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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

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Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#141

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #136
anoncake wrote: post #2

> GTK Stylesheets can make applications look broken, and even unusable. Bugs are bad, yes. > Icon Themes can change icon metaphors, leading to interfaces with icons that don’t express what the developer intended. That is not a problem if you use icons for the purpose they are intended for. > Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand. Good. My computer is not your billboard. Co…

> My computer is not your billboard. It's also not the distro's billboard, but you seem happy for them to impose their branding upon your desktop, even if they break functionality.

[deleted]

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#142

Post by gmueckl »

adamzochowski wrote: post #117
gmueckl wrote: post #32

Color themes seem like a brilliant idea until hit the point where your custom control needs this one extra distinct highlight or background color to convey state. Then you're out of luck. You only have bad options left: opt out of system theming and enforce your own or hardcode a color (or put it into the settings dialog) and accept that it breaks with any non-default theme out there because no user will take time to…

There are two solutions to this: 1) use offset colours, like specifying to move 10% in Hue off the theme colour. 2) specify all foreground + background colours and admit that this is special and won't conform to any user or distro theming

Number two is the enforced theme I was tslking about. Offset colors can be problematic for a number of reasons. The main one is that you don't know if the color that is generated that way has the right amount of contrast to each of the other colors it appears with and that the end result is something that is visually pleasing.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#143

Post by eximius »

Okay, this is maybe more reasonable than I expected. I believe distros shipping non-default stylesheets are the target here? They seem to explicitly acknowledge users can do whatever they want.

> If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.

Which is a sentiment I can get behind. Telling distributors that they need to make it clear the styling might break things is not wholly unreasonable.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#144

Post by anoncake »

DanBC wrote: post #136
anoncake wrote: post #2

> GTK Stylesheets can make applications look broken, and even unusable. Bugs are bad, yes. > Icon Themes can change icon metaphors, leading to interfaces with icons that don’t express what the developer intended. That is not a problem if you use icons for the purpose they are intended for. > Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand. Good. My computer is not your billboard. Co…

> My computer is not your billboard. It's also not the distro's billboard, but you seem happy for them to impose their branding upon your desktop, even if they break functionality.

Your assertion is incorrect. Even if it weren't, giving my distro permission to brand my desktop would not give anyone else the right to do the same.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#145

Post by faissaloo »

anoncake wrote: post #75
faissaloo wrote: post #65

On the contrary, I think GNOME allows people too much freedom to theme and it opens the system up to really broken theming. One of the things I love about Serenity OS is that it has one simple theming engine so everything looks the way you'd expect between applications.

> On the contrary, I think GNOME allows people too much freedom Freedom is kind of the point of free software.

The ability to run what you want and modify what you want is different from design freedom.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#146

Post by finchisko »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #63
cuddlecake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. The author presents valid and sensible issues with the state of theming on the GNOME platform. And the overarching topic is essentially User Experience. Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not…

The only egocentrism I see is all in the pompous article requesting that users do not make perfectly reasonable choices on their own computers. Then attempts to justify on some absurdly contrived grounds. Neither reasonable nor sensible. Imagine if Apple asked users not to apply stickers to their laptop as it denies Apple the possibility to control their brand, or could make the laptop look broken, even unusable - sh…

I see your point. But beware that if you make app developers go mad, they can stop using gnome and use some fw that doesn't allow theming (there is only certain level you can piss off the people :).

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#147

Post by anoncake »

microcolonel wrote: post #125
quantummkv wrote: post #8

This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it). GNOME/GTK devs, as usual, got confused and implemented something no one wants. Either you provide a proper and defined way to theme like KDE does or take the windows/mac route and tell developers to recreate any custom themed control from scratch. Instead, they go around saying that there is only one GTK theme and then leave a convenient…

> This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it). How do you think GTK+3 handles theming (or lacks handling for it)? It sounds like you're confusing GTK+3 theming for GTK+2 theming (which was based on "engines", which were quite a mess). Now it's very "proper and defined", it's accomplished with a strict subset of CSS which has fairly consistent behaviour. I personally don't see the po…

> I personally don't see the point in elaborate theming systems (I'd prefer to just have control over the colours, and maybe one or two of the spacing variables), and it is obvious that they cost a lot of cycles at run time....

Consistency and overriding bad decisions.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#149

Post by anoncake »

gmueckl wrote: post #139
anoncake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you use the extra distinct highlight or background color the system theme specifies.

That is not enough. What if I need three clearly distinguishable background colors to convey different states for list entries?

Then you should fix your app so it can be used by color-blind users. Aside from that, you should use distinguishable background colors A, B and C specified by the system color theme. It's more likely that its designer has considered accessibility issues than that every single app developer has.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#150

Post by TillE »

rangerpolitic wrote: post #88
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only egocentrism I see is all in the pompous article requesting that users do not make perfectly reasonable choices on their own computers. Then attempts to justify on some absurdly contrived grounds. Neither reasonable nor sensible. Imagine if Apple asked users not to apply stickers to their laptop as it denies Apple the possibility to control their brand, or could make the laptop look broken, even unusable - sh…

They're not addressing this to end users. There is a notice at the top of the article in a bright yellow box. > Please read the letter all the way to the end. This is aimed at distributions breaking apps by default, not tinkerers playing with their own setup.

It's always a good sign that you're communicating clearly when you have to add a big yellow disclaimer at the top.
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