Re: why are there no themes for galeon? and is galeon 1.3 cooler than 1.2, let's vote

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 23:19 -0500, philip dahlquist wrote:
> ok, here are well formatted questions.
> 
> 1)   why are there no themes for galeon?

Themes for any application are regarded by almost everyone as a bad
thing.  This whole skin fad that winamp started really is getting old.
In the end, having a good-looking design across the whole system is
much, much better.  

> 
> 2)   why is there no selection of throbbers?
> 
> i think that part of what makes an app/browser cool is the look.
> netscape has themes, mozilla has themes (don't point out the obvious)
> window managers have themes. window managers are themes.
> 
> before you tell me that visual appeal isn't necessary, stop and think
> "why the screen shots?".  that's how apps distinguish themselves.
> it is the fundamental selling  point.

Yes, but visual appeal does not equal themes.  When I look at a
screenshot I look at how clean the interface appears.  Is it intuitive?
None of that has anything to do with themes.

I really like using k3b for burning, for example.  However I just saw a
screenshot of the upcoming gnome standard cd burner and it has a cleaner
interface that's just easier to use.  Switching between DVD data and CD
data, for example, does not require a wizard or even a menu entry.
There's a simple drop-down box.  These are the kinds of things that
really make an impression in the visual appeal department.

When I bought my powerbook last year, I was surprised at the simpleness
of some of the apps that ship with OS X.  But I've come to realize that
simple is often better.  Indeed it is the unix philosophy: lots of small
simple apps that can work together.

> 
> the major idea behind graphical user interfaces is the look and feel.
> otherwise, bill gates wouldn't have spent untold millions on cognitive
> psychologists and human/computer interaction experts developing
> how windows looked and felt. they tried to make it attractive.

The look and feel should also be consistant and uniform across all
applications.  Having individually themed apps breaks this.  Most
custom-skinned windows apps are hideous.  For example, the Symantec
Antivirus home addition has it's own set of widgets which are ugly.
Media players are horrible offenders.  Even MS Office has changed it's
look and feel in every revision!  Office does not even fit in with
normal applications.

Even Macintosh is moving to a much more unified look and feel.  Expect
in Tiger that brushed metal will be used a lot less.
> 
> galeon now shares it's buttons between gedit and nautilus
> half of it's button are in gedit, and the other half are in nautilus.
> try this:
> a) maximize galeon 1.3.19
> b) open nautilus 2.8.1
> c) place the top edge of the title bar of nautilus immediately below the
>    url location bar in galeon.
> d) what do you see?
> 
> mine are identical with the exception of the 'new' and 'save as' buttons
> i added.

This is as it should be.  We've finally succeeded in getting some
uniformity.

> 
> it doesn't even tell you what application it is in the title bar.
> 
> 3)   is it striving to be just a generic web browser?
> 
> right now, i feel that galeon 1.3 is half of a nautilus.
> nautilus had themes, too.

And Nautilus rightly lost its custom themes.

> 
> i want to take a vote, and i would like to hear from every galeon user,
> and you can say whatever you want, tell me i'm stupid, tell me to shut
> up, whatever, but answer this, and tell me why:  
> 
> 4) is galeon 1.3.19 cooler than 1.2.14?

I think it works very well.  It certainly is a good-looking app that I
enjoy having on my desktop.  It behaves in a consistant and expected way
and fits in with all my other apps.  In short it makes my gnome desktop
feel like a complete environment.  Firefox I dislike because it doesn't
quite fit in.  It looks foreign even though it uses some of the gnome
widgets.  At this point I can't even look at 1.2.x since it doesn't
support the nicer font handling system.

> 
> i think this is worth discussing, because this is a user list,
> it's about using in general, not just technical "why doesn't this work"
> issues.
> 
> the developers will never get any feedback about the look and feel if it's never discussed.

True, except that this has been discussed over and over again over the
last couple of years.

Michael

> 
> the main reason i started using galeon was i liked the it looked.  i
> started using it somewhere in the redhat 7 series.
> 
> last but certainly not the least is 
> 
> 5)   what was the motivation for the interface change?
> 
> i looked on the galeon help, and there was no mention of themes
> i went to the galeon website and looked at screenshots.  they had one
> that said "different theme and fonts".  where is it?
> 
> i also noted that there was a galeon foot on the toolbar in some of the
> shots, but my toolbar doesn't give the option for one.
> 
> i would very much like to here what other people have to say, and i
> don't mean things like "galeon does everything i need it to".  that's
> like saying a yugo does eveything a ferrari does.  good luck getting
> laid in a yugo.
> 
> 
> respectfully yours,
> philip dahlquist
> 
> 
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