Hi,
On 09/12/13 07:29, Gregory Casamento wrote:
I've often felt as though our default look causes people to have a bad
first impression of GNUstep.
First impressions and "out of the box" experience have a huge impact.
Many people make the mistake of believing we are ONLY OpenStep based
on the look alone without really looking at the API.
Does anyone have any opinions on this?
I disagree... (not on the first impression thing of course). Many people
don't even know what OpenSTEP and APIs are, thus don't worry.
I intended to write a cynic email about the typical topics we get when
somebody looses confidence in the project, which I read again and again
in the past 10 years. But let me write something more constructive.
Everytime theming is mentioned (as with other critical topics in this
category) there is bla bla, but on the first moment of action needed
fixing or coding to improve the situation, things will slow down.
As others wrote, we need to show themes, but that means we need to have
themes! These themes need to be seen in screenshots, need to be
packaged, need to be reasonably complete and usable!
It is much better not to release a theme than to release something badly
usable: again, a matter of first impressions.
Now I did a test, I searched "google theming" with bing. Looking at the
images, we do get screenshots! Our main screenshot is a dark themed
image... we have blog posts. Thus it is fine. [First point: check how
things really are, not how things think you are].
However... the 4th and 5th links are... devastating.
http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Themes
If anybody interested in themes makes it up to that wiki page, he will
run away scared :)
1) only one theme is directly mentioned, Silver (Kudos, German!)
2) there is no real "page" about Silver... the link is directly for a
download
3) the rest are just a couple of links to GAP (where the landing page is
also quite incomplete!), etoilé and some SVN links???
4) the real way of changing themes is clear only for people actually
knowing what they are speaking about...
navigating more, goes to this page (even linked in our own wiki):
http://gnustep.blogspot.it/2008/01/system-preferences-and-theme.html
No images at all ;)
This is terrible, IMO. a couple of ideas for our wiki
1) this is the place where to put more screenhots, those that German
likes :) and he is right in this case
2) the page should "cite" other themes with their own WIKI pages, not
direct SVN links or tarballs
3) each major theme should have its own page with a screenshot, release
instructions (akin of our Apps)
4) GAPs page should be updated too, it was a good start.... 3 years ago
though :)
5) changing themes should be shown, through our info-panel per
application and through system-preferences
And of course, if the gnome and windows theme were in better shape they
could be released at leas in a "0.1" stage which could allow for better
screenshots, pages...
Riccardo
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