I want to appeal to the design team and the usability team to rethink usability aspects of design. I think that there should be guidelines that tells that if any item of design has a usability function it should be designed in a way that is theme independent. This means that changing theme from default Breeze to any theme from kde-look that follows Plasma 5 theme guidelines should not affect visibility and usability of that item. That was a general statement, now examples that will show what I mean by that.

1) Icons on panel
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349411
read comment 9
The bug was reported as task manager bug but was changed and resolved as Breeze only bug with suggestion that other themes need to be adjusted.

new, related bug reports.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=363878
viewtopic.php?f=285&t=124799

2) Bug 364472 - show holidays also as text in main view
See the screenshots showing that holidays are not visible with other desktop themes than Breeze.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364472
http://i.imgur.com/8AHFLtu.png
http://i.imgur.com/wIsnWyc.png
Kai decided that text visibility need to be discussed by usability team but made no mention that the fact that holidays are not visible with other themes should be also discussed by usability team. Sadly, I found that there is now way to sign to
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
Kde-usability-devel Archives are inactive since 2009
I don't know were it is going to be discussed.

By the way, this is also important. In both cases developers state openly that they prefer the way they designed it to the way it was in KDE 4. In example 1 this statement is made about desktop icons: Bug 359077 - icons frame size is too wide comment 6
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359077#c6
Shouldn't it be first discussed with community before redesigning to the personal liking of developers?


Going back to the topic, conclusion: design Plasma 5 features in the way that are independent from the theme user prefers. I will repeat what I wrote in bug report: generally it is a rather bad practice to make things work with only default theme because usually users are not capable to adjust other themes that are available on kde-look on their own and authors of those themes not update theme promptly or at all.

Hi,
could you please explain what any of this has to do with usability? All I can see here are purely visual aspects of design, and even whether things work well with other themes is not a usability issue either.

Neither is whether things work well with other themes a design issue. It is a development issue. I do agree that compatibility with existing themes should be a goal.
However, some issues like the missing holidays is nothing we can do anything about. If a theme was created before holidays were introduced, then of course it misses the styling of the holidays, so that has to be added. There is nothing we can do about that, it has to be done in the theme.
In such cases, you should write a comment on kde-look, asking the creator to update their theme.

In case of themes colours Martin already explained in bug report that new guidelines should be released. But whether holidays are visible as text information is usability issue because it affects the way users use calendar. It affects the way users find information. Is it easy to find a holiday if you forgot when it is or hard. Besides if changes, redesign are made while switching from Plasma 4 to Plasma 5 it would be great to discuss it on forum with community before introducing them as code.

The size of the icons is not only "pretty" / "ugly" issue. It is usability issue. That is the point. Some users have poor eyesight and need have bigger fonts and bigger icons to see it easily. After all the function of icons is to be recognizable. The bigger they are the easier to recognize them (differentiate between them). Besides nowadays screens have so big sizes that there is a lot of space on them. There is no point to limit size or make it smaller then in KDE 4.

Besides I am not the only one who raised the issue of icon size
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298490
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303787

Making panel always bigger to make icons appear bigger doesn't make much sense to me.

Is it easy to recognize what program is open on the left bottom? Not for me.
http://i.imgur.com/nLFuyNI.jpg?1
viewtopic.php?f=226&t=118058

That's why I say icon size is an usability issue because it affects the way we use our devices.

apache wrote:2) Bug 364472 - show holidays also as text in main view
See the screenshots showing that holidays are not visible with other desktop themes than Breeze.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364472
http://i.imgur.com/8AHFLtu.png
http://i.imgur.com/wIsnWyc.png
Kai decided that text visibility need to be discussed by usability team but made no mention that the fact that holidays are not visible with other themes should be also discussed by usability team. Sadly, I found that there is now way to sign to
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
Kde-usability-devel Archives are inactive since 2009
I don't know were it is going to be discussed.

As you wrote at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364472#c4. It would be nice if someone would update the KDE Techbase docs. The Plasma 5 theme calendar.svg at now:

/calendar.svg: graphics for a calendar widget, since 4.3
weeksColumn: background for the vertical column with week numbers in it.
weekDayHeader: background for the row with week day names in it.
active: background for the day numbers of the current month.
inactive: background for the day numbers of the next and previous months.
hoverHighlight: background for the day under the mouse cursor.
today: border for the current day cell.
selected: border for the selected day cell.
red: border for holidays on sundays
green: border for holidays during week days

is obsolete.

The new calendar.svg is only using 'event':

Full image: http://i.imgur.com/DCaCphi.png

It can be added to the other plasma themes so they can show the events:

Full image: http://i.imgur.com/CtQiX5D.png

Clock calendar background: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthrea ... post389803

@Rog131
I like your idea. I mean the star can be added as an attachment to download on techbase along with updated instructions.

I think it would be good if you make this comment somewhere on bugs.kde.org (perhaps as a new wishlist bug) so that Martin Klapetek gets informed about it. Developers rarely read forum, at least not regularly.

>It would be nice if someone would update the KDE Techbase docs. The Plasma 5 theme calendar.svg at now:


It's a wiki. You have powers to edit it and clearly know what needs writing.