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Bug 649426 - Usability Issue with workspace pane and black color wallpaper
Usability Issue with workspace pane and black color wallpaper
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-control-center
Classification: Core
Component: Background
3.9.x
Other Linux
: Normal minor
: ---
Assigned To: Debarshi Ray
Control-Center Maintainers
: 649425 725288 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-05-05 01:56 UTC by nireno
Modified: 2014-04-16 13:40 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 3.9/3.10


Attachments
Image showing the a completely black background wallpaper hides the last workspace in the workspaces pane of the activities dashboard (166.84 KB, image/png)
2011-05-05 01:56 UTC, nireno
Details

Description nireno 2011-05-05 01:56:05 UTC
Created attachment 187255 [details]
Image showing the a completely black background wallpaper hides the last workspace in the workspaces pane of the activities dashboard

Overview: 
Using the default gnome 3 theme, if the user selects a plain black color background wallpaper, the last workspace in the workspaces pane of the the activities dashboard cannot be seen.

Steps to reproduce:
Choose a plain black color as the desktop wallpaper. Now go to the activities dashboard. By visual inspection, you will not be able to detect the last available workspace that is automatically created in the workspaces pane.

Actual Results
I could not see the last workspace in the pane. I knew that a workspace was present and could still interact with it but only through guesswork.

Expected Result
There should be an outline, number or some other indicator on the workspaces that clues the user into its existence and bounds.

Build Date
April 25, 2011, 11:27 p.m. UTC
Arch Linux

See the attached screenshot.
Comment 1 Owen Taylor 2011-05-05 03:25:09 UTC
*** Bug 649425 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Allan Day 2013-08-26 00:43:59 UTC
I don't really want to design the shell around black backgrounds, so I'm punting this to the control center - I don't think we should allow black backgrounds to be set from the colours part of the background selection panel.
Comment 3 Bastien Nocera 2014-04-14 09:22:31 UTC
commit 2c9961a4a1052478ef3da78c3820586ee04321e1
Author: Bastien Nocera <hadess@hadess.net>
Date:   Mon Apr 14 11:20:27 2014 +0200

    background: Remove black colour from choices
    
    A completely black background will make it impossible to see
    whether there is one more workspace in gnome-shell, and as we
    do not want to design gnome-shell around the possibility of
    a solid black coloured background, remove black from the options.
    
    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649426
Comment 4 Vadim Rutkovsky 2014-04-14 15:03:01 UTC
*** Bug 725288 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-04-14 20:21:12 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't really want to design the shell around black backgrounds, so I'm
> punting this to the control center - I don't think we should allow black
> backgrounds to be set from the colours part of the background selection panel.

Black color saves battery usage and power use! search lineedit, dash, workspace bar, in apps (frequent|all) has grey borders. 

Is it really that hard to put a border to workspaces, and apps folder popups?

Allan Day are you not trying to force your ideas and opinions on others, with this? 

That's Steve jobs syndrome!

Quote from: http://despicablewonderfulyou.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/steve-jobs-syndrome/
"This phenomenal success story of Steve Jobs has perhaps given birth to this behavior pattern in many individuals who seem to assume the status and believe that they too share similar intellectual traits. Yes, there are many who are as smart as Steve Jobs or even lot more than he was. But the victims of the “Steve Jobs Syndrome” are those who seem to carry a misconception about themselves as being able to make everything better and impose their ideas of improvement on matters that they often have very little experience or information about."
Comment 6 Bastien Nocera 2014-04-14 21:55:15 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > I don't really want to design the shell around black backgrounds, so I'm
> > punting this to the control center - I don't think we should allow black
> > backgrounds to be set from the colours part of the background selection panel.
> 
> Black color saves battery usage and power use!

Huh, what? The backlight is on whether it's black or white... And it will be behind a grey application.

> search lineedit, dash, workspace
> bar, in apps (frequent|all) has grey borders. 
> 
> Is it really that hard to put a border to workspaces, and apps folder popups?

You're thinking of commenting in a shell bug, not in a gnome-control-center bug which just tries to stop users getting into the bad situation and doesn't claim to fix the root of the problem.

> Allan Day are you not trying to force your ideas and opinions on others, with
> this? 

First and last warning. Ad hominem attacks won't be tolerated.

You might want to go read the comments, and the updated World of Gnome article you probably followed to get here and vent:
http://worldofgnome.org/oops-shell-removes-black-backgrounds-support/
Comment 7 Allan Day 2014-04-14 22:02:08 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
...
> > I don't really want to design the shell around black backgrounds, so I'm
> > punting this to the control center - I don't think we should allow black
> > backgrounds to be set from the colours part of the background selection panel.
> 
> Black color saves battery usage and power use! search lineedit, dash, workspace
> bar, in apps (frequent|all) has grey borders. 
> 
> Is it really that hard to put a border to workspaces, and apps folder popups?

That's a question for one of our visual designers. We can and should look at making the theme work well with dark backgrounds - there are already bugs about this (with design recommendations). Feel free to find them and subscribe - they are independent of this particular issue.

My point in the previous comment is that some things just aren't going to work well with a flat black background. Window shadows will not show up, for example - and there's nothing we can do about that. As such, suggesting a flat black background is not helpful - it diminishes the effectiveness of the UI, and as such should not be a suggestion.

If you want to have a plain background you can still have one - just create a black image file and set it as your background manually.

> Allan Day are you not trying to force your ideas and opinions on others, with
> this? 
> 
> That's Steve jobs syndrome!
> 
> Quote from:
> http://despicablewonderfulyou.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/steve-jobs-syndrome/
> "This phenomenal success story of Steve Jobs has perhaps given birth to this
> behavior pattern in many individuals who seem to assume the status and believe
> that they too share similar intellectual traits. Yes, there are many who are as
> smart as Steve Jobs or even lot more than he was. But the victims of the “Steve
> Jobs Syndrome” are those who seem to carry a misconception about themselves as
> being able to make everything better and impose their ideas of improvement on
> matters that they often have very little experience or information about."

That's incredibly rude. I'm a member of the GNOME design team; we make calls about how the UI should be behave - it's my job. If you think that I'm making those decisions based on a naive set of personal preferences, you are neither familiar with how I work, nor with what it means to do serious design work.

Please do not make personal comments in bug reports - stick to the issues.
Comment 8 Debarshi Ray 2014-04-15 07:46:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)

> If you want to have a plain background you can still have one - just create a
> black image file and set it as your background manually.

Or you can drag and drop any colour from the colour chooser. See bug 689351
Comment 9 alex diavatis 2014-04-15 16:09:01 UTC
I think this bug remain un-resolved, because G-C-C let us set black wallpapers for flick.

I also feel this is 100% GNOME-Shell bug, and I don't understand why my original bug report[1] moved here.

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725288
Comment 10 Lennart Buit 2014-04-15 19:08:49 UTC
Not only solid black backgrounds suffer from the symptons displayed here, also the black "leaf" default background has these problems.

There are some options to fix this, borders would solve it, even for the black case. Besides borders, elementary included that the statusbar takes the opposide color of the background, that might even be a solution. (That would however alter GS quite severely)
Comment 11 Lennart Buit 2014-04-15 19:11:56 UTC
(Why doesnt bugzilla have edit capabilities, oh well)

WOG also covered this quite extensively [1], these are the (main) areas that are affected by either black or dark backgrounds:

[1] http://worldofgnome.org/oops-shell-removes-black-backgrounds-support/
Comment 12 Allan Day 2014-04-16 08:27:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> (Why doesnt bugzilla have edit capabilities, oh well)
> 
> WOG also covered this quite extensively [1], these are the (main) areas that
> are affected by either black or dark backgrounds:
> 
> [1] http://worldofgnome.org/oops-shell-removes-black-backgrounds-support/

I think it would be best if we create a new bug to tracks the various places where dark backgrounds are an issue. I originally thought that we should track these issues individually but, thinking about it, the visual style needs to be consistent, and we probably need to discuss the problem as a whole.

I've already found bug 690624, which describes one of the issues. It would be great if someone could take the time to look for similar reports and set up a new gnome-shell tracker bug.
Comment 13 alex diavatis 2014-04-16 13:07:58 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #11)

> I think it would be best if we create a new bug to tracks the various places
> where dark backgrounds are an issue. I originally thought that we should track
> these issues individually but, thinking about it, the visual style needs to be
> consistent, and we probably need to discuss the problem as a whole.

Allan,

That doesn't belong to the bug report, but since you came up with this idea, I think it is better to open a page to wiki, and collect the bugs there, together with possible solutions.

Furthermore since you are the main maintainer of gnome-theme-standard I believe that it would be really helpful for GNOME Theme authors to document the GNOME CSS (specially the non-standard CSS compliant parts) on wiki. Both for GTK+Shell, alongside with the changes on the newer version.

Many authors quit theming because they can't keep up with the changes. No-docs. GNOME is bleeding contributors without really a reason.

A same project would be also nice for GNOME Icons, from Jakub Steiner. Put all icons on a single page, as other major icon projects do.
Comment 14 Allan Day 2014-04-16 13:32:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
...
> > I think it would be best if we create a new bug to tracks the various places
> > where dark backgrounds are an issue. I originally thought that we should track
> > these issues individually but, thinking about it, the visual style needs to be
> > consistent, and we probably need to discuss the problem as a whole.
> 
> Allan,
> 
> That doesn't belong to the bug report, but since you came up with this idea, I
> think it is better to open a page to wiki, and collect the bugs there, together
> with possible solutions.

It's perfectly appropriate to use a bug report for this.

> Furthermore since you are the main maintainer of gnome-theme-standard

No. I have very little to do with Adwaita.

> I believe
> that it would be really helpful for GNOME Theme authors to document the GNOME
> CSS (specially the non-standard CSS compliant parts) on wiki. Both for
> GTK+Shell, alongside with the changes on the newer version.
>
> Many authors quit theming because they can't keep up with the changes. No-docs.
> GNOME is bleeding contributors without really a reason.
> 
> A same project would be also nice for GNOME Icons, from Jakub Steiner. Put all
> icons on a single page, as other major icon projects do.

All of this is off topic. This is a bug tracker - please stick to the bug topic.
Comment 15 alex diavatis 2014-04-16 13:40:01 UTC
(In reply to comment #14)
> (In reply to comment #13)
> ...

> > Allan,
> > 
> > That doesn't belong to the bug report, but since you came up with this idea, I
> > think it is better to open a page to wiki, and collect the bugs there, together
> > with possible solutions.
> 
> It's perfectly appropriate to use a bug report for this.

I meant that my comment was off-topic, not yours :)
I will move it on MLs