Constructive criticism: Winstripe

ct^ · Post by **ct^** » June 12th, 2004, 5:45 pm

hao2lian wrote:Most people stick with the default three subskins of Luna because Classic is mostly rectangular and grey, which doesn't appeal to the eyes, and because patching uxtheme.dll is construed as "dangerous" and the most visible method of doing it, StyleXP, is shareware.

There are freeware toys to mess with uxtheme.dll, but even if there weren't, you don't need any patches to use Classic... And I know quite a lot of people who use Classic on XP. Most of them are geeks, but Fx should be appealing to them too. :P

Thumper's Evil Twin · Post by **Thumper's Evil Twin** » June 12th, 2004, 5:59 pm

People who change from the default theme on Windows are more likely to change from the default theme on Firefox. So they're basically complaining for the hell of it.

- Chris

[Unknown] · Post by **[Unknown]** » June 12th, 2004, 7:57 pm

Ugh. I can tell you that about 85% of my clients, who are using XP, use Luna - and the other 15% use Classic. A whole 0% uses another custom theme....

However, a lot of my clients use 98 or 2000, which only has Classic. So, I'm not trying to give totals on which is more popular or important - just saying that trying to serve the needs of those who customize is going for the, in my mind, "people who would use Firefox anyway and most likely are" group. I even belong in that group, as a I *slightly* modified the Luna theme because I hated, for example, the green start button.

So, yes, I agree - don't worry so much about the customizers, you can never win for *everyone*... someone will always manage to have something they dislike. (even if others don't.)

-[Unknown]

Tytoba · Post by **Tytoba** » June 12th, 2004, 9:57 pm

I thought the new theme was revolting when I first started using it. It's really grown on me now. Personally, I think most of the current symbols are fine (maybe add a little stub on the back and forward buttons to make it a little arrow, and the download button looks goofy to me) but they really need that XP touch. Mainly, some more vibrant colors, more of a 3D look, and different shadows. Basically everything that's already been said many times over. I think they need to find a spot somewhere between Luna and Classic. Keep it sleek and clean like it is now, but make it look a little more at home in Luna.

ct^ · Post by **ct^** » June 13th, 2004, 3:36 am

Perhaps there should be something à la color themes in Winamp, i.e. a UI to change the menu background color, to avoid having to edit userChrome.css. Just a thought.

aurelian · Post by **aurelian** » June 13th, 2004, 5:47 am

Thumper wrote:People who change from the default theme on Windows are more likely to change from the default theme on Firefox. So they're basically complaining for the hell of it.

Have to say I agree. The default theme should fit with the default OS theme, which at this stage for most home pc users probably is the blue bubblegum XP theme. If you can switch themes on your windowing system then you can switch themes on your browser.

As it happens I only really care about the fwd, back, reload and stop icons (don't use any others), and I require the theme to pick up the menu and toolbar colours from the OS. That rules out a lot of the potential themes for me. But there are two or three which I'm happy with, and when it's finished, I expect the default one should also be fine.

ct^ · Post by **ct^** » June 13th, 2004, 5:57 am

Well, there _is_ a theme manager for that. :) I meant simply the background color. In retrospect, perhaps it should just be an extension - which may already be out there.

cheeaun · Post by **cheeaun** » June 13th, 2004, 5:57 am

Uh.. this is not quite a construtive criticism by me but..
http://cheeaun.phoenity.com/weblog/

PS: I'm pretty amateur in this blogging world.

lordmedikit · Post by **lordmedikit** » June 13th, 2004, 6:32 am

Thumper wrote:So they're basically complaining for the hell of it.

No we are not. Stop flaming.

aurelian wrote:Have to say I agree. The default theme should fit with the default OS theme, which at this stage for most home pc users probably is the blue bubblegum XP theme. If you can switch themes on your windowing system then you can switch themes on your browser.

You're assuming that the majority use use WinXP. You might be right, but remember that there are lots of versions of Windows 2000, 98 and ME still out there and that takeup of XP has been quite slow, especially in the business environment which I thought was as much of a target as home users.

Furthermore, I saw few complaints about the padding on the buttons before this change (perhaps I missed them), but this seems to be a big complaint now. The problem that I see with the padding at the moment is how space inefficient it is. Obviously, I know that Luna Blue, etc. is space inefficient which is one of the reasons that I don't use it, but such behaviour makes the UI feel really strange to users who aren't using XP with a theme.

slang123 · Post by **slang123** » June 13th, 2004, 6:35 am

He wasnt flaming. He has a point, very few people change the default theme, and if they dont they are probably the sort of people who want to (and know how to) change the default theme for firefox. How is he flaming?

lordmedikit · Post by **lordmedikit** » June 13th, 2004, 6:42 am

slang123 wrote:How is he flaming?

That wasn't the flame part and I altered my post above to reflect that. What was flaming was his derogatory comment afterwards about people that were proving constructive criticism about the padding on buttons.

He has a point as do we who are providing the feedback that was requested in this thread. There was no need to say:

Thumper wrote:So they're basically complaining for the hell of it.

Because this is an incorrect, ignorant and offensive comment that is not constructive criticism and I'm fed up of him adding them to the end of so many of his posts.

I wish to remind you that the title of this thread is: "Constructive criticism: Winstripe", not, "Give your personal opinion of people who diagree with you about Winstripe". That was kept in the other thread that was locked.

slang123 · Post by **slang123** » June 13th, 2004, 6:58 am

OK, fair point. cheeaun: nice work. That back button is a big improvement on the luna one. I hope the winstripe author takes note of the points youve made. Btw have you ever considered making an icon set for windows, i cant get enough of phoenity

aurelian · Post by **aurelian** » June 13th, 2004, 7:21 am

lordmedikit wrote:You're assuming that the majority use use WinXP. You might be right, but remember that there are lots of versions of Windows 2000, 98 and ME still out there and that takeup of XP has been quite slow, especially in the business environment which I thought was as much of a target as home users.

True. My feeling was that in a lot of business environments the default will be to use IE and that people who can switch from that can also also switch themes. But I guess the same applies for home users.

So yes perhaps the ideal would be a default theme which works in both settings. That doesn't seem so easy though because people who like XP seem to like a colourful 'cartoon' icon style which looks out of place in other settings. My preference would be for the installer to offer a selection of themes for the most common OS defaults, or at least point the user in the right direction shortly after install.

We often discuss FX in the context of its adption by highly non-technical users, and maybe it's nice to imagine, but one has to ask is it realisitc even for a long-term aim? Surely such users are always going to use the browser shipped with the OS, which in Windows' case is never going to be FX?

The default theme shouldn't be ugly (so this thread is definitely important), but I think so long as users are made aware of how and where to get new themes, it shouldn't be a huge deal.

lordmedikit · Post by **lordmedikit** » June 13th, 2004, 7:38 am

aurelian wrote:That doesn't seem so easy though because people who like XP seem to like a colourful 'cartoon' icon style which looks out of place in other settings.

It's perfectly possible, and is what has been done, to make themes adapt to changes in the WinXP skin, in terms of colour and overall look. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to make firefox adapt the different padding that buttons use.

The current issue is that if you basically, use a WinXP theme, apart from looking all colourful which isn't so bad, you also get buttons with a stupid amount of padding IMO that wastes space. Now, if an application like Firefox then has this stupid amount of padding and you are used to/using the classic/unskinned theme, then it throws all your normal UI control out of the window. Personally, I find that a lot of the control you have over a UI is automatic and you get used to things having a certain dimension, therefore, when using Firefox with the extreme padding, you end up misclicking or just getting annoyed at the 'wrong' feel of the interface compared to what you are used to. IMO, this is actually far more important than the icons themselves as it makes the UI feel 'wrong', at least to me.

Obviously, you might get used to this padding over time, but for new users to the theme it is the first impressions that count and since this is the default theme, it's not only the first impressions of a theme, but the whole browser.

lordmedikit · Post by **lordmedikit** » June 13th, 2004, 7:51 am

aurelian wrote:We often discuss FX in the context of its adption by highly non-technical users, and maybe it's nice to imagine, but one has to ask is it realisitc even for a long-term aim? Surely such users are always going to use the browser shipped with the OS, which in Windows' case is never going to be FX?

This is a tangent post, but anyway.

It's all about information. At the moment many of the people I have told about Firefox switch to it. This is however, due to two things really. Perhaps the most important is how useless Internet Explorer is at the moment. SP2 might change this, but only for WinXP users it seems. The other is obviously due to Firefox being a competant product and alternative.

At the moment, I personally feel that the success of Firefox with non-techinical users is almost soley due to how awful Internet Explorer is. If they have no problems, they wouldn't be so happy to experiment with alternatives and would stick with what 'works' (though in this case IE clearly doesn't). Whilst it is what I really like about Firefox, I really do think that most users prefer a browser that looks how they want it and has the features 'out of the box', so perhaps something like Opera. Because they haven't been using it, they don't realise the beauty of Firefox is in making it into whatever you want (within limits of course). Basically, you almost have to be using Firefox before you appreciate it's true strengths. I know that I personally took long to begin discovering them and am always dicovering new helpful things. However, such things take time and to be actually using the product.

I hope that it is a realistic long-term aim, but I really feel this is dependant on how much Microsoft continue to annoy thier IE users rather than how good Firefox is.