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Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

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Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#111

Post by adrianlmm »

privong wrote: post #104
adrianlmm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then create one your self, this is open source, you are getting stuff for free and you got the source.

Often that is acceptable advice, but in this case, their issue that: > - Doesn't break in the next release. is something that can't be worked around simply by creating your own theme. That seems to be caused by poor compatibility checking (or reckless disregard, as others are claiming), which could bite you even if you create your own theme. Obviously, you could extend your suggestion to "fork gtk3", but that's likel…

That's an old myth, the theme engine is now stable and even if it breaks it is only a matter of minutes to fix it.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#112

Post by EmanueleAina »

weland wrote: post #108
cynic_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's as if everyone Apple fanboy who was rejected by Apple's UX department is now making GTK themes." Or most of them probably just gave up making GTK themes. https://github.com/QtCurve/qtcurve-gtk3 https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...

> Or most of them probably just gave up making GTK themes. Yeah, things are pretty terrible for theme developers. It's like GTK 3 development was steered by Steve Ballmer.

Things have improved a lot with the CSS engine maturing. With GTK+2 themes where loadable compiled modules and where far from simple.

With GTK+3 you do everything with CSS alone.

Of course full stability cannot be provided due to the fact that the CSS can poke at the internal composition of composite widgets, not unlike how greasemonkey scripts can hardly cope with the target website changing, but things got much more stable in the last few cycles.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#113

Post by EmanueleAina »

xpinguin wrote: post #72
weland wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was prepared to whine about exactly that. There is literally no gtk3 theme that, simultaneously: - Is not flat and generally grey or dark blue. It's as if everyone Apple fanboy who was rejected by Apple's UX department is now making GTK themes. - Is not frickin' ginormous. I know multitasking is frowned upon now that we have tablets, but I have a bloody 27" screen, I want more than one window on it at the same time…

That gtk3 maintainers position on backward-compatibility really puzzles me. May be I am wrong, but theming engine is a vital part of an UI toolkit - you need to represent all the fancy widgets somehow in a way appropriate to the user. Yet they keep on breaking things almost each minor, leading a lot of theme creators to quit. Might be the real underlying cause of our whines... Nevertheless, I don't see any other way…

> May be I am wrong, but theming engine is a vital part of an UI toolkit

Arguably, for a big chunk of GTK+ users (me included) it's not. I care about the work on the default theme as I can't really be bothered to install custom themes. For me, the same is true for Qt or whatever other toolkit: either they give me appropriate defaults or I will probably tend to ignore them.

That said, it seems that GTK+ developers agree with you more than you seem to expect: in the past few cycles they worked a lot on the theming engine, simplifying it to the point that the whole theme is defined only by CSS.

Instead of writing clunky, complex loadable modules in C, they can just mash together some CSS and customize every part of the UI. This is a massive improvement over GTK+2.

Of course, since the CSS can poke at the deep internals of the toolkit, complete stability cannot be provided: think of it as a user-level CSS that cannot cleanly cope when the target website changes.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#114

Post by nycticorax »

flowless wrote: post #77
xpinguin wrote: post #54

Disasterous :( For me, it has begun from evince and deadbeef, now firefox is on its way to follow. The problem is that I am unable to find any compact gtk-3 theme that looks like xfce-b5 theme for gtk-2. Xfce theming engine seems to be broken under gtk>=3.8. The only possibility is to recreate theme from scratch and pray that nothing would be broken when minor bumps again. Hell, I am unable to find any theme compact…

Try Clearlooks-Phénix https://github.com/jpfleury/clearlooks-phenix It's quite mature and available in number of distros. I'm pretty happy with it since I've discovered it.

I second this. Clearlooks-Phenix is great.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#115

Post by weland »

EmanueleAina wrote: post #112
weland wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or most of them probably just gave up making GTK themes. Yeah, things are pretty terrible for theme developers. It's like GTK 3 development was steered by Steve Ballmer.

Things have improved a lot with the CSS engine maturing. With GTK+2 themes where loadable compiled modules and where far from simple. With GTK+3 you do everything with CSS alone. Of course full stability cannot be provided due to the fact that the CSS can poke at the internal composition of composite widgets, not unlike how greasemonkey scripts can hardly cope with the target website changing, but things got much mor…

Bullshit. Every time a new GTK3 release comes up, the bug trackers of popular themes flare up (many of them obscure, e.g. https://github.com/shimmerproject/Numix/issues/206), various undocumented tidbits and bugs in the theming engine pop up and "innovations" like the client-side decorations are introduced.

Meantime, clunky, terrible C modules written back when GTK 2.10 was a thing work just fine on 2.99.

That is not simplification. Simplification is when things get easier, not when they get harder.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#116

Post by weland »

adrianlmm wrote: post #111
privong wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often that is acceptable advice, but in this case, their issue that: > - Doesn't break in the next release. is something that can't be worked around simply by creating your own theme. That seems to be caused by poor compatibility checking (or reckless disregard, as others are claiming), which could bite you even if you create your own theme. Obviously, you could extend your suggestion to "fork gtk3", but that's likel…

That's an old myth, the theme engine is now stable and even if it breaks it is only a matter of minutes to fix it.

Do a google search for GTK 3.16 theme bug. You'll find a bunch of people for whom it didn't take minutes.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#118

Post by whoopdedo »

cbd1984 wrote: post #33
whoopdedo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"oh no" that Firefox is dropping support for a slightly older technology (again)? "oh no" that GTK2 is a sinking ship that everyone is fleeing from? or do you mean "oh no" that Firefox is going to be at the center of yet another incendiary (and ultimately fruitless) debate. Because I can agree that any one of those is a good reason to say "oh no".

I'm voting for "bowl of petunias", and it got cut off before it could say "not again". The relevance of the "not again" is immediately apparent to people who've gone through a few GUI toolkits.

I would have thought the whale would be more appropriate seeing as we're talking about GTK+3 (and thus by association, GNOME).

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#119

Post by wander_homer »

xpinguin wrote: post #71
wander_homer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with deadbeef? It supports both GTK+2 and GTK+3 interfaces - GTK+2 is even the default and considered more stable since most of deadbeefs developers prefer that one. Edit: Regarding Evince, there's Atril. It's the GTK+2 evince fork from the mate developers.

You've made my day, thank you so much! Atril is really what I've been looking for. Regarding deadbeef, yeah, it was mentioned mostly on emotional basis. I had some troubles building gtk2 plugin on my home machine, good chances that it was problem with inconsistent building environment, yet no problems with building simple gtk2 apps or deadbeef gtk3 plugin. I haven't dug deeply though. At work, I just use slightly old…

I'm glad I could help :)

If you need help with building deadbeef, just visit us in IRC (#deadbeefplayer in freenode) and we'll help you. There are also portable builds available, those should work on any distro.

Re: Firefox nightlies for Linux are now using Gtk+3

#120

Post by adrianlmm »

weland wrote: post #116
adrianlmm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an old myth, the theme engine is now stable and even if it breaks it is only a matter of minutes to fix it.

Do a google search for GTK 3.16 theme bug. You'll find a bunch of people for whom it didn't take minutes.

Then submits bugs and contribute to fix those bugs, it is the way open source works, if you don't like it, go use something else, nobody is forcing you to use it.
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