i have seen some really cool mockups and heard some really cool suggestions and the comments from the developers have all pointed towards keeping it exactly the same as it is now. while i don’t think its a bad idea, i just think its a boring one. i feel that the theme should stay the same as its specifically haiku, but us users should have multiple theming capabilities to make our os truly ours. i know that when i had vista i had purple windows, a slideshow background, custom cursors, and custom ui sounds, and now that i have windows seven i have all similar things, but seven has an easier user interface for theming, and my friend victor is always showing me is new theme or background or something with his xp. i know that the devs are cutting back on creating “modern” windows animations and theming capabilities due because they have more important things to do, but i think they should at least implement them in the os along with similar theming capabilities such as those in win or mac. i think this is a great idea but i do see why they want to keep it the way it is now so i propose that if they do listen to me and those like me that want a fully customizable os with great windows animations and transition effects, they can implement them, but have them disabled/turned off as a default so it is just the haiku theme in the beginning, just the way it is now, but allow us to customize our os and save different themes, also i think they could also have some default themes mimicking those of the default win7 and mac osx just to show off what they can do with themes.
While I concur that skinning or themes are a cool idea, at this Alpha stage it really doesn’t strike as a priority when there’s so much ground to cover. So for the time being we should let the current theme stay as is and maybe if you feel up to it later you can launch a project that gathers a team to tweak and improve Haiku’s UI or offer help in that front.
i completely agree with you
this is just something id love to see and believe would be essential to having a user friendly os
but yeah its definitely something thats for a final release not an alpha
maybe we could see something in a beta though
You can already change the color scheme and background. Which is about all you can do in Windows (without resorting to hacked themes.) Now, I would support built in and installable color schemes, so that I don’t have to figure out what colors go well together, but further control shouldn’t be the priority of the developers. Haiku needs its own identity and allowing people to copy Windows or Mac OSX is pointless (not to mention the fact that both OS’s window managers are less functional than Haiku’s.)
i know its not the developers priority, but its a much talked about per that i thought id bring up here, definitely for a final release
btw which win os are you running, win 7 has transparent window borders and headers, dynamic color scheming, and support for both current and classic windows which pretty much doubles your theming capabilities,
also i was reading another thread where a dev was talking about windows animations and transitions effects similar to windows that he has already worked on but put on the backburner until further development
but yeah definitely for final release
repeat i consider this only for final release im not suggesting this for the current alpha releases
The developers plan to rework the “window manager” in order to incorporate the “Stack and Tile” stuff. The required cleanup, should open the way for theming capabilities.
Regards
PS:
Here is the “Stack and Tile” in action.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~lutteroth/videos/stack-and-tile.html
a mailing list about it
and the code in the Haiku’s repository !
http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/haiku/haiku/branches/features/
I’ve used Windows 7. Transparency is not a different theme and counting the classic or basic theme as evidence of theming capability is a little off. Classic and basic are there for those who don’t have strong hardware or who can’t deal with the new look; they don’t add much or anything to the OS’s themeing ability. Which is not to say that Windows couldn’t have what I would call proper theming, all you have to do is hack uxtheme.dll and you can get custom themes that look like just about anything.
My real issue is just that you would suggest theming Haiku to look like Windows or OSX, this is my problem, not theming in general. The other reason why I’m hesitant to have theming easily accesible is that there are lots of really horrible themes for the *nix WMs, gtk, qt, etc. and they make me wonder how someone can look at them without tearing their eyes out.
As is, I wouldn’t be against having a color manager with scheme support. Nor would I be against small amounts of widget retheming or deskbar themes. As for transparency, I think it’s best left out. You cannot improve a UI by hidding it. Shadows are okay though.
Theming SOUNDS like a good idea at first (as an artist it appeals to me) but as an artist who uses their computer in their process I should add that functionality should come first IMHO.
Colors and background are already available for customization at this stage that is enough with one possible exception which the (essentially identical to BeOS) tab shape which I have commented on here : http://www.haiku-os.org/community/forum/contemporary_tabs.
one element of which seems to me could use a few more options is “tab position”. I do find myself wanting to move it to the left side of the window since on most modern screens there is more screen space horizontally than vertically and it is simply a better use of that space for my own purposes.
Tab position variability in my estimation would be a rudimentary feature which would greatly increase user specific usability.
My two cents 