7 ms·

> It's blatant how UI designers don't give a damn about the users' needs, not even in FOSSland. Especially with this new "don't theme my app" movement. It's r

by treyd 3y ago

> It's blatant how UI designers don't give a damn about the users' needs, not even in FOSSland. Especially with this new "don't theme my app" movement. It's really unfortunate. The issues with CSS stylesheets in GTK should be solved with replacing CSS with a better way to describe styles, not with just throwing it all away and not letting the user set their own themes.

gonzo41 3y ago
There's also the consideration that a decent style sheet can be ~100 - 200 lines long. Yet I see ~5000 line css files that have so much custom formatting for JS frameworks that build everything with divs, rather than using semantic HTML5 which has accessibility baked in.
- MereInterest 3y ago
  It seems like there's two wildly different ways that CSS gets used. In one style, a CSS class is a semantic category of things on the page, and the style sheet defines how it looks. In the other, a CSS class has no semantic meaning, and the style sheet defines a list of options to choose from. It's the difference between `<div class="user-comment>` and `<div class="bg-lt-gray-fg-dark-gray-bold-text">`. The first type of CSS can be written succinctly, but the second cannot.
- airtonix 3y ago
  [dead]
Pannoniae 3y ago
Yup. GNOME/GTK is a lost cause in my eyes. Literally worse UX than Windows. The developers basically say "fuck you" if your use case does not perfectly align with their "vision".
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Honestly I want the app to just set its look exactly. I really don't care if different programs look slightly different as long as its internally consistent in app. What I hate is installing a program that was designed for a KDE distro and because you run gnome all the icons are the same color as the background and alignments on things are whack. Package it all up in a flatpak so it looks and works exactly the same on all distros. One complete and verified experience.
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    "One complete and verified experience." These words sound sickening to me. None of these have anything to do with accessibility, or respecting the user. The user should be in control of his computer. That includes the programs on it. Locking it down so you can have "verified authentic design" is just straight-up user-hostile.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Those words reminded me of Apple's 1984 commercial.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      This is the main reason I switched to MacOS. Was sick of everything on Linux being contentiously broken out of the box with the excuse "Oh you are meant to just configure the icon colours and toolbar padding yourself" The programs can still be open source so you can recompile with whatever look you want, but they should bundle a working experiance by default. But linux users seem more obsessed with curating custom themes over having things actually work.
      - Pannoniae 3y ago
        I shouldn't have to recompile something to customise it. Make the defaults whatever you want sure, but even if you don't provide GUI config, provide an environment variable or a config file. "just recompile it" is incredibly user-hostile.
    - 3y ago
SkiFire13 3y ago
"don't theme my app" is not about users theming their apps, but instead against distros theming by default and more importantly the expectation that you could theme every app with a generic theme.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
  Same difference. If you don’t support theming done by distros, you don’t support theming full stop. I suspect even their attitude towards theming done by end-users is more akin to ‘well sure, if you insist, you have the full source code, I can’t stop you, but you’re on your own’ than considering it a fully supported configuration.
  - hju22_-3 3y ago
    Hard disagree with your first paragraph. An application can have endless customization abilities, but still doesn't need to let the system choose a theme for it to support "full theming" as you put it. There can also be legitimate reasons not to support it. On the top of my head, for example, the default theme being the most tested, etc., etc. In a perfect world, they'd all be tested and well integrated, but there's limited man power going around, and the world isn't perfect. Though I otherwise agree.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. Maybe distros are not doing a good job of this, but that is one thing they have the power to do. QT, GTK2, SDL, wxwidgets, and more toolkits I can't even think of should all fit together on my desktop and look the same. xfce, gnome, and kde all have some nice apps, they should mix and match. This is a HARD problem, but that isn't an excuse to not face it.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. I would reject a distro that did this (unless I could disable it). But users should be able to make everything look the way that works the best for them.

by treyd 3y ago

gonzo41 3y ago

There's also the consideration that a decent style sheet can be ~100 - 200 lines long. Yet I see ~5000 line css files that have so much custom formatting for JS frameworks that build everything with divs, rather than using semantic HTML5 which has accessibility baked in.

MereInterest 3y ago
It seems like there's two wildly different ways that CSS gets used. In one style, a CSS class is a semantic category of things on the page, and the style sheet defines how it looks. In the other, a CSS class has no semantic meaning, and the style sheet defines a list of options to choose from. It's the difference between `<div class="user-comment>` and `<div class="bg-lt-gray-fg-dark-gray-bold-text">`. The first type of CSS can be written succinctly, but the second cannot.
airtonix 3y ago
[dead]

Pannoniae 3y ago

Yup. GNOME/GTK is a lost cause in my eyes. Literally worse UX than Windows. The developers basically say "fuck you" if your use case does not perfectly align with their "vision".

Gigachad 3y ago
Honestly I want the app to just set its look exactly. I really don't care if different programs look slightly different as long as its internally consistent in app. What I hate is installing a program that was designed for a KDE distro and because you run gnome all the icons are the same color as the background and alignments on things are whack. Package it all up in a flatpak so it looks and works exactly the same on all distros. One complete and verified experience.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  "One complete and verified experience." These words sound sickening to me. None of these have anything to do with accessibility, or respecting the user. The user should be in control of his computer. That includes the programs on it. Locking it down so you can have "verified authentic design" is just straight-up user-hostile.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Those words reminded me of Apple's 1984 commercial.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    This is the main reason I switched to MacOS. Was sick of everything on Linux being contentiously broken out of the box with the excuse "Oh you are meant to just configure the icon colours and toolbar padding yourself" The programs can still be open source so you can recompile with whatever look you want, but they should bundle a working experiance by default. But linux users seem more obsessed with curating custom themes over having things actually work.
    - Pannoniae 3y ago
      I shouldn't have to recompile something to customise it. Make the defaults whatever you want sure, but even if you don't provide GUI config, provide an environment variable or a config file. "just recompile it" is incredibly user-hostile.
  - 3y ago

SkiFire13 3y ago

"don't theme my app" is not about users theming their apps, but instead against distros theming by default and more importantly the expectation that you could theme every app with a generic theme.

pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
Same difference. If you don’t support theming done by distros, you don’t support theming full stop. I suspect even their attitude towards theming done by end-users is more akin to ‘well sure, if you insist, you have the full source code, I can’t stop you, but you’re on your own’ than considering it a fully supported configuration.
- hju22_-3 3y ago
  Hard disagree with your first paragraph. An application can have endless customization abilities, but still doesn't need to let the system choose a theme for it to support "full theming" as you put it. There can also be legitimate reasons not to support it. On the top of my head, for example, the default theme being the most tested, etc., etc. In a perfect world, they'd all be tested and well integrated, but there's limited man power going around, and the world isn't perfect. Though I otherwise agree.
bluGill 3y ago
Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. Maybe distros are not doing a good job of this, but that is one thing they have the power to do. QT, GTK2, SDL, wxwidgets, and more toolkits I can't even think of should all fit together on my desktop and look the same. xfce, gnome, and kde all have some nice apps, they should mix and match. This is a HARD problem, but that isn't an excuse to not face it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. I would reject a distro that did this (unless I could disable it). But users should be able to make everything look the way that works the best for them.