At Ars Technica, I have put together an article detailing my impressions of KDE 4 Beta 2 (more or less, my source checkout is from within 24 hours of beta 2 being tagged last week). An official beta 2 announcement should be arriving shortly as the distros have been packaging it this last week. I am happy to say that beta 2 has made significant progress since beta 1.
I just want to point something, don't take this as a flame or bashing into the new style authors, please.
One of the things I always disliked in Linux/Unix UI is that you can't adjust spacings and marginx. You know, in windows 95 you could change the window title bar to being very thin, the same goes for buttons.
Every new style I see people proposing is fatter, more spacing wasted and more margins. This new theme is a nice idea, but needs do adjusts sizes (way to big for now) and contrast in my opinion. To my eye there is too much empty spaces, look the buttons.
Sure you could argue that's the better for msot people, but what about giving the user a way (hidden please, it can be a XML file for example) to define those settings?
> change the window title bar to being very thin, the same goes for buttons.
I'm not sure which UI you are talking about, but that is certainly not true of the KDE window decorations and styles that I know of.
I think the original poster is not familiar with the gazillion configuration option offered KControl/System Settings (on Kubuntu) for window decorations!
No, those kind of settings depend on the actual style implementation (widget or window decoration styles). Some provide them, some don't.
I agree with the GGP's point. The current default style on KD3 (Plastik) is very compact and wastes minimal space. Unfortunately the Qt counterpart (Plastiq) is not and neither are the other available styles, including Clearlooks and Oxygen (which means that for some -including me- the transition won't be painless).
Nevertheless I'll save my final opinion for when things are settled. In the mean time, keep it up!
Eh, no Plastik is quite big compared to Keramik which was quite big compared to Highcolor. Plastik is exactly what he is talking about when saying every new style is more bloated that the previous.
Are you kidding? Keramik is the one with huge over-gradiented buttons and huge menus that won't scale down.
I agree with you on Plastik/Lipstik, but I can't stand the Tahoma font.
And yes, I know the zillion options on kcontrol, but options for better sizing of elements (tabs, buttons, window titles, etc) are provided only by the themes (and only a few of them), it's not a configuration of qt or KDE.
Take gtk themes for example, you can create a theme with very small buttons, but can I change button sizes on a theme? Only if I edit the theme, that in the case of a gtk theme is ok, but what about KDE themes that are C++ code compiled? You would have to edit the source and compile your own version.. what a mess.
All shipped decoration allow some tweaking of the border and titlebar size.
The title bar size is tied to the title bar font height, and I think that's enough flexibility, without requiring a separate option (which would need tweaking if you change the window title font).
Look how windows allow to adjust the titlebar and scrolling bar sizes.
Plus, what I wished was for adjusting spacing in the button (see the red markings).
Does anyone else remember that? They had not yet abandoned their own printer drivers (which used to be a major selling point in the DOS version) so there were two ways to talk to the printer. Either using the Windows driver, or the Word Perfect built-in driver. In the latter case, you could not use the Windows fonts.
Oh, yes... The Official MS Style Guide for Windows 3.0 prescribed big buttons with a but of text underneath. Which WordPerfect and MS Help faithfully followed, only to be wrongfooted by the next generation of Microsoft Windows applications.
Wordperfect for Windows was also horribly, and I mean, horribly slow. Wordperfect was king once upon a time, and Word was the underdog. Wordperfect kept the same key-strokes from a DOS/console based word processor, while Word focused on the GUI interface, and having the keystrokes mirror other Windows apps.
Maybe there is a relevant object lesson here. If your default UI reminds people of Wordperfect for Windows, something needs to change.
And as it happens, yeah, I understand there's pretty much a consensus that big icons with text underneath is what makes for the most comfortable toolbars for the users as a whole. Which doesn't mean that using big icons + text will /automatically/ make your UI good if there are other issues, mind (like too much wasted space where there shouldn't); it's just one part of a whole that's made of a sum of tiny fiddly details.
Dunno, but I find icons only (granted the icons make sense and are recogniseable -- which of course is another issue altogether) superior. It not only takes much less screen estate, but it's also not less understandable than the text-aided toolbar. Another problem of mine with the text+icons toolbars is how Up takes much less space from Back and Forward, and makes the icons look unaligned and carelessly thrown at the toolbar.
Kicker, however, was always a resource hog, especially for older systems. Merging it together makes the memory management much simpler, and its progress to replace it instead of just porting it to Qt4. It'll be better in the long run, hopefully.
Good to have a GTK'ish KDE?
Can I have some of that grass?
""Compared to the breath of fresh air that is Oxygen, the plastik-clone Clearlooks is imho pretty dull and boring...""
Plastik clone ? Clearlooks is a loose descendant of Bluecurve, introduced in Red Hat 8 as a unifying theme between Gnome and KDE.
You KDE users had by default the ugliest widget set the mind could conceive (Keramik) while we had our Bluecurve cups of STFU.
Plastik is a pile of trash put together with ducktape.
> Plastik is a pile of trash put together with ducktape.
No it isn't, and I think you mean "duct tape".
You, damn useless brat, should know better.
I can't stand GTK, but to each their own.
The new folder icon doesn't look really good. I hope they will change it before final release. The previous one(and the one before the previous one) were much better.
It's infinetly better than the previous Oxygen folder icon. That one was ugly beond belif, but I hoped it was just a placeholder.
On the last screenshot, compare the bin and Desktop(yuch) icons. It's much better. But I kind of think the old(kde3) approach looks better than the straigth from the front look.
I still like the one before that one the best.
Come on guys, all the folder we did were good. Link to me your perfect folder for your favorite theme, that way I can understand what you guys like.
The biggest problem with those folder icons are that they are way to glossy. And from the screnshot. The old icon used for the Desktop are too flimsy, all told it does not relly look very much like a folder.
The other look more solid and like real folders so they are an improvment. One problem I think is the single color used, using a base color for all folders and a ribbon to indicate folder color like with the KDE3 icons may work better.
And simply the perspective used on the KDE3 folder gives a much better look.
The folders in the nouveXT2 iconset are quite good, and the perspective used on those works better than the Oxygen approach too.
You understand the folder in NuoveXT2 are just a rip-off from Windows Vista folders?
I can't take into consideration your suggestion.
As I don't use Vista I didn't know that :-). Rip of or not, you asked for a folder that I thought looked better.
But as said, the texture and the way the colors are done is waht makes it look better than the current Oxygen ones. Not that you should copy it outright.
The perspective are not good however, I still find the old way better. A slight tilt to the folder breaks the squareness of it and makes it look more natural. I don't think copying the perspective from the Vista look, or Tango(as the current Oxygen does) for that matter are a good way to go.
There's nothing wrong with the folder icon, or any of the Oxygen icons (except for the one that is being used from KDE3, the one to clear the search field). Anyway, I think it's a step in the right direction, I honestly feel that at this stage it is on par with Leopard's icons (which I didn't like as much as Tiger, but time will tell if the entire icon set is as good). The Oxygen style and icon theme really is a breath of fresh air among the themes normally associated with KDE3, which no offense to anyone who likes them, were ugly, boring and horribly designed (with the exception of Domino). Though I'm not a designer I could point out many major flaws in many of the KDE3 visual styles (especially Plastik and Keramik). Let's try to make KDE more appealing for those used to top-notch visuals from OS like Leopard and Vista - and Oxygen is that style, and Plastik is at the opposite end.
Well thanks, always reading bad comments on folder etc is really depressing sometimes. Glad to see somebody likes the work we have been doing.
I like it too! More subtle than the last one (the desktop icon) which is important 'cause it's probably the icon you have to see most often.
I understand the difficulty in creating an icon that's original and still very pretty, I can't think of anyway you could do it better.
David, the new folder icons rock :-) Most of my development time I'm spending on Dolphin for KDE4.0 and if something would be wrong the the folder icons, I would be the first one who complains about them.
To each his own. I like Konqueror because, through KParts, I can have everything except my text/source/document editing (Kate or LyX, as appropriate) in tabs of the same tool.
Sorry to see people's work being put down.
I really like what you do, although I can't see why some people get all fussy over a --> folder icon <--.
Despite being a long-time linux user, I like the bling of today's desktops (yes, I already use KDE4.0's bling!). But still I can't see any cause to prefer one folder icon over (almost) any other.
I _really_ like the oxygen icon set!
Also, it's just me or KDE4 is getting more Apple-like? (in general terms please, don't answer as if I'm talking only about icons or style, try to see the big scene).
Well thanks for the support, it's a great responsibility being the art director of the icon project and sometimes encouraging messages are really a great antidote to continuing doing my best. Thanks, we are in actually doing a lot of work making fixing all the inconsistencies and improving all the actions metaphors etc. Also the applications icons are finally shaping up ... it will be very good for the release.