub_dub]

I was hoping that this would be a set of guidelines similar to Microsoft Windows' style guides (e.g. standard sizes for font sizes, using 'F' as a shortcut key for the File menu, all that jazz).

At the moment it seems Tango is only for icons, so I hope that in the future they consider the above aspect as well. To me, Linux applications always seem quite wildly different (different styles of menus, different locations of buttons, etc). This could be a useful way to integrate applications together.

Re:Guidelines, not just icons?

[l3ert]

The guidelines will come with the Cash Project.

Re:Guidelines, not just icons?

[ssergE]

Quite some time ago GNOME released the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.

It covers all aspects, included those that you gave in your examples, and I would credit it to one of the reasons why the GNOME desktop is so nice to use.

Give it a look sometime, especially if you are a developer.

Re:Guidelines, not just icons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know how well 3rd party software developers stick to consistent UI's in Windows...

Re:Guidelines, not just icons?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

Hello? No one else saw that movie I guess.
Good thing.

Beautiful?

[dtfinch]

Is anyone else looking at that webpage in Firefox on Linux with font smoothing enabled and set to "Best Contrast"? Their choice of font looks terrible. I'm not sure if it's an accident or if they're trying to make a point.

Re:It's been done before

[kernelpanicked]

Nice, I get modded troll for pointing out the obvious. What the hell are you mods smoking? Here's a few links to projects just like this that blew hot air and wasted bandwidth by talking and not doing, just like this one.
http://freedesktop.org/ http://www.freestandards.org/news/press.php?id=215 &view=full/ http://www.desktoplinuxconsortium.org/

This'll Never Work

[Eli Gottlieb]

Why don't these "desktop standards" folks get it? We, the people of Open Source, like having choice in our desktop environments, our window managers, and how they all look. If having ever bloody Linux distro switch to offering a KDE/GNOME choice by default didn't "standardize" (ie: kill choice and competition) Open Source desktops, what makes them think they can?

They are contrary to the aims and values of the Free Software and Open Source movements, and simply wish greater market share for Linux. Shmeh.

Re:This'll Never Work

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most insightful post here. A score of 1. That's a shocker.

You know what I miss?
Slashdot. The way it used to be.

Re:This'll Never Work

[Hiro Antagonist]

The important point is that whatever we *choose*, there should be a uniform way to apply this across all applications.

A user should be able to choose a look-and-feel, be it NextStep, Ion, KDE, GNOME, Windows, MacOS, or whatever they hell they happen to be in love with, and *all* applications should follow this choice. Given the way that windowing libraries work, this is not hard, as all of them have the same 'basic' widgets; the problem is that everybody and their mother has implemented their own widget library, each having a different look-and-feel, and none of them being 'theme-compatible' with the others.

There is nothing wrong with GTK, QT, WX-Windows, and Java Swing all being around -- the problem is that getting all of the above to look the same is all but impossible.

There's a lot of other big usability nits that people put down to 'choice', but which really boil down to 'developer laziness' or just 'lack of foresight'. I hate that, despite my having been a Linux user and professional sysadmin for six years, that I still can't figure out how to be able to input in Japanese, German and English in all of my applications from within X. I hate that every application that isn't part of KDE or GNOME seems to need its own differently-functioning file manager, and that I can't just copy a bunch of formatted text from OOo, dump it into an xterm, and get plain text.

This is why there is a shiny new PowerBook 12" sitting on my coffee table. I want to spend my time working on my projects and writing open-source apps, not dealing with fundamental flaws in my user interface. Flaws which I'd love to fix, but which are so deep that they are otherwise unchangable.

Don't get me wrong. I love Linux on my servers, especially Debian, but as a workstation, I've been more than a little disappointed.

Re:This'll Never Work

[Anonymous Coward]

The important point is that whatever we *choose*, there should be a uniform way to apply this across all applications.

And how is some people working to create a green icon set standard going to make it easier to tell every program to use my favorite red icon set instead of the standard one?

Sorry, but this smells too much like the "One Microsoft Way" of blue everything in that other OS.

umm..

[Hohlraum]

how is this any different than just creating a new icon theme. another 1 of a gazillion available on the gnome/kde-look.org sites? why not just pick one of those. I hate the mix of cartoon and surreal (aqua-like) as well. This project goes anywhere it'll be a miracle.

Re:Completely irrelevant post

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Offtopic moderation courtesy of a TFer

ahhhhh !!!!! dancing with Slashdot

[icepick72]

Surely the project server has tangoed with death! I cannot access it.

Oh Reg, I do declare.

[springbokgeek]

Oh Reg, I do declare we gotsta compete with windows vista, its just so doggone beatiful...... Linux should be free and beautiful. Reg: Linux is ugly and for Geeks. Windows is beautiful and SLOOOOOOOOOW

Standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

Standardization of any process/product offering has been accomplished only through an iron hand.

|Are the heavy weights (IBM, Novell etc.) ready to adopt this?| is a question Tango guys have to think about.

print arrow

[icepick72]

I know they spent a lot of time on thinking up these icons, but I still would prefer to see the print document icon with an arrow going into it (intead of out of it as depicted by the icon). Conceptually I think of it as the document going to the printer, not the paper coming out of the printer. Does anybody really care though? I'm nit-picking.

Not Aqua, Human Interface Guidelines

[itomato]

This is more like the Apple Human Interface Guidelines than "Aqua". Not to mention, this has none of the wow-factor, gloss, or novelty of Aqua's interface.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExper ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html
and
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/HIGui delines/HIGuidelines-2.html

It's a corner of the box defining Free Software interfaces that recommends the use of braindead icons.

Re:Not Aqua, Human Interface Guidelines

[Lehk228]

i have never had a problem using free software due to icons, and most of my screen time is spent on free software, gaim, firefox, thunderbird, abiword, openoffice, 7zip, foobar

the onlt software i can tink of i use regularly that isn't free are a few games, ut2k4 and everquest 2

wont last long

[sl4shd0rk]

Unity and the Desktop have never been in agreement.
Just google for "KDE blah blah and Gnome BLaH blah"
Besides, diversity, adversity, choice and variety is
what makes OSS, OSS. Trying to unify it will be
like trying to herd cats.

Re:wont last long

[DashEvil]

http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22KDE%20blah%20bl ah%20and%20Gnome%20BLaH%20blah%22

It didn't work. :(

Xp GUI

[OneArmedMan]

I use XP at home ( for games ) and at work , cause i have to.

But the first thing i do after a clean install is disable all that fancy dandy Perdy UI shit. Its a resource hog and gets in the way.

even tho i use linux for select things ( file serving, firewalls, routers etc ) the single best thing i like about Windows is the consistency of it. No i dont mean the crashing :P, i mean that everything is in the same spot on every version, all the time.

It saves me time when working on someone elses machine , not to have to go digging round looking for the option i need.

This is where i feel distros like Ubuntu will help on the desktop, givin that "Windows Feel" , without all the crap that comes along with it.

Is it there yet, no i dont think so, but its sure moving forward awful fast.

Re:Xp GUI

[Proc6]

But the first thing i do after a clean install is disable all that fancy dandy Perdy UI shit. Its a resource hog and gets in the way. If you say so. Although going back and forth between XP Luna and Classic UI my memory and kernal memory usage fluctuates by approximately 1-2 megs. Unless you have some 1989 Hercules video card, the difference in speed to draw windows with either is smaller than probably any human could notice double-blind-tested. (Though blind testing UI's would be quite a feat.) I mean, turn off Luna if you hate it, but "It's a resource hog" is silly. What's an additional 2 megs of RAM now days, a nickel? But if it makes you feel more h4x0r to turn off Luna because it uses "resources" and "gets in the way", then by all means...

Re:Xp GUI

[OneArmedMan]

you have never had to admin a bunch of Xp boxes on a shoe string budget before you have?

never had to run one close to the "low end" of minimum resource requirements ??

turning off all those un-used and un-needed services and themes makes a difference.

it will never make a slow machine fast, but for those of us that dont have the best of everything ,each of those 2 mb here 3 mb here services add up and it makes a difference.

now to try and get an alternate Shell running so i can trim the fat a bit more.

if people want a fancy GUI and have the CPU power for it , well good for them, for those of us that dont, its nice to be able to get rid of the crap and keep the functionality of the machine.

Re:Xp GUI

[arkanes]

the single best thing i like about Windows is the consistency of it.

No, you like the way that you already know where everything is. Because the simple fact is that Microsoft absolutely does rename and move stuff between versions - the dumbed down (ahem, "simplified") control panel interface in Windows XP is a great example. Especially for managing users and groups. Grr. Theres the ever-loving auto-hiding menu items. There are *vast* UI inconsistencies between Windows versions, beyond the themeing, and major ones even within Windows. But you already know and are familiar with that interface, so you're mentally blind to it and it seems normal.

Re:Xp GUI

[phxbadash]

ummm...you do have the option to work with the classic control panel and you can turn off the autohide on the menu listings as well.

Lifetime employment for icon designers

[Wesley Felter]

Every time GNOME or KDE or some distro vendor decides to change their theme, TigerT, JimMac, and Steven Garrity have to redesign all the icons. I predict that soon after the Tango project is finished someone will decide that "it looks too XP/Aqua-like" or "my distro looks just like all the others" and the designers will be back at work.

Dead on Arrival due to license

[Anonymous Coward]

The icons are licensed under Creative Commons Share-Alike. The Creative Commons licenses don't meet Debian Free Software Guidelines, so would not be inlcuded in Debian.

See here for a summary of the problems with Creative Commons licenses:

http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html

Re:Dead on Arrival due to license

[MasterPi]

not even in non-free? alot of stuff gets buy there. it would be kind of odd to stick a mainstream project in non-free though.

Re:Dead on Arrival due to license

[X_Bones]

Dead on arrival? Right, because we all know that Debian is the only version of Linux that anyone runs, anywhere.

Re:Dead on Arrival due to license

[uhoreg]

Creative Commons has been working with debian-legal on making the appropriate licenses DFSG free. I don't know how much progress has been made, but there is something being done. So as long as the icons are licensed under CC-SA 2.0 "or later", things should work out eventually. Although I think it would be good for them to dual-license under both CC-SA and GPL.

NSJF

[Anonymous Coward]

No Stuff Just Fluff.

Huh?

[Duncan3]

Unifying... open source.... hahahahahahahahhaha

On a serious note, it's about freaking time. Hurray!

Not contrary at all.

[Chuck Chunder]

What they are doing doesn't restrict choice. It will always be there for those that want to change themes or icon sets.

Having seen various distros expend energy over and over again getting Openoffice/Firefox/GNOME/KDE to look somewhat similar it seems like a waste of energy. If they can get to a situation where the defaults for each app play nice then perhaps they can focus more resources on making real improvements to free software and less on kludging things together to create the latest 'bluecurve'. It makes sense to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort by pushing the changes back to the source. If distros (or anyone else) then wants to do their own thing then they are free to do so but it is insane for them to need to do so if they want a consistant look.

The Rise and Fall of Tango

[strider44]

The server has been pwned. Coral Cache works.

Re:The Rise and Fall of Tango

[Anonymous Coward]

... and now Coral is caching the server's error messages.

I have longed for something like this...

[bogaboga]

...but was helpless since I am neither programmer no coder!

I'd like slashdotters to tell me one cross-platform application that is more beautiful and therefore more pleasant to look at, [and use] on Linux, as compared to its Windows counterpart.

I'll answer that: None!

From OpenOffice with its huge icons, Firefox with its terrible fonts...may I go on?

Re:I have longed for something like this...

[loqi]

Not a programmer or a coder, huh? What else could you possibly be?

Re:I have longed for something like this...

[zpok]

"I'd like slashdotters to tell me one cross-platform application that is more beautiful and therefore more pleasant to look at, [and use] on Linux, as compared to its Windows counterpart."

A lot of internet website products. Or let me turn this around: you show me one proprietary (windows or whatever) BBS product that is as beautiful as e.g. Simple Machines.
I'm a usability flunky myself, so I'm not used to complimenting linux, but it needs to be said. A lot of FOSS server products blow away expensive alternatives both in functionality and beauty.

Why is everyone so apprehensive?

[shroomz]

What's wrong with this? Sure linux is about choice but it would be nice for everything to be standardized for new users--- besides, this is just one more choice, and those of us who know how to use linux will still be able to make a choice and screw around with other themes if we so please... this will make the linux desktop more competitive.

Pffft

[Chuck Chunder]

I mean, the first thing many KDE/GNOME/etc. users do is switch the theme they're using

Many? I'd expect the reality is more like:

The first thing 1% of KDE/GNOME/etc. users do is switch the theme they're using

Re:Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

That because you're a CUNT!

KDE

[Edd!3]

I must honestly say, that I use almost default KDE settings and it took me about 5-8 hours to be completely used to it. I came from Windows XP. Gnome is also very nice, when modified enough (and more efficent than KDE). I don't think that Linux has done a bad job with GUI, in fact I think people only critisize it because they compare it to Mac and Windows, and cannot spend a few hours getting used to it.

a film canister for photos?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok and "emblem-photos" is represented by a _film_ canister. We're in the digital camera age ... it's slightly dated is it not? Why not an icon of a camera, or a photo instead.

We need a new kind of janitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my idea, not that original for sure, but anyway...

Just like the Sylpheed-Claws thing, we need some people to get Gnome, KDE, XFCE, EDE etc. and do some serious pasteurization. Not all things are possible, but much has been done already, like:

- Red Hat's Bluecurve / Mandrake's Galaxy theme unification

- Openoffice/Mozilla integration with Gnome/KDE theme

- Various themes translated to various DEs like Brushed Metal, *Step, etc.

But it's all fragmented effort! I'm not advocating DE uniformization. KDE, Gnome etc. each has its own strengths. What I'd like is a group a people to do some orchestrated effort to do an automated process of converting DE/toolkit config info to a common database, which will be then used to generate configurations for other DEs or WMs (I understand information might be lost in the process).

This should be even done to old apps with code available. This is a perfect exercise for beginning developers...

And would be a way, albeit not easy, of achieving the same consistency on desktop Windows has -- without being tied to a one-for-all boring look.

Thanks for reading; AC comments are difficult to reach.

Whats wrong

[Dark_MadMax666]

with bazzilion other themes,icons ,widgets ,windows managers and other crap? - yet so far no linux distro has side mouse buttons working by default ,shift+numpad is still fucked up as well. not even mentioning the horrid stat of APi, binary and packages compatibility. Linux is already pretty. -prettiness is not linux problem nowdays ( I dont think honestly it ever was) .

Re:Whats wrong

[sapped]

with bazzilion other themes,icons ,widgets ,windows managers and other crap? - yet so far no linux distro has side mouse buttons working by default

I would assume that the people behind this project are more artistically inclined. I.e. they are more comfortable working with graphics than with code. Therefore it would most likely be of zero benefit to Linux to pull these people off this project and get them coding away on the side button issue.

Also because it is open source we are not really dealing with finite resources here. Just because these people choose to work on this doesn't mean that the side button mouse guys are going to stop working on their stuff.

Fix keyboard usability

[sabit666]

and focus issues in GTK+. I regularly find gtk applications very hard to navigate by keyboard. Fix focus issues in Firefox... don't waste time on look; feel is more important.

As long as it is fast

[saskboy]

If it's fast, and has the capability for "flashy" to be added in easily, so that people can download a theme to cover over it or modify their darn icons into stupid creatures or shapes, then I'm sure it will be adopted as a godsend by the Windows hordes looking to migrate to something that is familiar.

Linux has suffered too long by having its brand diluted with no unifying logo besides the penguin Tux. And there's only so much you can do with a chubby little black and orange/yellow bird. What's most important is the "Start" buttons work the same as they do in windows, and that Radio Buttons don't show abmiguous shadows so you never know if it's pressed in already, or if it's popped out.

We need tools man

[Bootle]

It strikes me that what we really need are tools that can read an app's code and transform the icons, locations, etc. to match the agreed-upon standard. That way existing programs can all be brought into the fold, without subjecting developers to extra work. An example of this the old-fashioned way is GimpShop. We need tools to do that automagically...

I wonder if this is an impossible task? It would really lead to more modular programs however, the GUI should sit above the program itself, so it should be easily modifiable.

And this is new, not what you know ...

[switcha]

conflict between creating a GUI that emulates the bubbliness of Windows and OS X, and creating a GUI that allows people to get work done efficiently and effectively.

And you, you are one person with an opinion. Just like someone else. Just like me. However, what's not an opinion is that "bubbly" absolutely, without a doubt, means unproductive. What makes someone more productive in a "bare bones" work environment? The fact that their interface looks like the cubicle they work in and they flee to the command line, and get back to work, just to stop from being visually assaulted by their windows?

Remember, this is a NEW project. If you think current bubbly, fruity-pants themes suck, that doesn't mean a new one will. C'mon... buck up. Think positive. You could put frickin' Pokemon characters in my windows, and if stuff is where I expect it and like-functioned items are in similar areas, I'd have a hard time arguing that it's not a "productive" system.

As always, arguing taste is an unwinnable argument, but I think arguing that something with aesthetic appeal to is, by its very nature, unproductive is a pretty poor position.

"Why would i" - offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of wearing this kind of comment on slashdot.. every time something NEW, BETTER, THAT PUSHES THINGS A LITTLE further appears there's always someone loving their "unsliced" bread (hardware specially), and they do this without any other arguments other then "why do I want a color tv? who wants colors? I can see anything on my old B&W sharp".. yes, some old stuff works great.. but this kind of comment always reveals lack o vision, and some egocentrism..
you can still get "unsliced" bread and B&W tv's on ebay. Stop pushing stuff backwards, let the market/users decide what THEY WANT.

I just installed Debian and good god...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything was gorgeous. I grew up using Windows and have never used Linux before.

Then I decided to peek around at the applications. FREECELL! Rock on! Then I started the game...

I swear, I think my eyes bled a bit.

I only hope that EVERYONE hops on this bandwagon, including whoever coded Freecell. The game can work perfectly but if Microsofts cards are prettier I'll just play on that box instead. ;)

Usability Guidelines

[Athenais]

Something like SymphonyOS' usability guidelines becoming popular in the OSS community would be awesome. In my experience, the second biggest problem people have with changing software (after file compatibility) is having to re-learn where everything is within the menu system, context menus, etc. Having a 'cockpit' of a program's most-used functions laid out in front of you with no nesting, scrolling, or drilling-down is very natural and easy to interact with, and addresses one of the biggest computer interface problems of today.

...But the ugly-colored icons are nice too.

Re:Usability Guidelines

[killjoe]

I hadn't seen that before. Finally some fresh thinking about the desktop. Actualy GUI innovation going on. These guys need more exposure.

Come on now...

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all know by now that the K in KDE stands for KRAP....! So obvisouly KDE should be discarded an effort placed else where... Like maybe back into CDE... Wait a minute? C...D...E Shit... What ever happen to the good ol days of fvwm? Now that was a fine piece of work there.. :)

Will it work? The evangelization i mean.

[Spy der Mann]

It seems to me like this is "a guy's idea (not a bad idea but anyways)" that he wants to popularize. Meanwhile, the Linux developers will keep doing the things they do, the way they want.

Unless this initiative has the support of major players I doubt it'll bear fruit. And that's bad, because Linux (the movement, not the kernel) needs standards badly.

I watched the video.

[CyricZ]

Taking your advice, I went and watched one of the demonstration videos on MSDN (or some other part of Microsoft's site). It was long enough, that's for sure. Nothing they did really impressed me. I was hoping I'd see something revolutionary, but all I saw was wasted screen space. It's different, yes, but to suggest that it will increase productivity is questionable.

Re:I watched the video.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? I mean, you'd think that the world's largest software company would have usability experts that actually know what they're doing, surely? And perhaps they'd record and analyze millions of users sessions to find out what tasks make them more productive? Come on, why is it questionable?

Re:I watched the video.

[Kjella]

Why? I mean, you'd think that the world's largest software company would have usability experts that actually know what they're doing, surely? And perhaps they'd record and analyze millions of users sessions to find out what tasks make them more productive? Come on, why is it questionable?

Or maybe because it is version 12 and during versions 1-11 they should have gotten really really close to the "perfect" way of doing it? Remember that half of what Microsoft is about is to give you a reason to upgrade, their top competition have been their own product. They're never going to go "Actually, version X-1 was pretty much perfect, you don't need version X". It is sort of, but not quite the same as fashion. You'd think that by now they should have tried every length from mini-mini skirts to the longest gowns. In the same way, there's really only so many ways you can help a user do word processing. But if they stopped changing it all around, they wouldn't sell anything.

Kjella

Re:I watched the video.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think that. You'd be wrong.

Usability testing is like any other form of testing; it "gets in the way" of making the product deadline and annoys the developers. What's the first thing to get cut from any project plan when it begins to slip? Testing. Want to guess which gets cut first if the choice is between usability testing and system testing?

Re:I watched the video.

[CyricZ]

"Usability testing" isn't like unit testing or even strength testing of concrete. There's no definite "this is broken" and "this is working".

It doesn't matter how many millions of dollars or how many "experts" they've used. What they have been coming up with for the past few years has not made me more productive. That is why I continue to use late 1980s and early 1990s GUI designs that do make me more productive.

I don't get it.

[lifebouy]

What, were they not expecting a good, healthy slashdotting? I mean, after going public with something as nerdlicious as new icons?
All cheap shots aside, the one icon I saw looks pretty clean.

BlueCurve

[mrfibbi]

This has been tried before. It's called bluecurve. It never got to be the standard it wanted to be because zealots of each Desktop/windowMananger/Toolkit complained that it compromised X's power and/or beauty.

Re:BlueCurve

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Here's the main reason I never liked BlueCurve: it looks like a ugly version of Windows 98 with nicer colors. The KDE support for BlueCurve was also very poor, it looks like ass comapared to the GTK+ support. QTCurve, however, was quite usable. The KDE support for it was quite nice, and the configuration is unified between KDE and GTK+. However, now thank's to ClearLooks I can just run that on GTK+ and Plastik with the ClearLooks color scheme. Look's quite unified that way, and much easier on the eyes.

Agree - but its not the 'killer app' either...

[spagetti_code]

Let me list what I see as the important items:

• browser (CHECK)
  
• office (3/4 of a CHECK). OO is nearly there.
  
• Simple app for viewing pics. (CHECK)
  
• graphical app (1/2 of a CHECK). Gimp UI devs need a sharp rap across the knuckles. Otherwise, it would be a CHECK,
  
• dont require users to dive into config files and command lines (e.g. wpa anyone??). Every app should have a GUI admin. All config should be done through a control panel (collection of admin tools).
  
• having 100 possible text editors is not something to be proud of. Pick one. Vi (on unixes in the 80s) and notepad today are success stories - consisent, everywhere, something you can count on. (Devs can do what they like, this is users I am talking about).
  
• Fix the 'start' menu. Its like every distro tool the MS start menu and messed it up. Look at Ubuntu if you want to see menus organised right.
  

I have used redhat, suse, fedora and ubuntu. Ubuntu kicks butt as far as usability. Simple install plus one of everything right where you expect. 5.10 is excellent with OO2.

Re:Agree - but its not the 'killer app' either...

[stor]

Gimp UI devs need a sharp rap across the knuckles. Otherwise, it would be a CHECK,

You might be interested in this.

In short: they know, they're working on it...

Cheers
Stor

Re:Completely irrelevant post

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points I would mod you +5 Funny.

Re:usability?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't polish a turd.

You can if it's frozen.

tango project

[Anonymous Coward]

Tango Project is also the title of this super rare and awesome old skool hardcore record:

http://www.discogs.com/release/157655 :)

The Artists have arrived to Software...

[mi]

A sure sign of a discpline having been developed, established, and saturated...

The Scientists are mostly long gone. Time for the Engineers to move on too. Biotech? Nanotechnology?

How can this work for Free Software?

[nickco3]

As Terry Pratchett said: Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of different directions.

Free Software gets pulled in all kinds of different directions, this is a natural consequence of the "Free" bit. We need to recognise this as a strength and stop trying to imitate the Tyrant and the Despot. Attempts to imitate them are probably doomed, anyway.

No mistakes in the Tango, Donna

[gatch]

Not like life. That's what make the tango so great. If you get all tangled up, just tango on. Why don't you try it? :-)

Tango for free is doomed to failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows Tango needs Cash!

Ok I actually read through all the responses to make sure no one had "stolen" that, jesus christ whats wrong with me.

Great project

[JVert]

can it run linux?

Need a common theme & menu structure

[mcn]

I did not RTFA.

We have lots of desktops and windows managers, like KDE, Gnome, Xfce, fluxbox and what-have-you. But I think one thing lacking is a common theme, menu structure, and windows behaviour, independent of the distro. And make that the default one for newbies. For advanced/adventurous users, they can change to what they like.

geez...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

One of the main reasons why I use KDE is because it looks and feels like KDE. I love the look and feel of KDE. I sincerely hope that it does not go any other way. Why should we submit to what other people want? I know that sounds arrogant, but so what. I like what I like, and if people don't like it, then don't freakin use it.

Having said that, I can foresee an "option" to use the "original-style" KDE, which I could live with too. I am not trolling, and not flamebaiting. This is truly my opinion.

Serverkillers

[drange_net]

Coral cache

Style vs. Content

[halleluja]

All slashdotters know, it's not the style that is sexy, but the content.

My Question-Cold Showers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What could be more beautiful? Is it not?"

I believe this is the point were we all yell to the Gnome and KDE guys? RUN!

Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that the linux framebuffer console suddenly went out of fashion?

Yes!

[EddyPearson]

I great idea! Really and it does address the issue of well, i suppose you could call graphical bloatware. Marcus Ranum said it best:

"If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that."

Re:Yes!

[cyborg_zx]

Bad analogy. X-Windows is more like an engine - we have cars with the same engine in them but with different styles on the outside - the Windowing systems are the chassis' and paintjobs and other nuts and bolts that make a complete car. People like to buy things with different styles - otherwise we'd still be driving Model T's. Windows is a bit like the Model T situation where you can have any UI you like as long as it's Windows. Choice is good. People like to choose.

Re:Yes!

[EddyPearson]

hmmmm, mines snappier!

A standard desktop is not a good thing

[cast42]

Although I like the effort i don't think a unified linux desktop is a good thing. The truth about markets (History and economics) learn that a unified/centralized solution is not a good thing because it hampers innovation. Instead disciplined pluralism results in the end at better solutions. So, long live KDE vs GNU vs Novell vs My tweaked vs .. desktops...

Free and user friendly

[zpok]

Those two clash. Hard. Today.
Which IMO isn't necessarily a bad thing. But linux may be user friendly, it's not average-user friendly. Does it have to be? Depends.

Where should FOSS be user friendly in the broad sense - and playing to the common denominator instead of the programmer's whim?

That's simple, no? There where the aim is market share. If you want linux desktops to succeed beyond the geek, you have to make it friendly and fool proof.

The good news is that with recent gains in both users and perception, more people will want to do things just like this project.

The bad news is... there isn't any bad news. For all people who think linux is fine just as it is, you will carry on just like before, building your stuff the way you like it, no?

The boring news is that usability is something that comes from the top, permeates the whole project and dictates - yes, dictates - to all who work with it.

So everybody working in a project that aims to please to the mythical joe sixpack will have to defer to the usability overlords.

Will that ever happen? Hopefully yes and no. A lot of linux developers tend to look for something that will plug in usability as an afterthought. It don't work that way. What I hope is that some projects will take linux usability to the next level and that some projects will not care one bit either way. So that in the end everybody is happy. And so that even those who don't give a rat's ass will still have an example that is NOT MS or Apple to look at when contemplating the user.

I've been impressed lately by some FOSS Internet server products, like Simple Machines BBS. It seems to be a perfect mix of user friendliness and geek heaven. It sacrifices some to both sides, but also pleases both camps. That's something OS X does very well, catering for the clueless and the übergeek alike. Something like that could happen with a more unified linux desktop, without threatening either side, since options and choice are what seems to be Linux's biggest appeal next to price and principles.

So there, that's my take on it. Good overall, as long as it doesn't want to change the whole linux thing. Because that would be impossible and insulting to those who develop in their free time.

Requires the loss of one of the platforms

[gilesjuk]

Either GTK or QT will have to die or both with need to conform to a visual appearance. Having multiple libraries will just keep everything looking different.

It would be handy if you could just apply something like a style sheet to a GUI.

Re:Requires the loss of one of the platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

death to gtk, and death to gnome. both are unintuitive, bloated, and frankly stupid. and how the fuck are you gonna tell your users that "this way is better to use your computer, no matter what YOU say". i am referring to that stupid red-headed stepchild spatial nautilus. the whole gnome project is fucking retarded. why dont they just cut bait and be done with it, it would save the rest of the world the pain of having gnome around!!!!!!

Tango disambiguation page

[Artemis3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango

In the eye of the beholder?

[campaign_bug]

I find myself wondering whether a single unifying style is a good idea. Regardless of what OS I'm running, I normally change the style significantly to suit my tastes. KDE 3 really went a long way towards profiding a consistent theming interface, but all too often I still find myself installing various add-ons and extras just to get specific styles to work properly. I think a focus on eradicating these problems in KDE would be a better use of people's time. Then the artists and designers can get on with making all the eye-candy they want. Having said that, a standard look & feel as a default setting on most distros might make it easier for people to migrate.

Really, when it comes down to it, everyone has a different preference for what is best. I think it will be very difficult for the entire community to reach a consensus on what looks nicest.

Use mirrorbot

[Anonymous Coward]

Coral Cache is already up to date: 404 Not Found.

Use mirrorbot to read the front page at least: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/b7e29f99c664a07e3 f8a35638353cdd9/index.html

Tango clarification

[digitaldc]

From http://planet.gnome.org/

Bits of Tango clarification

Slashdot got it nearly right, but a bit wrong: the Tango Project is about unifying the Open Source desktop, but it isn't by Steven Garrity and Jakub Steiner alone. Steven and Jakub presented it at the GNOME Summit in Boston over the weekend, but Rodney Dawes, Tuomas Kuosmanen, Anna Dirks (site currently down), and myself all had a lot to do with making it a reality. A few others helped out along the way too, such as Trae McCombs.

In addition, Tuomas recently posted on his blog a bit more about Tango: Remember, Tango is not "yet another theme", what I am even more interested in is to really look outside our "Gnome/KDE/Whatever" sandbox and try to fix the overall user experience on "Linux Desktop" - we need to co-operate really. Unified look and feel is one step in that direction, and a logical one for me as an artist.

Re:"compliment"

[Anonymous Coward]

'Don't you mean "complement"?'

Oh shut up! No one cares about a single misplaced letter.

What a dipshit.

Oh, it's about *graphical* look&feel?

[dkf]

There I was thinking (from the headline) it was about unified source code pretty-printer and highlighter. Instead, we get boring stuff about changing the exact look of all the icons all over again. Hey guys, this is just about keeping lame-ass graphic designers off the streets, and not about making OSS better for developers...

It's Already Being Done

[segedunum]

It's called the appeal project (http://appeal.kde.org/ and this Tango project has simply been dreamed up as a response. It's a direct rip-off actually. I mean come on:

The Tango Project is a collaborative effort of a variety of free/open-source software designers and artists

Jakub Steiner even talks about standards (freedesktop.org!! - standards!!) on his weblog (http://jimmac.musichall.cz/weblog.php). Err, sorry but you're not creating yet more non-existant standards to throw around just so you can say certain people aren't collaborating. This is a solution looking for a problem because the problem is already being alooked at. I can't see KDE adopting anything like this as a standard, and I doubt whether Gnome would as well because it would mean some large changes to their HIG as well as other things. This sentence kills the project stone-dead before it has even started:

While there are things you can already grab and start using on your desktop, we are making this public in an early stage as the key elements of the project are the actual standards we want people from various projects agree on.

Right. So we create an independent project, create lots of Gnome-oriented stuff, possibly submit it to Freedesktop and then push it as a standard? Right......

and he makes this comment further down:

Chris, the goal here is to find a sane compromise. We need to get rid of those icon attributes that would make an application feel out of place. If everyone else is using saturated colors, going against the stream isn't going to help us.

What project is going to adopt that! This guy has certainly got the wrong end of the stick here. I can't see this lasting at all.

If making apps not look out of place really is their goal though they can do worse than to just ask the KDE people and adopt the QtGTK theme engine and work on it. Somehow I can't see any of that happening.

Nice idea but these aren't the guys to do it.

[windowpain]

They designed the Firefox and Thunderbird logos? They're terrible. They look good when they're a couple of inches across in Photoshop or whatever but they sure don't look good on a toolbar. The IE "e", AIM's walking man, Word's "W" and Yahoo Messenger's open-mouthed smiley all look better and are more distinctive.

Distributed Proofreaders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, did you nick that from something going through Distributed Proofreaders? There's a lot of hilarity up in there.

Gnome? KDE?

[gr8_phk]

"Creating a unified look and feel for graphical Linux apps has been long overdue."

I thought that's what Gnome and KDE were trying to do. I know Gnome is starting to look quite unified as long as you use Gnome apps. The only thing I can really complain about is the icons on the Gnome pannel - especially the fact that some are different than in other places. Desktop folks have no business creating icons different than the ones app developers make - it leads to confusion. We certainly don't need a 3rd group trying to make a nice desktop, but they are welcome to try.

More than just Jakub and I (Steven)

[sgarrity]

Thanks for the link! I want to clarify, though, that while Jakub and I gave the presentation (well, Jakub gave the presentation - I just helped introduce), there are more people than just he and I on the project. Garrett LeSage (another Tango-er) clarifies.

Horrible, horrible idea!

[Grendel Drago]

That's a terrible idea! The difference between GTK and QT apps is moe than just cosmetic; there are different usability guidelines for GNOME than there are for KDE. If you blur the distinction between them, the user's experience becomes that much more difficult. Instead of two environments running at once, each with its own consistent idioms and user experience, the user is faced with one big environment, but an inconsistent and confusing one.

Yech.

OSS - People Reinventing the Wheel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. Look at the posts. There are a ton of other projects doing this. The issue has been around seemingly forever. And as long as this sort of disparate effort continues, OSS seems to be wasting its resources.

May The Fizz Be With You

[gidds]

It's also the name of a range of fizzy drinks that's very popular here in the UK, especially in the original orange flavour. It's also known for its often-controversial advertising.

Why they should want to be associated with that, I'm not certain...

Dock is great but geeks don't like it

[snowwrestler]

It's simply a place to put things you need. If you need an application, you can put it there. If you need a document, you can put it there. If you need a folder, you can put it there. If you need a window, you can put it there.

Computer geeks freak about the Dock because it's not well-defined. "Is is for applications? Is it for documents? Is it for windows? It's so confusing!" No, it's not. It is for things (anything) that you need. It is so useful precisely because it is not limited--you can put anything there if you need it, and take anything out if you don't.

Minimizing windows into the Dock makes sense because if you minimize a window, obviously it's something you need. If you didn't need it you would just close it.

Who cares if all the windows look the same down there. If you mouse over anything in the Dock you get its title in nice big drop-shadowed (easy to read) text.

No, it's a GREAT idea!

[mrchaotica]

The parent mentioned GTK-QT in the context of uniting the look and feel of GNOME and KDE. It is the first step in the process that would include merging GNOME and KDE's human interface guidelines too

Stuff like ok/cancel button order is already configurable in preferences; every HIG difference should be configurable too so that GNOME and KDE apps act the same way as well as look it.

Building 'Yet Another Window Manager' not answer!

[Lodragandraoidh]

All you need is a layer between the X API and the applications. This layer would translate existing X calls to the 'user friendly' mode.

Developers would not have to learn any new tricks, and existing software would be immediately useful - and the tool would be more useful to the end user than trying to get the X window managers and desktops crowd to agree on anything.

Re:Building 'Yet Another Window Manager' not answe

[Lodragandraoidh]

Correction: ...some logical flaws there:

app space
| we could insert something here to solve the problem instead!
|
desktop manager issue in here
|
|
window manager and/or in here
|
| inserting somthing here won't solve that problem
X

My basic idea was correct - but the details were flawed.

We could insert something between the applications and the window managers that could filter the API calls (a la WINE). While daunting, that bit of software would be no less daunting than trying to get everyone to use one unified window manager/desktop.

It looks nice but...

[Yonkeltron]

It looks nice but I question whether it might be a positive thing to have choices in terms of look. Going from one WM to another should bring new things to the table.

hmmmm.

[binarybum]

now, if only they could do the same for /. - this mocha theme has got to go.

    Also, as evidence that this is not the kind of priority open-source needs - the tango server is down.

Alas, it's a CPU hog

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

If you bother to observe the commandline util "top" (or Activity Viewer or whatever) while that icon is bouncing, you will see a distressingly high use of CPU.

I installed a util to stop it and instead replace it with a flashing arrow indicator, which allowed me to keep playing a fullscreen game without quitting to answer an IM =/

(the inability of some Mac games to minimize/windowize is left as another heated discussion... thank god WoW does)

Re:Alas, it's a CPU hog

[Eccles]

If you bother to observe the commandline util "top" (or Activity Viewer or whatever) while that icon is bouncing, you will see a distressingly high use of CPU.

Couldn't that have something to do with it busily loading a program?

Re:Alas, it's a CPU hog

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

In this case no, because the default user-alert system ALSO repeatedly bounces the Dock icon for notification/attention until you click on it. Such as when you get an iChat message. I first noticed this when I was playing a game and things suddenly got extreeeemely slow and laggy. Quit, and voila, there was an icon bouncing forever until I clicked on it... Next time you get one of these, check Top, you might be surprised.

Re:Alas, it's a CPU hog

[Eccles]

I've been on the internet for twenty years, so I don't use this newfangled chat stuff. :-) I got an iCal event to trigger, and it used about 20% of CPU doing bouncing and a ringing clock on a 1.8 Ghz G5.

Please give us Freedom of Color

[xethair]

I'd like to appeal to this and every other icon and beautification project. You are very valuable, but please take some effort to give us this one thing: freedom of color. Let the user pick the colors. Really. Make your icons and shadows and such derive from a set of user selected colors, and don't forget to handle the implications of that, especially for example, the difference between light-on-dark and dark-on-light.

I know there are some people already thinking this would never work, that they need to pick an effective color-scheme to have it look nice, but that simply isn't true. Given key colors, you can generate a nice palete for icon drawing which still lets you have distinctive differences and subtle consistencies between icons. You'd probably want two sets of colors, one for generic things (light foreground, background, various accents) and another for topical things (like warning, default, movement...), and then you'd generate your icons from template code that could blend the basic colors to match.

It probably won't be perfect, but it won't be that difficult, and you can do it so that *your* chosen color scheme still comes out perfect, while mine comes out somewhere between nice enough and beautiful, without every user needing to hack up icons or have them look glaringly wrong if they dare to use different colors.

Plus, your icons then become more than a set. They become a pattern that can survive many design changes, and not just be replaced or redone poorly when you aren't around. They become true free software icons.

You shouldn't be able to configure that.

[Grendel Drago]

People complain that the Linux desktop is unusable. Why in the blue hell would you want to be able to configure whether it's Cancel-OK or OK-Cancel? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having simple, easy to remember idioms on the desktop? Being able to fiddle with the code and change it is one thing, but putting it right in the configuration interface? Whose brain-damage was that?

Merging the guidelines is a fine and admirable idea. I'm sure it smacks of one-true-wayism far too much to be adopted with any haste, but I'd rather not have to accustom myself to two or more different user interface standards while on the same machine.

Re:You shouldn't be able to configure that.

[mrchaotica]

Well, what I was talking about wasn't really options for individual things like that, but an option to "use GNOME inteface guidelines" or "use KDE interface guidelines," and all your apps -- GTK and QT alike -- would follow that setting.

Re:You shouldn't be able to configure that.

[name773]

i like immense configurability. focus follows pointer makes sense on my desktop, but not on my dad's laptop (trackpad is imprecise). i really like the idea that i can move around the minimize/maximize/close/above or below others/on all desktops/help/shade/etc. buttons on the top bar of windows in kde, and that i can decide which ones belong on there at all and which ones don't.

i also don't mind if things are a little different between programs. keeps you on your feet ;)

tango-project.org domain not found?

[shaggz]

I can't seem to find a dns server with an ip address for tango-project.org. Anybody have a mirror of their icons?

WHAT?

[Dust'-_-'Worm]

Hello, knock knock FEDORA CORE! Is not the same?