Plasma 5 first release

Hello,
As a person deeply interested in KDE's development, I would like to raise
my voice just this once. I have been blogging about KDE for quite a few
years now and simply have to point out a few aspects of Plasma 5's release
announcement. What I'm concerned about is the applications' look. Why in
the following pictures:
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/www/sites/www/announcements/plasma5.0/screenshots/
oxygen is shown as the widget style? For your information, yes, I do follow
the discussions on relevant mailing lists. Therefore I do know that Breeze
(Qwidget-Qtcurve) with Qt Quick Controls have been selected for the default
theme of Plasma 5. Meanwhile, oxygen was selected for the default window
decoration due to reasons concerning performance.

I would like to focus on the visual appeal of Plasma 5 for a while. This
will be the 1st „new gen” release of Plasma in 6 years, therefore this is a
tremendous opportunity for marketing actions, such ash showing the world
the potential and progress behind KDE. This makes me extremely confused as
to why oxygen (widget style and decoration) is shown, despite the beta 2
screenshots with Breeze (
https://dot.kde.org/2014/06/10/plasma-5-second-beta-needs-testing).
Furthermore, the latter was very warmly greeted by the community. In my
humble opinion, it would be simply logical and beneficial to show the new
look and feel in the official release screenshots.
 Here are a few reasons to do so:

1. They are coherent with the new Plasma's design, while oxygen is clearly
not and introduces a visual inconsistency

2. The principle of first impression, as written by Thomas Pfeiffer (
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2014-May/031299.html). Here, let
me quote him:

I personally still like Oxygen a lot, but people (not only trolls, but
the majority
of people) are strongly influenced by design trends and do not perceive
something as "new" if it adheres to design trends of the past. Therefore
if we show them a Plasma Next which looks like "KDE4", people's first
impression will be "It looks like KDE4! So all the fuss about nothing?".
And the problem, from a psychological perspective, is this:
After a first impression has been formed (which is strongly influenced
by the look), an effect called "conformation bias" [1] kicks in, which
makes people focus on aspects that confirm the first impression.
Therefore they will tend to focus on everything which is _not_ new about
Plasma Next and neglect the things which are.
This means that the perception of Plasma Next as a whole (including the
technical aspects) is likely to be negatively influenced by the first
impression telling people "This doesn't look new at all!".

3. Contradicting previous materials, such as the test versions. Examples
include the RC: ( http://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.0-rc.php ) and Beta
2: ( https://dot.kde.org/2014/06/10/plasma-5-second-beta-needs-testing ).

4. Most people will judge Plasma 5 based on the new screenshots, and very
few will read into exact details regarding oxygen, Breeze et cetera. Even
braver individuals will download ISO images, such as (
http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/weekly-plasma-5-live-iso/ ). Even
in Neon 5 Live ISO Breeze is the default style.

 I hope that my opinion will not be viewed as any sort of critique. My goal
is simply to focus some attention on the current official screenshots, as
they will be a staple of Plasma 5's opinion among many users. Therefore,
let me repeat myself slightly, it is only logical and just to show the new
and best of Plasma. This can be done by showing Breeze, not oxygen, on the
screenshots.
Cheers,
Łukasz Sawicki


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