7 ms·

I can't be the only one that dislikes KDE's typography. I see that notification pane and aside from color, nothing gives it typographical hierarchy. It just lo

I can't be the only one that dislikes KDE's typography. I see that notification pane and aside from color, nothing gives it typographical hierarchy. It just looks odd to me.

dqybh 7y ago
No hierarchy, bad sizes, bad padding, no different colours, etc etc. It's just terrible design, as I've said in another comment which has been promptly flagged. Seems like the only proper criticism is to write the code myself to fix it? Because I'm passing, I don't use KDE, and I don't need to write code to see when a design is amateurish.
geolgau 7y ago
I don't know what theme he was using but my setup looks so much nicer. It depends a lot on the theme, font choice and rendering.
jimbo1qaz 7y ago
Maybe the notification heading should be bigger and/or bold? IDK about the app title.
sdegutis 7y ago
All the UI and UX in general looks like it's from 2007. I know that it's volunteer work and I don't want to downplay the generosity of those who contributed to it, but I do wonder what's causing the delay in catching up to modern aesthetics. Is it a technical issue? Is there too much bureaucracy to overcome? Is there a shortage of UI and UX developers?
- Narishma 7y ago
  To each his own, I guess. I find modern aesthetics to be a downgrade for the most part from what we had at the turn of the century.
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    Personally I prefer Windows 95-98 era UI/UX, it was the right balance between pretty and useful. Too bad those days are over.
- orbifold 7y ago
  Basically creative people by and large never subscribed to the idea that they should give away their creativity for free. So all the talented designers are employed and happily working on paid projects, especially less established ones get approached with ridiculous low offers all the time. In short outside of the bizarre software/tech world very few subscribe to the idea that intellectual property should be shared and used freely.
  - oblio 7y ago
    You don't really debug a painting. That's why Open Source is big and Open Art isn't (to my knowledge)
    - jancsika 7y ago
      I'd bet that isn't true and that plenty of artists can and do peruse places like deviantart and quickly improve upon someone else's images. But design for a GUI is more like industrial design. Getting a designer to help improve KDE's look-and-feel would be like squatters in a dilapidated hotel convincing an interior decorator to spruce the place up for fun. Actually, that sounds like it would be a blast. Perhaps open source people are simply terrible at marketing.
- arendtio 7y ago
  Actually, there are many things I like a lot better about the 2007ish KDE/Oxygen/Breeze style than about more modern approaches like for example Windows 10. I am not saying it is perfect, it is not, but especially in design terms, 'newer' isn't always better. And in general, I like KDE look very much.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    I agree with you that newer interfaces (Windows 10 in particular) are mostly not very good. But I wouldn't say personally that KDE is a good example of 2000s era design. I think Gnome 2 was the absolute pinnacle of PC GUI design, actually. Having instantaneous access to Applications / Places / System (with text labels!) makes so much sense; it's one of the few desktop environments that pretty much any competent computer user could sit down at and immediately use. Actually, I have my KDE set up to be an approximation of Gnome 2 with a few tweaks that work better for me, but I'm not under any impression that it approaches the immediate usability of Gnome 2. It even looked nice! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Ubuntu_8.04_Live_CD.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Ubuntu_8...
    - mort96 7y ago
      > Having instantaneous access to Applications / Places / System (with text labels!) makes so much sense I don't really get that. I suppose I've just never gotten used to it, but I just find that typing the name of the application is so much easier and faster. If I know I want to e.g launch Nautilus, why would I first spend time thinking about whether it's a "place" or an "application" or a part of the "system"? Is my text editor an "educational" program or an "office" program or an "accessory"? Or maybe _that_ is a "system" tool? I'm actually genuinely curious about this; how is it better to mouse through hierarchical categories and look for an application, instead of just hitting super and typing the first couple of characters? Especially something like KDE's start menu, where you can hit super and start typing, or hit super (or click the icon) and mouse through similar categories to not lose the discoverability benefits of categories.
      - 7y ago
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > All the UI and UX in general looks like it's from 2007. Yeah. That probably KDE's most compelling feature.
tylerjwilk00 7y ago
This has always been the problem with KDE and the reason I can not switch. KDE UI never gets Typography, spacing/padding, or alignment correct. It's a shame because they are so close on most other criteria.
- simion314 7y ago
  KDE let's me setup myy font sizes, I always use huge fonts and I hate with a passion when devs pixel allign things and break the GUI when I use larger fonts. I also get exasperated when I get asked to pixel perfect align checkboxes and the labels in web pages, each browser has different checkbox dimensions and styles, and aligning them how the designer wants means a lot of extra styling that will break on users that don't use the defaults(but the designerr wants his pixel aligned stuff on his Mac screen... also rewording messages to align in message boxes or labels
- solarkraft 7y ago
  I agree. That said I switched to KDE a few weeks ago and turned into a fan boy during the configuration process. I'm very happy with my current configuration (probably a mix of it actually being good and the Ikea effect). I love that you can just configure almost anything almost exactly to your liking with not all that much effort. I'm not a huge fan of the default configuration, but the ability to completely change it (with the many panel options) is just amazing (kind of contrary to GNOME). I think I have figured out at least part of the reason for the spacings always feeling just a bit (or very) off (although I think it's bearable with my theme): Their Kirigami design support library has a set of pre defined spacings and sizes developers are advised to rigidly stick to. These probably break down in many contexts and might not even be chosen well in the first place. Another reason might be that KDE doesn't have a design group that is as strong as Gnome's and KDE might not be organized top-down as much (which is probably related to financing). I think you can fix or mitigate well a lot of the mistakes (Qt is great) by using a good Qt curve theme.
  - noahadavis 7y ago
    You're correct that KDE's design group isn't organized from the top down. While that might be a problem for a company, I think it's actually a good thing for a community of volunteers because communities need to grow. Everyone has their own lives outside of the work they do for KDE, so it's important that the work load is spread across many people. Anyone can start start designing for KDE, you just need to talk to other KDE designers and submit patches. I am a fairly new KDE designer who started contributing icons in the spring of 2018 because it was easy and fun.
brmgb 7y ago
You are not alone. Typography is questionable but the worst parts are padding and alignment. I have to apologize in advance because it's going to sound like a harsh comment and I know this is volunteer work. I really think that KDE is technically very good. The amount of basic design mistakes however is just unbearable as far as I am concerned. I mean, let's take a look at this improved notification panel. The closing and setting icons seem slightly lower than the icon on the left of the title. The large hamburger menu icon is actually two pixels on the left of the closing icon. There are 17 pixels of top padding but only 12 pixels of left padding. The large image is one pixel of center (232 pixels on the left, 230 on the right). Every single line of text has a different interline. And it's same for every application of KDE. They really need a design team to polish it up.
- magduf 7y ago
  Yeah, this is the real tragedy of KDE, and it's been like this forever: technically, it's fantastic, but the design and polish are really lacking. Instead, all the people good at visual design are working on Gnome, which has technical underpinnings that are crap by comparison.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    GNOME does terrible waste of screen real estate so if those "people good at visual design" are responsible for that, i'd rather them stay in GNOME instead of infecting other desktop environments.
    - asark 7y ago
      Design quality for a UI, ordered easiest to hardest: 1) Information dense 2) Looks good in screenshots 3) Information dense and easy to use 4) Information dense and easy to use and looks good in screenshots An awful lot of designers stop at 2 because a 4 is way harder to achieve, yet a 2's pretty easy to sell (to "stakeholders"). The result is at least sometimes (sometimes) better than a 1. They may also drop a 3 to a 2, though, and it's really hard to later turn a 2 into a 3 (since it's "uglier", so harder to sell) and a 2 is so different in character from a 4 that it can't even really be considered progress toward it (a 3 might be).
nbabitskiy 7y ago
I never could use KDE, because it systematically mistreats words. It's not only typography (few WMs get it right, tbh), but as a language user, I feel uneasy everytime I have to use "Konsole" or "Konqueror".

I can't be the only one that dislikes KDE's typography. I see that notification pane and aside from color, nothing gives it typographical hierarchy. It just looks odd to me.

dqybh 7y ago

No hierarchy, bad sizes, bad padding, no different colours, etc etc. It's just terrible design, as I've said in another comment which has been promptly flagged. Seems like the only proper criticism is to write the code myself to fix it? Because I'm passing, I don't use KDE, and I don't need to write code to see when a design is amateurish.

geolgau 7y ago

I don't know what theme he was using but my setup looks so much nicer. It depends a lot on the theme, font choice and rendering.

jimbo1qaz 7y ago

Maybe the notification heading should be bigger and/or bold? IDK about the app title.

sdegutis 7y ago

All the UI and UX in general looks like it's from 2007. I know that it's volunteer work and I don't want to downplay the generosity of those who contributed to it, but I do wonder what's causing the delay in catching up to modern aesthetics. Is it a technical issue? Is there too much bureaucracy to overcome? Is there a shortage of UI and UX developers?

Narishma 7y ago
To each his own, I guess. I find modern aesthetics to be a downgrade for the most part from what we had at the turn of the century.
- sdegutis 7y ago
  Personally I prefer Windows 95-98 era UI/UX, it was the right balance between pretty and useful. Too bad those days are over.
orbifold 7y ago
Basically creative people by and large never subscribed to the idea that they should give away their creativity for free. So all the talented designers are employed and happily working on paid projects, especially less established ones get approached with ridiculous low offers all the time. In short outside of the bizarre software/tech world very few subscribe to the idea that intellectual property should be shared and used freely.
- oblio 7y ago
  You don't really debug a painting. That's why Open Source is big and Open Art isn't (to my knowledge)
  - jancsika 7y ago
    I'd bet that isn't true and that plenty of artists can and do peruse places like deviantart and quickly improve upon someone else's images. But design for a GUI is more like industrial design. Getting a designer to help improve KDE's look-and-feel would be like squatters in a dilapidated hotel convincing an interior decorator to spruce the place up for fun. Actually, that sounds like it would be a blast. Perhaps open source people are simply terrible at marketing.
arendtio 7y ago
Actually, there are many things I like a lot better about the 2007ish KDE/Oxygen/Breeze style than about more modern approaches like for example Windows 10. I am not saying it is perfect, it is not, but especially in design terms, 'newer' isn't always better. And in general, I like KDE look very much.
- bscphil 7y ago
  I agree with you that newer interfaces (Windows 10 in particular) are mostly not very good. But I wouldn't say personally that KDE is a good example of 2000s era design. I think Gnome 2 was the absolute pinnacle of PC GUI design, actually. Having instantaneous access to Applications / Places / System (with text labels!) makes so much sense; it's one of the few desktop environments that pretty much any competent computer user could sit down at and immediately use. Actually, I have my KDE set up to be an approximation of Gnome 2 with a few tweaks that work better for me, but I'm not under any impression that it approaches the immediate usability of Gnome 2. It even looked nice! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Ubuntu_8.04_Live_CD.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Ubuntu_8...
  - mort96 7y ago
    > Having instantaneous access to Applications / Places / System (with text labels!) makes so much sense I don't really get that. I suppose I've just never gotten used to it, but I just find that typing the name of the application is so much easier and faster. If I know I want to e.g launch Nautilus, why would I first spend time thinking about whether it's a "place" or an "application" or a part of the "system"? Is my text editor an "educational" program or an "office" program or an "accessory"? Or maybe _that_ is a "system" tool? I'm actually genuinely curious about this; how is it better to mouse through hierarchical categories and look for an application, instead of just hitting super and typing the first couple of characters? Especially something like KDE's start menu, where you can hit super and start typing, or hit super (or click the icon) and mouse through similar categories to not lose the discoverability benefits of categories.
    - 7y ago
marcosdumay 7y ago
> All the UI and UX in general looks like it's from 2007. Yeah. That probably KDE's most compelling feature.

tylerjwilk00 7y ago

This has always been the problem with KDE and the reason I can not switch. KDE UI never gets Typography, spacing/padding, or alignment correct. It's a shame because they are so close on most other criteria.

simion314 7y ago
KDE let's me setup myy font sizes, I always use huge fonts and I hate with a passion when devs pixel allign things and break the GUI when I use larger fonts. I also get exasperated when I get asked to pixel perfect align checkboxes and the labels in web pages, each browser has different checkbox dimensions and styles, and aligning them how the designer wants means a lot of extra styling that will break on users that don't use the defaults(but the designerr wants his pixel aligned stuff on his Mac screen... also rewording messages to align in message boxes or labels
solarkraft 7y ago
I agree. That said I switched to KDE a few weeks ago and turned into a fan boy during the configuration process. I'm very happy with my current configuration (probably a mix of it actually being good and the Ikea effect). I love that you can just configure almost anything almost exactly to your liking with not all that much effort. I'm not a huge fan of the default configuration, but the ability to completely change it (with the many panel options) is just amazing (kind of contrary to GNOME). I think I have figured out at least part of the reason for the spacings always feeling just a bit (or very) off (although I think it's bearable with my theme): Their Kirigami design support library has a set of pre defined spacings and sizes developers are advised to rigidly stick to. These probably break down in many contexts and might not even be chosen well in the first place. Another reason might be that KDE doesn't have a design group that is as strong as Gnome's and KDE might not be organized top-down as much (which is probably related to financing). I think you can fix or mitigate well a lot of the mistakes (Qt is great) by using a good Qt curve theme.
- noahadavis 7y ago
  You're correct that KDE's design group isn't organized from the top down. While that might be a problem for a company, I think it's actually a good thing for a community of volunteers because communities need to grow. Everyone has their own lives outside of the work they do for KDE, so it's important that the work load is spread across many people. Anyone can start start designing for KDE, you just need to talk to other KDE designers and submit patches. I am a fairly new KDE designer who started contributing icons in the spring of 2018 because it was easy and fun.

brmgb 7y ago

You are not alone. Typography is questionable but the worst parts are padding and alignment. I have to apologize in advance because it's going to sound like a harsh comment and I know this is volunteer work. I really think that KDE is technically very good. The amount of basic design mistakes however is just unbearable as far as I am concerned. I mean, let's take a look at this improved notification panel. The closing and setting icons seem slightly lower than the icon on the left of the title. The large hamburger menu icon is actually two pixels on the left of the closing icon. There are 17 pixels of top padding but only 12 pixels of left padding. The large image is one pixel of center (232 pixels on the left, 230 on the right). Every single line of text has a different interline. And it's same for every application of KDE. They really need a design team to polish it up.

magduf 7y ago
Yeah, this is the real tragedy of KDE, and it's been like this forever: technically, it's fantastic, but the design and polish are really lacking. Instead, all the people good at visual design are working on Gnome, which has technical underpinnings that are crap by comparison.
- Crinus 7y ago
  GNOME does terrible waste of screen real estate so if those "people good at visual design" are responsible for that, i'd rather them stay in GNOME instead of infecting other desktop environments.
  - asark 7y ago
    Design quality for a UI, ordered easiest to hardest: 1) Information dense 2) Looks good in screenshots 3) Information dense and easy to use 4) Information dense and easy to use and looks good in screenshots An awful lot of designers stop at 2 because a 4 is way harder to achieve, yet a 2's pretty easy to sell (to "stakeholders"). The result is at least sometimes (sometimes) better than a 1. They may also drop a 3 to a 2, though, and it's really hard to later turn a 2 into a 3 (since it's "uglier", so harder to sell) and a 2 is so different in character from a 4 that it can't even really be considered progress toward it (a 3 might be).

nbabitskiy 7y ago

I never could use KDE, because it systematically mistreats words. It's not only typography (few WMs get it right, tbh), but as a language user, I feel uneasy everytime I have to use "Konsole" or "Konqueror".