Regarding a new default theme

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

Hi all,
this is an email suggesting a next-gen theme for Gnome. I emailed a few 
people first about it privately, and Seth suggested I email d-d-l, so here I 
am.

Here is the mockup:
http://www.osnews.com/img/8251/butter.png

The theme I beefed up on this mockup is "Milk". I call this theme, "Butter" 
(because it's creme instead of white).It has its roots to an OSX third party 
theme, then it got ported to Gnome: http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/567/ 
(unfortunately it was a pixmap-only theme). Both the original Milk and 
Gnome's Milk are so incredibly white that makes them extremely unsuitable as 
default themes, plus they lose points on details (details that have to be 
perfect on a default theme). These themes were more "promising", rather than 
"usable". So, I cleaned Milk up and created Butter.

Except the color changes to the theme, I have also changed the widgets. On 
first look, only a trained eye will see the differences, but zooming in 
shots or looking more closely, you will notice quite some changes to the 
widgets over the original, trying to make them cleaner and more consistent.

So, if anyone wants to start working on an engine that would materialize 
this theme (maybe even modifying Butter to add some of the *ideas* showing 
here: http://www.osnews.com/img/3721/test2.png , like the bold text on tabs 
and buttons or the rounded tab views and box frames), and maybe --just 
maybe-- convince Owen/Havoc to add user-switchable drop shadows on 
gtk/metacity (now that XOrg has better support for such stuff), I believe 
that Gnome 2.10 can be released with a modern, killer theme that will bring 
the Unix desktop to a new level.

The reason that I push for a theme that looks more involved rather than 
yet-another-theme-that-looks-like-all-the-rest-just-with-some-different-colors, 
is because I believe that is important Gnome has to finally go with the 
times and become more modern in the way it looks by default. First 
impressions and looks count with new users. The theme has to be eye 
catching --yet fully usable by both eye-troubled and healthy users--, has to 
have shadows that make the different views easier to the eye, has to look 
different enough from any other default theme around -- in order to 
differentiate itself.

I don't believe that a theme effort for Gnome 2.10 should just be a single 
guy's effort working in a corner by himself and when he's done to be shoot 
down on d-d-l after he presents his work. Instead, it should be co-ordinated 
with both GTK+'s and Metacity's development teams, Seth, the usability list, 
and get support by gtk/metacity guys by implementing new stuff as needed by 
this new demanding theme.

So, how could that work? Anyone's interested in developing Butter? (note: 
that mockup is not final, it's a first test, I am willing to work on the 
design/usability side with Gnome devs). Anyone interested in actually 
putting the gears to work to coordinate the development through all these 
teams? I believe that the "looks" have been put aside for a long time, and 
now it's the time to do the right thing and give Gnome a facelift that makes 
it both modern and more usable than before.

Rgds,
Eugenia

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