GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 619812
[GUI] Ekiga looks ugly in Windows
Last modified: 2020-06-06 16:30:08 UTC
Dear all, first thanks for your great job. I think the horrible look Ekiga has in Windows prevents it to become popular amongst Windows users. I know some people think it is a detail. But considering the big number of Windows users, and the potential of testers/contributors it represents, I think this point must not be neglected. Is there a way to improve it ?
Someone had the same remark. But how to improve it? What is ugly for you?
If you tell us what is ugly, there might be a way to improve it.
Created attachment 163036 [details] Propositions design on Vista Thank you for your answer. Please find in attached file a screenshot I took on Vista. I am not designer, but in a general way, design would appear more "modern" if we could avoid sharp angles. On the screenshot, I indicated 2 items: - in red: tabs could be more smooth if they had round corners, like the ones I indicated with red arrows (Firefox, ...) - in blue : the bottom of the GUI could be inspired from Pidgin's. I hope it helps making Ekiga better.
The design is given by gtk, not by ekiga. Ekiga just says: "create a tab component", and gtk creates it. So this is a bug in gtk, feel free to create such a bug report. For information, gtk version used in ekiga is gtk 2.16. For the bottom of the GUI, this is the same as bug #620959. Do you agree?
For the tabs, I understand we are dependant of GTK possibilities. Is there just one way to create a tab with GTK ? no "skin" ? I will have a look at GTK website. For the bottom, I was not thinking only about bug #620959 , but also about the aspect of the "Online" listing zone. I find Pidgin's one nicer.
For information, GTK theme can be changed. See this discussion on GTK mailing-list : http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/2010-June/msg00102.html
Personally I like the ekiga look in the Windows 7 screenshot. Looks quite professional to me. I like the squared tabs. Just about every windows app does their own widgets these days anyway, so I don't think that this is ought to be a high priority for ekiga developers. It's certainly not "horrible" and it's not going to drive off users. Since the issue of look and feel is a GTK one, this issue should be closed.
I agree the current square look is ok for "professionals". I am talking about trying to help MSN&Skype users migrate to Ekiga. These users generally give much importance to "look and feel". In a first step, I think it costs nothing asking Pidgin team which GTK theme they use, and see if it can suit to Ekiga. In a second step, the best solution would be to add a "preference" option to change the theme.
Daniel from Pidgin's devel mailing-list indicates that Pidgin uses "MS-Windows" theme, which comes with GTK+. Is it the same theme currently used by Ekiga windows?
You may easily check change the theme GTK2 uses under windows by downloading and installing GTK2 Theme Pack from the GTK2 Windows Runtime homepage on SourceForge. GTK Theme Changer is included in this pack and you should be able to run in by going into the folder GTK2 runtime was installed into and executing appropriate file.
Ekiga is not under active development anymore: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/-/issues/273 Ekiga saw its last release 7 years ago. The last code commits were 4 years ago. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (and transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is deprecated) if anyone takes the responsibility for active Ekiga development again in the future.