Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

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CaminoUser
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Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by CaminoUser »

I'm starting to play around with updating Camino's user interface. With Lion recently being previewed, Camino is looking more and more outdated. Camino's current interface is really best suited for Tiger, which was a long time ago. This is what I've come up with so far. I'd like to hear comments and/or requests. The icons currently come from The Working Group's iPhone toolbar iconset, so if you want to help in that regards, it would be appreciated. Here's a preview:

Image

And here is a modified nightly to play around with:

http://rapidshare.com/files/428066899/Camino.zip
Last edited by CaminoUser on November 1st, 2010, 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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davedit
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by davedit »

To be honest, one of the things I really like about Camino is the color. I would hate to see all the toolbar icons change to graphite.
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stardomains
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by stardomains »

Hey, if you get it done, I'll give her a spin! Looks interesting to me.
phiw13
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by phiw13 »

2 notes:
1. your build crashes on startup

Code: Select all

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @executable_path/libfreebl3.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/phiw/Applications/Camino_test.app/Contents/MacOS/Camino
  Reason: image not found

I suspect that, after successfully building, you didn't run

Code: Select all

make -C path/to/$OBJDIR/camino/installer

see http://wiki.caminobrowser.org/Development:Building for all the details, particularly about creating a build for distribution (towards the bottom of the page).

2. your graphics are huge.
see http://wiki.caminobrowser.org/Developme ... g_Graphics
CaminoUser
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by CaminoUser »

phiw13 wrote:2 notes:
1. your build crashes on startup
see http://wiki.caminobrowser.org/Development:Building for all the details, particularly about creating a build for distribution (towards the bottom of the page).

2. your graphics are huge.
see http://wiki.caminobrowser.org/Developme ... g_Graphics


Thanks for this info. I don't really have a clue when it comes to this kind of thing. I am going to fix a few bugs and try this again. I'm also going to have a crack at redesigning the tabs. I don't really want to switch to the generic Safari tabs. I want to keep the look of right-side-up tabs but make them more clearly defined and also look more integrated with the system. I think its also really important to clean up the whole bookmark bar/tab separation. Right now it's so busy with all the different lines/gradients!
capfuji
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by capfuji »

Looks really great! Looking forward to your tab ideas!
mem0
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by mem0 »

CaminoUser wrote:
...I'm also going to have a crack at redesigning the tabs ... make them more clearly defined ...


I like Camino's original UI!

But if you want to play with it, then please let the close-buttons on the tabs always visible and DON'T hide them like in Safari 5. This mouseover effect looks terrible on Safari's tabs/UI !!!

Thanks.
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Uncle Asad
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by Uncle Asad »

davedit wrote:To be honest, one of the things I really like about Camino is the color. I would hate to see all the toolbar icons change to graphite.

mem0 wrote:I like Camino's original UI!

Just to make sure it's clear, the changes being discussed in this thread aren't being done or driven by Camino developers (and the thread title has been updated to remove some ambiguity in that regard caused by the original).

However, as always, Camino developers unofficially monitor the threads in the forum.
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capfuji
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by capfuji »

mem0 wrote:I like Camino's original UI!

Yeah, I like Camino's UI as well - in general. It's just... some (mostly graphical) parts are terribly outdated. The bookmarks manager for example: while it fits the Tiger UI perfectly, it should have gotten an update for Leopard and SL. Same goes for the icons and the adressbar...

May I ask, when was the last theme refresh for Camino? I don't want a completely different UI, but a few subtle changes would definitely make Camino more fitting to today's standards and a more pleasant experience for new users.

So, to conclude, I seriously welcome any new UI ideas and I would love to help in that respect :)

Last question: How difficult is it to implement various themes for different OS versions?
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Re: Updating Camino's UI

Post by phiw13 »

capfuji wrote:Yeah, I like Camino's UI as well - in general. It's just... some (mostly graphical) parts are terribly outdated. The bookmarks manager for example: while it fits the Tiger UI perfectly, it should have gotten an update for Leopard and SL. Same goes for the icons and the adressbar...

May I ask, when was the last theme refresh for Camino? I don't want a completely different UI, but a few subtle changes would definitely make Camino more fitting to today's standards and a more pleasant experience for new users.

Yeah, you have a point about the bookmarks manager. Remember that Camino is a all volunteer project, and serious coders / developers are always welcome :-).

The toolbar icons have been updated for Camino 2.0, and more polished for the upcoming Camino 2.1. Do you have suggestions on how to improve them further ? (the colourless iOS style glyph icons are not so popular among the core Camino developers; dito for the Safari style toolbar icons)

The location bar (and associated URl dropdown) is being refreshed for Camino 2.1a - I don't think a location bar with rounded corners is on the todo list anywhere. There is no existing bug about it anyway. And I'm not sure that has ever been discussed. (I know, it is all the fashion among browsers these days...).

If you think that last one is a valuable enhancement, could you file a bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug. ... uct=Camino)? That way the Camino team can discuss this further.

capfuji wrote:So, to conclude, I seriously welcome any new UI ideas and I would love to help in that respect :)

Did I hear someone volunteering there ? :-)

capfuji wrote:Last question: How difficult is it to implement various themes for different OS versions?

Probably not very difficult. It would probably involve developing some sort of theme engine (something that would also make things easier for custom themes, btw). But again, given the limited developer time available, it is not a high priority.

---
On a side note - I did you try the iOS style icons you provided with your build in the first post of this thread (I extracted them out of the build and put them in my own). I must say, I don't think that is a concept that works well on the 10.5/10.6 toolbar. The contrast between icon and background colour is really low and the image seems to vanish a little (well, more than a little). The same concept 'works' for Google Chrome, but you'll note that Chrome uses a custom toolbar with a much lighter background. Similarly, Apple seems to use those icons on custom toolbars only (iMovie 11, much lighter grey with black glyph icons; iPhoto 11, black background with white icons). I'm not clear at all what the future holds with OS 10.7. The keynote video shows a variety of icon styles.
mem0
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by mem0 »

Why should the Camino-Team (which is maybe only a handful developers) investigate so much time & energy into UI changes. The UI looks fine!!! There are so much other topics, like Fullscreen-View, Private-Mode or a Startup-Page-concept (maybe previews of the most visited Sites like in Chrome), which were (more) also interesting :-)
CaminoUser
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by CaminoUser »

After thinking about it while, I agree that the dark icons are not the best choice right now. Besides the issues already mentioned, they don't look very good above the colorful favicons in the bookmark bar (when it's visible). So I've reverted back to the standard icons for now. The tabs are stolen from Coda, which I've always liked.

Image
CaminoUser
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by CaminoUser »

I don't think a location bar with rounded corners is on the todo list anywhere. There is no existing bug about it anyway. And I'm not sure that has ever been discussed. (I know, it is all the fashion among browsers these days...).

If you think that last one is a valuable enhancement, could you file a bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug. ... uct=Camino)? That way the Camino team can discuss this further.


The code to create a rounded location field is only about 20 lines, maybe less. So it probably wouldn't be too difficult to get checked in if people actually wanted it. I think it looks a lot better, personally. Also, I think removing the knob to resize the search field is also a huge improvement, and only requires removing 1 line of code.
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Uncle Asad
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by Uncle Asad »

CaminoUser wrote:The code to create a rounded location field is only about 20 lines, maybe less.

We discussed the rounded-rect location bar in association with the location bar Summer of Code, and decided not to move forward with that.

CaminoUser wrote:Also, I think removing the knob to resize the search field is also a huge improvement, and only requires removing 1 line of code.

It's a big loss for usability (the user loses all clues that the field is resizable), so I don't think we'd ever take it.

One other thing to note: don't forget that the bookmark bar can be 2 or 5 or 10 lines tall ;)
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mem0
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Re: Making a more iPhone-like Camino UI theme

Post by mem0 »

Some things what I have noticed with a first look on the screenshot:

- The tab-close-buttons, the Favicons and the titles could be centered vertically in the tabs.

- The bookmarkbar-items could be centered between toolbar-icons and tabbar

- The unfocused tab could be dark (on the screenshot it is reversed)

- The URL-Bar has another style as the search-bar: it has a border and no shadow at the bottom. (I like the old URL-bar!)
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