91–100 of 206 posts
I couldn't disagree more. If the user wants the intended experience, they will not apply a different theme for your app. The whole reason a user has applied a different theme on your app is because they disagree with your choices and that's totally fine. What's next, asking Mozilla to take down user style sheets and extensions that restyle web apps? This article is antithetical to the whole cultural foundation that G…
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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.
"However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory."
Unsupported territory, for changing a desktop icon, or adding a higher or lower contrast stylesheet? Wow. That's pompous and absurd for me. Doesn't sound like it's explicitly made a reasonable exception though, just piles on a layer of entitlement for a damn brand.
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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.
I did thanks.
"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."
Unsupported territory for choosing a distro that looks unusual, or applies theming, or for changing my own damn desktop icon?
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I'm using System76's Pop_OS icon theme in Gnome Shell, and like the clean look of it. It changes the icons for a good number of popular applications too, which results in everything looking neat and coherent. > Good. My computer is not your billboard. Yes, seriously. If a user runs a free software desktop, chances are the ability to change things according to their wishes is part of why they use it. > Changing third-…
And also why next year will eternally be the ‘year of Linux on the desktop’, until desktops don’t even exist anymore.
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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…
> Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. Actually, it's dismissive of the app developers' egocentrism. In so far as theming breaks usability, they do have a point. Distributions shouldn't make potentially incompatible changes to the default theme without QA. But it's not all the fault of distributions and not respecting branding is not a UX problem. Yes, I may be too harsh towards people volunta…
As someone who struggles with this too: The world doesn't care that you own it and admit it; they only care if you fix it, or at least work around it for them.
> 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…
No two displays that I own produce the same colours. It depends on the hardware, the brightness, the daytime colour cycling I have, and so on.
I feel like if slight changes to colour can wreck your app then your app leans too heavily on colour reproduction.
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Really? Do you have a source for that? Theming GTK has been a not uncommon thing since as long as I've been using it (~15 years).
https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-a... Oh yes, people have always done it, via one hack or another, and as long as it was more of a "for people who really want to fiddle" it wasn't that much of an issue. But now expectations have risen, people expect more solid behaviour and look/feel from their apps, and distros routinely have quite different GTK themes.
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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.
What it actually does is list a number of reasons why distro themes are bad (in their opinion). Some of those reasons amarettos equally true for end users theming and some of those reasons are not. The letter also does say that end users are welcome to theme themselves but they should do so under the knowledge that there be (potential) dragons.
What it doesn’t say is that theming “doesn’t work”
Personally speaking, I’m on the fence about whether I agree that distro theming is bad. However I do think their points are perfectly valid and that a considerable number of HN commentators have taken the letter completely out of context.
Edit: and I’m also a little peeved that there is so much knee jerk down voting of comments on here. Particularly when those comments are quite literally correct. It’s a really pity you guys couldn’t be bothered to read the letter before abusing your right to moderate.
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I'm using System76's Pop_OS icon theme in Gnome Shell, and like the clean look of it. It changes the icons for a good number of popular applications too, which results in everything looking neat and coherent. > Good. My computer is not your billboard. Yes, seriously. If a user runs a free software desktop, chances are the ability to change things according to their wishes is part of why they use it. > Changing third-…
And also why next year will eternally be the ‘year of Linux on the desktop’, until desktops don’t even exist anymore.