Please don’t theme our apps • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#81

Post by anoncake » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

pushpop wrote: post #77

Zenst wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so egocentric if you factor in the fashion aspect. Not everybody wears the same matching clothes. Then more crucial aspects of ability - such as eyesight being a major one. Some people can't see some colours that well, some need larger fonts. Things like that in which theme's are the saviour and for many a developer - how they cater for disability usage. Sure some theme's can break the UI, but to blame the u…

The letter is about distributions not end users. It says end users are allowed to do as they wish. So that accessibility concern is covered.

It says distributions should not theme because it doesn't work. If theming doesn't work when a distribution does it, it doesn't work either when an end user does it for accessibility.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#82

Post by jsty » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

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'm not sure they're saying that end-users shouldn't make those decisions, simply warning that customised versions of their software won't be supported by upstream to the same degree, and thus distributers should leave the styling as-is. On the first point, to quote the article:

"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."

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#83

Post by anoncake » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #76

anoncake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about free software. If a distribution insists on theming your Electron app, it can do so.

Sure. Even if I disagree with the letter, no one has asked for disallowing distros to do anything - it's more of a plea than a demand.

True. It even explicitly says that they don't want to use a technical solution like 781 proposed.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#84

Post by anoncake » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

781 wrote: post #78

Legogris wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same argument could be made for web apps, but we still have userChrome.css and userContent.css which solves this neatly.

How many are actually using that? I don't know anybody. https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-...

If we remove options just because few people use them, we might as well shut down the Gnome project along with everything else related to the Linux desktop.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#85

Post by no_identd » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

cuddlecake wrote: post #17

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…

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 color change-inducing-friction complaint seems like an issue with lack of built-in theme sanity checking. There exist numerous partial solutions for this already, I'll link to the four best ones I know, albeit I wish someone would combine their approaches into one unified super-product:

1. http://www.hsluv.org/examples/ These palettes will absolutely NEVER clash. But they might have contrast issues. Which brings us to:

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800718 Lyft primarily designed ColorBox.io to always reach WCAG 2.0 contrast ratios. Something I'd claim a ton of UX themes mess up. Unfortunately from what I can tell, it lacks the anti-clash guarantees of #1

3. Much less related, but still important, albeit only for very specific parts of any UX:

The color map generation approach in Matplotlib: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU (btw.: Seaborn, as mentioned in #1, builds on top of Matplotlib.)

For even more color madness, see this recent Hacker News comment by me as well as the other comments linked to there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19983604

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#86

Post by anoncake » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #80

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…

It EXPLICITLY says that it does not talk about users changing things on their machines, but wants it to be something the user sets instead of a distro applying by default.

Choosing a Linux distro with a specific theme rather than one using Adwaita or sticking with the pre-installed Windows is the user changing things on their machine.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#87

Post by anotheryou » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

Leave me my icons.

Meh about the in-app theming. Probably should not be bundled, but sadly most OSS ist lacking in the front-end and can really use some polish.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#88

Post by rangerpolitic » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#89

Post by barrkel » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

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…

The article isn't complaining about users changing things; it's complaining about the desktop unilaterally applying a style on all apps without testing.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#90

Post by oarsinsync » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #35

threeseed wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually written and supported an app before because that's not how it works. The users always blame the app. And then when they can't get the app to work they stop using it. Which means the developer just lost a potential customer.

I did, and you don't have these "customers" if distros don't ship your app. So you're most probably still net positive even if distros mod your app. If you don't like people modifying your software, don't publish it under permissive license.

Unfortunately, this is ultimately the problem with free software. Either you publish with zero support, and users end up using your software badly (via poor blog posts telling them what to do) or they don't use it at all; or you end up paying for your contribution to the world with even more of your time, supporting people who either don't realise that they've introduced the faults themselves (either directly through their own errors, or indirectly through their choice of distribution or guide they've followed).

How do you solve the social problem of a large majority who feel entitled to everything for free?

My solution was to give up, publish free stuff anonymously with zero support, and charge for anything I actually care about. My charged-for software has multiple orders of magnitude more users than the free software, and effectively funds the free software that nobody actually uses.

I regularly think about not publishing the free stuff anymore, but I figure that even if a single person benefits from it, it's a net-positive, and so I keep going. It doesn't stop it being incredibly demoralising.