Moving designs towards the original concept and/or Unity 8

[godlyranchdressing]

Thoughts? I was thinking that high-contrast and the increasing lean towards material/fluid/buzzword design (completely subconsciously) is just starting to feel a little bit generic and is moving too far away from the original concept.

[GreyAsteroid]

I've already stated my opinion in this before so I won't go into too much detail but of course I'm all for this.

I've been a bit partial towards how the concept looked vs how Unity 8 looks but even so, changes that directly remind me of the Unity 8 interface like rounding out the buttons, I love how they look. Looking at Unity 8 right now, even the lighter drop shadow that I loved from the concept was also present in parts of Unity 8.

Whether you want to bring changes back from the concept, push towards that Unity 8 feel, or pull a little bit from both; I think I'll be happy with whatever you come up with.

[krzyzowiec]

I'll include the concept for people who want to see what we're talking about.

I think your theme already looks better than the concept, but I'm not against change. To be fair, the underline element is probably a bit overused. I like your ideas here. The rounded corners in particular are fitting for an Ubuntu theme, though I would probably include the Window itself in that change if I could. (that part of the concept shot is nice) The only thing I would ask is that you keep some purple in there somewhere! :)

[GreyAsteroid]

That's a good point about the hard edges on the windows, I do find them a bit jarring. Also yeah I agree with the point of more purple. Thankfully there's now a purple/alt variant of the theme (though the purple used does look a bit more red than purple imo)

[krzyzowiec]

Now that @GreyAsteroid mentions it, I do think that if you decide to go this way, you should probably go all the way. So the alt+tab switcher would need to be rounded, the tooltips, popups, and the launcher buttons too. (Adwaita would be a good model for it since they round all these elements)

[GreyAsteroid]

One thing that I would be interested in seeing would be the light transparency of the headerbar in the concept. This is not used in Unity 8 whatsoever but themes like Arc pull it off well and I would be interested in seeing how it would look with this theme. It could look like absolute crud but I think it would be something neat to try.

[juhaku]

I think even how it looks now is quite impressive. Speaking of sharp edges as well. As long as things are not too it is also quite alright.

[amrmsaraya]

@ElectricGestalt what is the icon theme you used in this picture if you may ??

[godlyranchdressing]

Rounded window corners is something that will be done. It's a small change that gives a really neat look, it's just such a small change that I forgot to include it in that quick mockup. Lol.

I'll try to keep the purple/secondary color prevalent but I'm really not sure how to do that while avoiding the problems that plagued the older versions where the purple was more present.

In Unity 8, some elements like the progressbar use a blue as opposed to the primary green color.

Maybe the accent/purple color could be used there instead? I'll give the purple and orange button thing another try. I'll just need to make some compromises to get around what seems to be the one issue I had with Firefox before I scrapped the purple buttons all together. If it proves to be more trouble than it's worth, the accent color will just be used for something other than buttons.

Modifying the shell would be the easiest thing to do since it looks pretty similar to Unity 8 IMO and also because changing one thing doesn't break something else.

It'll just be to round out a couple elements and make the searchbar black. Lessen the orange a little too. A perfect example is the calendar, for the currently selected date/today's date I'll just remove the orange background, make the text orange and add a white, rounded border instead similar to Unity 8's. I'll also possibly like to incorporate gradients as seen in the concept just for a nicer highlight effect.

Thanks for the input, everyone.

@amrsaraya That's snwh's Moka icon pack.

[amrmsaraya]

@godlyranchdressing thanks alot.

[GreyAsteroid]

My main drive for having more things purple is more about adding variety more than anything. Right now everything is white and orange, sort of gives off that holo feel from older Android versions but instead of black and blue, white and orange.

I figure that any color variation will help with that, not just adding purple. Though purple being analogous with orange and something Ubuntu uses often does make it a good choice.

So, I don't think that the elements like the progressbar have to necessarily be purple, blue might just look good there and it could look good other places as well. Kinda just have to try and see.

[godlyranchdressing]

I was going to go with the blue but then I found this http://design.ubuntu.com/brand/colour-palette and decided to stick with the purple which IMO doesn't look half bad. OpenSUSE and Fedora have similar guidelines. I think I'll make some changes based on them.

[GreyAsteroid]

Ubuntu's official colour palette didn't even cross my mind. That's a really good idea.

I love the border on the buttons and entry boxes, let's you keep the color close to the background without losing them.

I notice the button slider is using green now, is that also going to be changed to purple to follow guidelines?

The top right section (not sure what to call it) the background should probably stay white. I can think of a couple places I've seen that and matching the main background would probably look weird.

You said that you had issues in the past with purple buttons, would it be easier to just keep all buttons orange and have all the sliders be purple?

[mrprobot]

I think Mid Aubergine or Dark Aubergine looks better than Canonical Aubergine, maybe you can test them out too.

The Link Button could stay Purple, I kinda liked that. If you change the slider to green I think the Checkboxes should be green too and I think they where actually green in Unity8.

[juhaku]

I'll wait what's coming with colors.. About purple almost anything goes but purple buttons in firefox will cause sea sickness. I think the balance now with buttons is quite good though.

[mrprobot]

Tested the newest version from concept branch. The rounded buttons really fit the theme well. I also like the green slider button, but I think the checkboxes should then be green too for consistency. Option enabled -> green color

Was the hover color always purple? Doesn't fit well with the orange in my opinion.

Juhaku is right, the purple text color for links is enough. The sliders (volume etc.) could be purple, I think that could fit well.

I also tested the alternate version... that's too much purple in my opinion.

[VandaLHJ]

I look forward to see slightly rounded corners and bit better exit/minimise/maximise buttons (perhaps also using squircle).

[krzyzowiec]

Man it's looking really great so far. I love the purple/green accents. (which is weird, I thought I would hate the green) The slider nub (circle) seems a bit oversized, and I'm not sure about the 'teeth' indicating window numbers on the panel, but I like everything else. The arrows just seem really distracting.

Dash to Dock has running indicators itself. Is it possible to tweak things in such a way that you can enable/disable them from there? I like the cleaner look myself.

The triangular nubs are interesting but stand in harsh contrast to everything else. Is it possible to soften them by rounding the edges?

Also, some bottom corners are not rounded, while others are. Not sure if the intention is they all should be rounded or not.

I kind of miss the orange highlight under the active window on the dock. Not a huge deal but it looked nice.

Edit: Btw, this theme is starting to look so professional, I could see it being the default theme on Ubuntu. You're very talented. :)

[godlyranchdressing]

@VandaLHJ, Good idea. I didn't think of new window buttons. I'll try something. I only ever experimented with Unity 8's buttons and those just looked too much like Windows 10's for me.

@ElectricGestalt, Agreed on the slider, I plan to fix it.

Honestly, I completely forgot DtD had running indicators. I could probably hijack them so the option will work for the custom indicators, right now they're both drawing in two different places so the option won't do anything for them.

The triangle pick is temporary.

That's not intentional. GTK2 apps don't have their bottom corners rounded at all and some GTK3 apps have their widgets drawing over where the corners should be rounded. I'm working on fixing it, I just hope that's even possible.

Thanks! If only I was more organized. Haha. And I hope so, anything but Ambiance.

[mrprobot]

The theme get's better and better with each iteration, so first off all, thank you for your work.

I really like the balance between orange, purple and green now, looks really good. There are just some small issues I noticed so far.

The progress bar in the Video App is purple but the nub is still orange.

The sliders in the Shell theme should be purple too for consistency.

I think a round nob would fit best, but you already mentioned the triangle is temporary. Could you make this look like a slider in purple?

[godlyranchdressing]

Didn't notice the nub or volume slider inconsistencies at all. I'll fix both. As for the triangle, I almost want to be lazy and make it identical to the progress slider (that was the plan, it's why the old ones are gone, haha), but they're both two different types of widgets so I kind of want to keep the distinction. I'll no doubt go back to the old pick.

I think I'll actually make some modifications to make it less look like it's going to be filled with something. It's supposed to mean fixed points but its thickness makes it look like a progress bar.

Thanks for the feedback!