bcooksley wrote:While I don't know specifically about Plasma Next and other KF5 based software, at least for the KDE 4.x series, deleting the plasma* files in /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/ outside of KDE was usually sufficient to clear the cache.

Hmm, I tried it out and reloaded the theme. Now I'm back to the original breeze theme, none of my changes are displays . Pardon, but WTF is this? I don't even have the original theme in the theme directory any more.

Here's a quick update. I completed a first cut at a QML implementation of the window decoration design.


(All those window buttons aren't there by default. they're just there to see all the buttons at once).

Of course, this version will only work on Plasma Next so if you're one of the devs or are running project neon 5 please try it out. It is available in the 'working' branch of the now up-and-running Breeze project repo (near the bottom of the page under 'heads'. Thanks Marco for taking the time to set up the project repo!

I'd love to see an iso with all new KDE technology, including Plasma next and KDE 5's new features

This is looking pretty nice! I was a bit surprised by the strong-colored titlebar, but it actually makes the windows look much more "defined" and gives a calmer appearance. Reminds me of the good old Ubuntu style in a good way. The blue bar in the focused window is an interesting touch, I'm not yet sure about what to think of it...

I'm not sure if I'm going to have time but it'd be nice to install project Neon and give it a try...

Blingy wrote:I'd love to see an iso with all new KDE technology, including Plasma next and KDE 5's new features

Oh, those exist: http://kshadeslayer.wordpress.com/2013/ ... on-5-isos/

colomar wrote:

Blingy wrote:I'd love to see an iso with all new KDE technology, including Plasma next and KDE 5's new features

Oh, those exist: http://kshadeslayer.wordpress.com/2013/ ... on-5-isos/

oooh, thank you!

alake wrote:Here's a quick update. I completed a first cut at a QML implementation of the window decoration design.


(All those window buttons aren't there by default. they're just there to see all the buttons at once).

Of course, this version will only work on Plasma Next so if you're one of the devs or are running project neon 5 please try it out. It is available in the 'working' branch of the now up-and-running Breeze project repo (near the bottom of the page under 'heads'. Thanks Marco for taking the time to set up the project repo!

Hello,

First post in here so I hope I don't get knocked down for giving my feedback but here goes:

- Is it really necessary to have the close button with the inverted color scheme and in a grey circle compared with the other buttons? IMO, it just adds unnecessary visual clutter.
- The blue line is a nice touch to differentiate an inactive window from the active one but considering that the inactive windows are greyed out IMO it just overcomplicates the design. I would just keep either one or the other.
- The design of the minimize and maximize buttons is similar to the KDE 4 buttons, so I suppose that the design is maintained as a way to keep a connection to the old KDE? It would be refreshing to adopt new button designs (maybe something Numix or Nitrux inspired?).

At least for me, it would be interesting to see a combination of your design with the button designs from garthecho:

garthecho wrote:Awesome. If any of these happen to be picked to include, I'll do the rest of the buttons so they're complete.

I ended up making the minimize line 2px longer on this one, and kept it bottom aligned. I think it looks better.




Also @pedrorodriguez, here is with your changes

alake wrote:Here's a quick update. I completed a first cut at a QML implementation of the window decoration design.


(All those window buttons aren't there by default. they're just there to see all the buttons at once).

Of course, this version will only work on Plasma Next so if you're one of the devs or are running project neon 5 please try it out. It is available in the 'working' branch of the now up-and-running Breeze project repo (near the bottom of the page under 'heads'. Thanks Marco for taking the time to set up the project repo!

OK. I like how it looks, but there are several things to consider. The blue line in the picture shown looks good, but what if the window colors are different?

Say someone has windows green or blue does the blue line would be noticed in this context?

Ubuntu, OS X has both shared something I love, is that the title bar has a color that is attached to the menu bar and toolbar. That is, offers a uniformity to the design of the window. [View image]



Could not you achieve something like that in KDE? I think he gives elegance and simplicity to the desktop. Sure, it's possible that non-qt applications look different, and if so, pretend I said nothing.

alake wrote:Here's a quick update. I completed a first cut at a QML implementation of the window decoration design.


(All those window buttons aren't there by default. they're just there to see all the buttons at once).

Of course, this version will only work on Plasma Next so if you're one of the devs or are running project neon 5 please try it out. It is available in the 'working' branch of the now up-and-running Breeze project repo (near the bottom of the page under 'heads'. Thanks Marco for taking the time to set up the project repo!

Oh this looks very good! Unfortunately I can't try it out right now, because Neon doesn't seem to be friends with my computer .

Does it support window tabs yet? If so, can I haz pictures? :3

@elav
Yes the theme adapts to your color scheme, here are some pics with the oxygen, honeycomb, and optimal color schemes applied https://imgur.com/a/oblJx
The detection for when the window buttons should change to white needs to be tweaked it seems.

enoop wrote:@elav
Yes the theme adapts to your color scheme, here are some pics with the oxygen, honeycomb, and optimal color schemes applied https://imgur.com/a/oblJx
The detection for when the window buttons should change to white needs to be tweaked it seems.

Excellent then!!

I must say that while the new window bar design sure is neat, I feel that it is a step backward from what's been previously done (especially from those mock-ups: http://kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/164722-1.png). My point is not very different from what's been said by other users: aside from being an area from where you can click and drag a window, the window bar is merely a place holder for the window buttons. Now when you contrast or put emphasis on an element that serves little to no purpose, my feeling is that you add clutter to the interface. OSX, Unity and the current Oxygen window decoration's all departed from the traditional contrasted window bar and it seems that the vast majority of their users do not miss having a bold window bar on top of their window. Being myself used to Oxygen, my immediate feeling simply is: it adds clutter. On a more general note, I know that the balance between accessibility and a concise/breathing user interface is something hard to define but in this case, I really feel like it's a step back.

mbeliveau wrote:I must say that while the new window bar design sure is neat, I feel that it is a step backward from what's been previously done (especially from those mock-ups: http://kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/164722-1.png). My point is not very different from what's been said by other users: aside from being an area from where you can click and drag a window, the window bar is merely a place holder for the window buttons. Now when you contrast or put emphasis on an element that serves little to no purpose, my feeling is that you add clutter to the interface. OSX, Unity and the current Oxygen window decoration's all departed from the traditional contrasted window bar and it seems that the vast majority of their users do not miss having a bold window bar on top of their window. Being myself used to Oxygen, my immediate feeling simply is: it adds clutter. On a more general note, I know that the balance between accessibility and a concise/breathing user interface is something hard to define but in this case, I really feel like it's a step back.

To throw a positive out there to start: I am liking how the new QtQuick UI is shaping up. It really does look quite good, better than Oxygen for the most part.

However, the window style is a bit underwhelming to me so far. I agree with mbeliveau, it is a step backwards from Oxygen (which is a theme i like very much but it has many many warts). I am not a fan of having a titlebar which constrasts heavily with the application window. I like how Oxygen and OS X currently do this and yes even Ubuntu's Ambiance theme (which I am not a fan of). I am also not understanding the purpose of the blue line under the titlebar either, it just seems to add clutter.

My (hopefully) constructive idea.. I don't think the min/max/close buttons look bad. I think they are a bit plain though. Perhaps we could add a slight 3D bevel affect to them? Could we maybe do a mock up with the window style matching the window as it does in Oxygen and see how it looks?

Lastly, I think Oxygen is still a good theme. I am wondering if anyone would be interested in ironing it out in KDE 5. Fix things like the weird padding, the grey-overload it suffers from, I think would a refresh Oxygen would be great looking again. I am assuming it will be ported but not updated at this point.

mmistretta wrote:

mbeliveau wrote:My point is not very different from what's been said by other users: aside from being an area from where you can click and drag a window, the window bar is merely a place holder for the window buttons. Now when you contrast or put emphasis on an element that serves little to no purpose, my feeling is that you add clutter to the interface.

However, the window style is a bit underwhelming to me so far. I agree with mbeliveau, it is a step backwards from Oxygen (which is a theme i like very much but it has many many warts). I am not a fan of having a titlebar which constrasts heavily with the application window. I like how Oxygen and OS X currently do this and yes even Ubuntu's Ambiance theme (which I am not a fan of). I am also not understanding the purpose of the blue line under the titlebar either, it just seems to add clutter.

You've put it much more eloquently than me in these two sentences.
That design adds too much visual clutter to me and detracts from the application window.

I think that other designs around here looked much better since they had less clutter and were more simple, while still being functional.

At Thomas' (colomar's) urging, I wanted to chime in to share a little bit of the rationale for the design choices for the Breeze window decoration design.

I confess that I'm doing this somewhat hesitantly because this kind of stuff can often be interpreted as being defensive and can often devolve into fruitless argument. But. I entirely agree with Thomas on usefulness of documenting rationale. So here I am. Below is a slightly edited version of a conversation I had with Thomas.

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What is the reasoning for using a color for the windeco which contrasts the main window color? I personally like uniform colors (like in the one from garthecho), so I'm interested in the advantages of a high contrast between title bar and window from a design perspective.
I was sticking with a single color because that's how I thought a window "should" look as well. The downside is that it severely limited the design options for anchoring the window title in the visual hierarchy. It was actually one of garthecho's designs that broke the log jam.

For a design n00b: What does "anchoring the window title in the visual hierarchy" mean?
The visual hierarchy is just the order in which information in the overall design (in this case the window and it's contents) is intended to be consumed by the viewer. The window title is the starting point in the visual hierarchy for the window, thus the anchor. Which means it needs to have visual qualities necessary for that purpose. While it's not impossible, the common color for the background of both the window and the titlebar, make it somewhat more challenging. That's partly why some of the earlier designs has the title in the highlight color. The problem, as many folks here pointed out, is the difficulty of reading that highlight blue on the near-white background.

So the question then is: Why do other OSes/DEs seem to make title bars rather subtle? Transparent in Windows 7, blending in with the toolbar in GNOME 3 and OSX...
Good question. One which I pondered as well. What's happened over time with all three is that when the same background color is used everywhere, the titlebar as a separate visual entity from the window itself doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense - acres of space with little obvious distinction in the visual heirarchy. It's all in hindsight but the result is much the same: they're all eliminating the visual and functional distinction between the titlebar and the window contents. It isn't a coincidence that it visually looks better as well.

Ah, so the color is a symbol of our commitment to the title bar as a distinct entity?
In our case, we're not going to get rid of the titlebar anytime soon (for many good reasons). So rather than try to hide it, after seeing garthecho's Sol design on deviantart, it made sense to me that we own up to the titlebar as a distinct enitity and design for it rather than hide it. When I shared the the first cut at the new design with garthecho via email, he essentially agreed. His thought was that window decorations on all platforms had overreacted to the OS X unified titlebar+toolbar look (I hope garthecho doesn't mind me sharing this publicly). So yeah, like you said, it's a commitment to the titlebar in the visual design rather than trying to hide it.
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Now let me share a few other thoughts. This does not mean that I think that window decoration designs wherein the titlebar shares the window background color are somehow wrong or are incapable of being beautiful. This does not mean that I think this window decoration cannot be improved upon (in fact, that's already happening). I firmly reject the notion of One True design. I firmly reject the notion that design only moves forward on One True path. Those notions are anathema to the inherent creativity of any design effort, visual or otherwise. More importantly, I think this community is capable of coming up with fantastic window decoration designs that are in no way obligated to satisfy the rationale shared here for this specific design.

Remember this is for Plasma. The KDE desktop environment. KDE. We, as a community, have always loved options. It is well within our wheelhouse to ship multiple decorations. Always feel free to create great designs!