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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#14

This is the antithesis of open source and the things that drew me to Linux in the 90s and 00s

Exactly. WTF? If I release an open source app I would LOVE for you to theme it, mod it to your heart's content, and have a party. Send me a pull request if you come up with something cool looking.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#15

This is the antithesis of open source and the things that drew me to Linux in the 90s and 00s

To expand: the web gave us a mindset where developers and designers dictate to everyone else how their app will look. Beforehand, that was up to the OS, the windowing system and/or the user. Now, it’s fair to ask that problems with appearances be reported to the intermediate themers first, but this invasion of the web mindset is profoundly anti-user and anti-community.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#16
> apps can be arbitrarily restyled without manual work, which is and has always been an illusion

Sources? Win9x and 2000 were perfectly restyleable as far as I know.

This essay comes from the position of "the application developer should not be expected to make the application restyleable", which hangs on the above assertion. If the assertion is false, the argument falls apart, amounting to nothing more than pleading to change the social expectations.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#19
The article says clearly they are talking about distros that apply system wide themes without checking that all GTK applications still look good and not taking about people tinkering.

Distros do this because it looks good in screenshots and give the system a unique flare, but it gives all these applications a bad image when people try them and they look terrible.

Is the expectation that programs like geary should look at all popular distros and make style sheets to look good in all custom themes? I think they are saying they don't have time. People are stepping on their hard work and giving their apps a bad name.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#20
Honestly wish GNOME would leave well enough alone. The best UI is the one I don't have to maintain a configuration that fixes all their mistakes over the years. And it's complicated too, because they've got multiple places where things need to be configured back to a reasonable interface that doesn't hide controls or shadow common keybindings that have existed for decades.
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