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Bug 480636 - Themes should theme the focus line
Themes should theme the focus line
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: gtk-engines
Classification: Deprecated
Component: general
2.12.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gtk-engines maintainers
gtk-engines maintainers
gnome[unmaintained]
: 511847 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2007-09-26 15:28 UTC by Benjamin Berg
Modified: 2014-04-05 17:01 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Benjamin Berg 2007-09-26 15:28:05 UTC
Really, why do we still have that old ugly dotted focus line? There are sane ways to implement focus for almost every widget out there. (Even the entry focus can be done in a sane way without these ugly hacks that clearlooks has, look at eg. industrial.)

There are different things that can be considered:
 - Buttons
 - Scales
 - Checkbuttons
 - notebook tab
 - Anything else?

And of course this is not relevant to pretty much every engine in gtk-engines.
Comment 1 Benjamin Berg 2007-09-26 15:28:58 UTC
 - treeview rows
Comment 2 Benjamin Berg 2007-09-26 15:51:21 UTC
We have quite some engines that get shipped with gtk-engines. In no particular order:
 - Clearlooks (and different styles)
 - thinice
 - industrial
 - mist
 - crux
 - glide
 - (smooth)

Fixing this in each of them would be quite some work. And then I have no idea what the focus rings may look like in the different themes, so some mockups would be great :-)
Comment 3 Benjamin Berg 2007-11-12 16:17:55 UTC
 - ColorWheel (ie. in the color picker)
Comment 4 Benjamin Berg 2008-01-24 20:29:25 UTC
*** Bug 511847 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Benjamin Berg 2008-01-24 20:42:30 UTC
Today there has been some discussion about the current focus implementation in Clearlooks "gummy". For examples of problems see Wouter Bolsterlee's blog post. http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2008/01/focus-color-problem

The problem is that we are approaching release very fast, and I am not convinced that all of the problems can be addressed within a short enough timeframe. This means that unless there are _very_ good reasons I am going to revert the focus changes for GNOME 2.22.
Andrea has done some good experimentations for the focus drawing, however I think it may be better to release GNOME 2.22 with the old focus rather then having controversial and maybe incomplete changes in the style.

This is why I suggest to revert the focus drawing for the next unstable release (which I will do next monday). I do much prefere punting the changes and them maybe doing changes for GNOME 2.24 instead of trying to solve the raised issues in a too short timeframe for 2.22. (ie. no last minute changes other than true bugfixes)
Comment 6 Andrea Cimitan 2008-01-24 20:58:29 UTC
No benzea, I've worked for at least 4 weeks on thinking to the best focus drawings.
Those new one are faster (a pattern and a cairo_fill vs the hard path of the old slower style), better looking (don't tell me that dots are nice...) and more usable (think about focused buttons, labels, dnd listview etc etc...)

I don't want to be blamed again and to move to the trash 1 month of HARD WORK just because one guy doesn't like it (ONE guy, uws, did you see other bugreports?). I remember other discussions about "colored scrollbars", other about gummy style "too cold" etc etc... but I went forward thinking just about my ideas and we saw (look at the 2.20 reviews at arstechnica etc etc, people feedback in forums and in planet gnome) that I made the right decision. 

I've a repository where a lot of guys download and install the new builds, and I have received _just_ positive feedbacks about the new work.

Then, I'm really disappointed and sad that EVERY TIME someone come in and stop the development. I have the impression that I'm just losing time with you guys, since somewhere else (KDE oxygen i.e.) my work will be MUCH more appreciated.

Sad, really sad to say but I'm at this point.
Comment 7 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-01-24 21:14:46 UTC
> I have the impression that I'm just losing time with you guys,
since somewhere else (KDE oxygen i.e.) my work will be MUCH more appreciated.

Good said.

Andrea made BIG improvement with Clearlooks. Compare Classic and Gummy. What looks more modern? Ofc Gummy. What focus looks more modern? Dotted or the pattern one? I think the dotted should DIE with natural death.

I can only say "bad Benjamin", like a kid, because what you want to do is moving away from future, far away. If you want to make all Andreas time to be wasted, do it what would you like to do, but remember - such thing is not appreciated.
Comment 8 Lapo Calamandrei 2008-01-24 21:23:21 UTC
I don't know if the screenshots uws posted are things not ready you're working on, but if it is intended to look like that I don't like it as well. the tab just look bad (so personal taste issue you could ignore), but the "blue window" is surelly broken.
Comment 9 Benjamin Berg 2008-01-24 21:27:55 UTC
OK, I *do* think that the things you did in trunk are valuable and go into the right direction. The main question for me is whether we are in a state right now where the whole theme has a consistent and good focus handling.

I have to admit that I did not do much work on gtk-engines and clearlooks for quite a longer period of time now, and did not follow the changes that happend.

Now the question at hand here is two fold. On the one hand one could of course discuss about who likes the new focus and who does not. What I find more important right now is whether the focus in the *current* state is good for release and what improvements would make sense. Now for example if everyone would agree that a special cased notebook tab (or whatever else) focus improves the theme a lot, then I think this may be a very good reason for not doing the changes in GNOME 2.22. The idea being not to release incomplete stuff to the masses, and instead getting something nice and complete out 6 months later.


I am not sure what the "faster" thing is about, but lets just ignore that.
Comment 10 Andreas Nilsson 2008-01-24 21:52:50 UTC
Benjamin: I fully agree. We don't need to throw anything away, just push it to the next release and make sure to fix any issues before the 2.24 release.
Comment 11 Andrea Cimitan 2008-01-24 22:16:17 UTC
Andreasn, (ironic) like the big amount of wallpapers we have for 2.22? (didn't you called 2.22 the "big art release"?) or the great gdm theme we are actually shipping in march? 
Do you remember you were against the new Clearlooks scrollbars? Did the people criticize them? No one, no bugreports there, just positive feedbacks.

Really guys, you're just blaming and stopping all my enthusiasm. And a developer without enthusiasm is failed.

At least, respect the work of a guy (me) that in less than a year reworked the Clearlooks Classic theme, redesigned Glossy theme, create from scratch Inverted and designed an *original* usable and modern successor: Gummy. For free eh, I wasn't payed to do it... Neither for the new focus, which was NOT easy to think, but took work.
I appreciate critics from guys that worked hard, coded like me and then come for their suggestions, not rants from people (this is general I'm not referring directly to andreasn or benzea) that sits on their sofa and criticize the others' FREE work.

One think I'm really sure, I won't support Clearlooks anymore if every time this is the result.

Bye guys and good luck.
Comment 12 Andreas Nilsson 2008-01-25 15:53:53 UTC
Dear Andrea,
I really don't want to go into any cock-measuring discussions on who put most free time into GNOME. That's just unnecessary. 

I think the new focus is great, it's just that it had some issues that needed to be worked out first, either in Nautilus or in the Clearlooks code. I personally think it's better to have it fully working than half-broken out of the box.
Comment 13 João Matos 2008-02-17 23:15:01 UTC
Andrea, I'm pretty sure everyone here appreciates all the hard work you have done in the GTK theme engines lately. The real question here is if it's appropriate to ship an incomplete work in this release (I have not checked it out so I don't know the state of it). If it's not ready yet it's better to wait for another release cycle and iron out all the issues and bugs.

Chill out people. :)
Comment 14 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 10:31:36 UTC
I was thinking about big, noticeable, OSX-like shadow for buttons focus.

PS: Cimi, is it possible to revert ClearlooksClassic appearance before your popular patch? It looked nice...
Comment 15 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 10:36:18 UTC
(In reply to comment #14)
> I was thinking about big, noticeable, OSX-like shadow for buttons focus.
> 
???
> PS: Cimi, is it possible to revert ClearlooksClassic appearance before your
> popular patch? It looked nice...
> 
???
Comment 16 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 11:31:54 UTC
> I was thinking about big, noticeable, OSX-like shadow for buttons focus.

ClearlooksClassic currently has dotted focus indicator. Gummy has subtle shadow.

I think that good idea would be BIG shadow for ClearlooksClassic's buttons focus.

> PS: Cimi, is it possible to revert ClearlooksClassic appearance before your
> popular patch? It looked nice...

Do you remember your patch which made Clearlooks-Cairo and Clearlooks-non-Cairo look the same? The -Cairo looked nicer before you patched Clearlooks.

Look: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks-Neo?content=53492

After you patched Clearlooks, it became so... flat.
Comment 17 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 11:57:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #16)
> > I was thinking about big, noticeable, OSX-like shadow for buttons focus.
> 
> ClearlooksClassic currently has dotted focus indicator. Gummy has subtle
> shadow.
> 
> I think that good idea would be BIG shadow for ClearlooksClassic's buttons
> focus.
> 
Can't be done without hacks or dirty approaches (Aurora)

> > PS: Cimi, is it possible to revert ClearlooksClassic appearance before your
> > popular patch? It looked nice...
> 
> Do you remember your patch which made Clearlooks-Cairo and Clearlooks-non-Cairo
> look the same? The -Cairo looked nicer before you patched Clearlooks.
Your opinion
> 
> Look: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks-Neo?content=53492
> 
> After you patched Clearlooks, it became so... flat.
> 
Exactly like the non-Cairo. And yes, we prefer the non-Cairo
Comment 18 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 12:28:54 UTC
> Can't be done without hacks or dirty approaches (Aurora)

Nodoka does this without hacks.

> Exactly like the non-Cairo.

That doesn't mean it's better.

> And yes, we prefer the non-Cairo

Just give me simple way to change appearance. Contrast doesn't give me what I want.
Comment 19 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 12:33:38 UTC
(In reply to comment #18)
> > Can't be done without hacks or dirty approaches (Aurora)
> 
> Nodoka does this without hacks.
screenshot
> 
> > Exactly like the non-Cairo.
> 
> That doesn't mean it's better.
For the majority of people the non-Cairo was a way better
> 
> > And yes, we prefer the non-Cairo
> 
> Just give me simple way to change appearance. Contrast doesn't give me what I
> want.
> 
You can't revert the old look.
Comment 20 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 12:37:38 UTC
From what I can see, nodoka is just copying Clearlooks GUMMY focus style
http://www.gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre2/75061-2.png
Comment 21 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 12:38:49 UTC
> screenshot

http://img.wklej.org/images/28390nod-bt-foc.png

> You can't revert the old look.

I really, really, want to.
Comment 22 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 12:40:46 UTC
It's not a copy. It was "inspiration". And the shadow is bigger. And Nodoka's light buttons (from light theme) look better on dark backgrounds in Firefox.
Comment 23 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 13:10:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #22)
> It's not a copy. It was "inspiration". And the shadow is bigger. And Nodoka's
> light buttons (from light theme) look better on dark backgrounds in Firefox.
> 
Shadow is exactly the same.
Same pixels
Comment 24 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-02-19 13:11:34 UTC
Doesn't matter. At first sight looks better than Clearlooks' one.
Comment 25 Andrea Cimitan 2008-02-19 13:13:28 UTC
Use nodoka and don't post here please.
Comment 26 André Klapper 2014-04-05 17:01:46 UTC
This project is not under active development anymore (except for buildtools, the last 'real' code change happened in October 2010).
According to developers, it is currently unlikely that there will be any further active development.

Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if
anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.