I thought the earlier Ambrosia screenshots showed promise.
Some number of years ago, a startup called 280 North created two noteworthy
applications: a slideshow creator and an Interface Builder clone called
Atlas.
(They also released the Cappuccino framework, which was basically a Cocoa
clone for browser-based apps. Tracking down the Atlas demo videos are well
worth the time.)
They were eventually acquired, but the Atlas codebase unfortunately never
open-sourced, and then it disappeared. However, Cappuccino is still around
and has always been LGPL.
Before the acquisition, they'd used some of their startup funding to
contract
with a professional design agency to create a theme for Cappuccino called
Aristo.
- <https://www.cappuccino.dev/aristo/>
- <https://github.com/cappuccino/aristo>
I heartily recommend that you take wholesale from Aristo and make it the
default theme for Ambrosia (even if you yourself don't find it to your taste
and configure your personal machine to something more in line with the
screenshot you've included here). One of the biggest factors in getting
people to be excited about a project like GNUStep/Ambrosia and a willingness
to try it is providing an immediately attractive and accessible
out-of-the-box
experience.
Xamarin also paid for an overhaul of MonoDevelop that resulted in a new
theme
before they were acquired Microsoft. I suggest borrowing from that
work, too,
to fill in the gaps (e.g. use the original iconset that the MonoDevelop
theme
used before they switched to flat UI).
--
Colby Russell
