I sometimes write about cooperate design and that plasma should feel like one monolithic thing. Now I start with some mockups for the specific tasks.

The difference between old and new:

focus more on the task with full screen dark background and less focus on the background

main items are in the center and settings, additional thing in the bottom toolbar

work on different form factors cause everything is centric align

reduce noise and focus on the specific task

what will be needed

an plasma/kde specific thing (don't know what but I bet someone else know what is missing)

Grub boot loader

login manager

splash screen (animation is needed)

kicker

session switcher

shut down

you can find everything in https://share.kde.org/index.php/apps/fi ... ate-design

Thank you for starting the effort to bring more visual consistency to the different parts of the Plasma experience!

Here are some points to think about (only from the usability perspective):

Grub theme:
- I would not show the sdX there because
1. I don't see much benefit in it, unless a user has the same distribution installed several times and remembers which instance is on which partition
2. The sdX association is quite unreliable especially during boot stage, which is why the Grub documentation advises to use UUIDs (but those are not really human-readable)
- I'd use "Choose Which Operating System to Boot" as the title because that's what the user does here, the booting itself is done by the system afterwards

Login theme:
- What does the magnifying glass next to the name mean?
- How would one login as a non-guest domain user who is not shown in the list? This is a problem we have with the current theme, so it should be fixed if we design a new theme
- What are the volume and clipboard icons doing in the tray there?

"Kicker"
- This is not Kicker, it's Application Dashboard
- Putting Favorites in a separate category instead of showing them always doesn't make much sense to me because what are favorites good for if you need an additional action to get to them? They're supposed to be quick-access, so they should be accessible right away when opening the dashboard

Shut down
- shut down -> Shutdown
- The button order has to be reversed in the Plasma context (see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354244 )

Login screen
Just to point out. In the discussion about the login screen from last month viewtopic.php?f=285&t=129283&start=15 every mockup had the toolbar at the top. But I think there was not a real reason mentioned why, so it most likely top or bottom are both equally fine.

Is there a reason why you show 3 avatars at the login screen? (And if so, how are these choosen?)
Most bigger corporations I know about, everyone has her own desktop or laptop. So it is always the same person who logins. (Except maybe support, admin, ...). And if they really switch between computers a lot, the 3 login suggestions won't help much either, because the probability to have the right ones is very low? The only scenario I see where this is helpful is, if 2 or 3 persons share one computer. Is this a common usage scenario?

I suggest to show either only 1 avatar, preselected with the last person who loged in or show the avatar only after entering the login field.

fabianr wrote:Is there a reason why you show 3 avatars at the login screen? (And if so, how are these choosen?)
Most bigger corporations I know about, everyone has her own desktop or laptop. So it is always the same person who logins. (Except maybe support, admin, ...). And if they really switch between computers a lot, the 3 login suggestions won't help much either, because the probability to have the right ones is very low? The only scenario I see where this is helpful is, if 2 or 3 persons share one computer. Is this a common usage scenario?

I suggest to show either only 1 avatar, preselected with the last person who loged in or show the avatar only after entering the login field.

In corporate environments, showing a handful of avatars may indeed not make much sense, except for maybe an admin account in addition to the regular user.
In a private setting, however, it does. On my computers, for example, there is always also an account for my wife in case hers are not available at a given moment, and vice versa.
We also had a shared laptop at my last job, which was used for special applications which were not used regularly. Having the three accounts we had there easily available on click was helpful there.

I don't know if Andreas meant the login screen to always show exactly three avatars, though. This may have just been an example.

thanks for the very useful feedback. really awesome

Grub
same style then the other selections


Login
I add the search for user button and move the guest user also to the main section (last time it was in the panel)


About the panel: as plasma offers by default the panel on bottom I add the panel on bottom with the same hight as the default panel. Gnome had an top panel so it is clear that the panel for the login screen in on top. that's the reason I use an bottom panel. Also when you switch from the login screen to the screen it should be more smooth.
If you have one user you see the one user and the guest and search user element. if you have more users (wife, child, ... ) you see the last 3 users (not more), guest and search user.

Application Dashboard
we can have the favorites always doesn't meter what you search for. My question was that the dashboard is a little unbalanced cause you have 3 sections two with icons and one with text in addition if you search for something the view is also different cause the search is grouped by applications, documents, .... So the idea was to have always the same view. the same than now when you search. on top favorites and on bottom the group selection.

Shutdown

the grub boot menu is finished and ready for review feel free.

http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php?content=174670

I sincerely hope that you will be making any change to grub entirely optional on the users part.

Grub is *pre desktop environment* - It should not be modified just on the whim of matching your (as in plasma) desktop.

it's a grub menu and you can downloud it from opendesktop it's not part of plasma.

I love the opensuse themes.

but as fare as I know opensuse have this consistent experience from boot to shut down.

so please give me feedback.

metzman wrote:I sincerely hope that you will be making any change to grub entirely optional on the users part.

Grub is *pre desktop environment* - It should not be modified just on the whim of matching your (as in plasma) desktop.

Why would Plasma modify the GRUB theme automatically? Which desktop would ever do that? Andreas wanted to offer something which users can use if they want a fullyx consistent experience, which is a great idea.
It could also be used for Plasma-focused distributions to build their own GRUB themes on which they can use if a user installs GRUB during their installation.

colomar wrote:Why would Plasma modify the GRUB theme automatically?

Precisely...

One thing I would maybe do is remove the 'panel' on the bottom and just continue the overlay and use white monochrome icons along the bottom. Mostly because it's not guaranteed to blend with the users' style or layout, and if the user has a taller panel or dock, you could get a nasty double-panel effect.

On the various screens, I think you can reinforce the "search" input at the top of the screen.

• In Grub maybe you could have it say "Type to search operating systems...". I don't know what the Grub screen is capable of though.
  
• On the user login screen the top title area be a "Type to search users..." input? It would let you keep your more elegant password-only design.
  
• Session switch could also include search at the top.

Kver wrote:

• In Grub maybe you could have it say "Type to search operating systems...". I don't know what the Grub screen is capable of though.

Grub 2 can be styled, but will always display boot options as a vertical list. What can be done is changing the font and adding icons (I don't know if/how distros set these). Can be tweaked: padding, spacing, color, scrollbar, borders, icon size. See here for a complete reference.

Louis

as it isn't that easy and need a lot of resources I change to gradient colors (thanks to Andrea and Ken).

hmm, i Don't think showing konqui in the boot screen looks really professional (don't get me wrong, that konqui looks beautiful, but more suitable to promo material, looks rather stark in contrast to the extremely "clean, professional" the rest of the graphics has been changed into),
Should be either just a monochrome-white k logo or plasma logo?