Better “old” 90s design that works than lousy 2020 design that confuses users. Why waste resources trying to redesign something that works when you can redirect those resources to more important things?
Flat doesn’t mean better. I open a Windows 10 menu and I don’t know where to find the things I want to use. And the colours are too vibrant. Its distracting. Ever wondered why older OSes (Windows 9x-2003), Mac os (pre Aqua), BeOS all looked grey and “boring”? Grey is neutral, you stare at it the whole day, you won’t be tired compared to looking at XP Luna. The same reason when I was in a call center working 12 hours a day, I used Windows Classic theme instead of Luna. Spinning bouncing 3d effect contributes 0% to your productivity.The purpose of having a computer is to make your work easier,not make you pull your hair out.
This whole project is a process of bringing back the cool BeOS way back to life. Changing how it looks just for the sake of looking modern, which doesn’t mean better by default, seems unfair.
However, bringing the ability to freely customize the UI by the end user is a legitimate request.
IMHO, the haiku gui is the best of any os that tried (yes better than macos). I would add some features that do not exist today (in a future), such as, shadows in windows and animations (on open/close/minimize/maximized windows) and a better lounchbox with transparency would not be bad. But no more, I love the simplicity, the minimalist and how well used the spaces are.
Dark Theme and accent color are already there… you just have to put everything in a box to make it easier to use for a newcomer user.
If anyone knows how to get window transparency to work without a big overhaul that would be great - and I would be able to use it for my HiQDock (would have to be supported in Qt as well, but that already has a window transparency flag for window background if the host OS supports it)
see: How to transform the app_server code to use compositing | Haiku Project
I love Haiku’s minimal, throwback interface because it recreates the BeOS experience perfectly. In my opinion, changing it would defeat the purpose of the project. While I agree that a dark theme would be a nice addition, I don’t think a complete UI overhaul is necessary. Instead, the development team should focus on fixing bugs and improving Haiku’s features. Making a new UI would take too much time and could potentially make the user experience worse. Overall, I think Haiku is already great as it is, and small improvements like a dark theme would be enough to keep it modern but that’s my personal opinion.
This is correct.
Being exposed to colorized light will change your eyes perception of color. If the colors displayed on the monitor is to correspond with the end product, the color of the light in the room needs to be known and the monitor calibrated thereafter. This is standard procedure in desktop publishing.
In order to not change the eyes perception of color, the monitor UI needs to have neutral colors. Haiku uses RGB(216,216,216) as panel background color which is neutral to the eyes. Classic Mac OS (“System”) was color neutral but “modern” operating systems are not. Haiku has the edge here in being mostly color neutral. This means that a calibrated monitor running Haiku will produce a more color correct end product than the “modern” operating systems out there.
Mac OS X used to be pretty color neutral but Apple is working overtime turning a pretty perfect product into shit, probably so they can claim new functionality in order to make their users upgrade to the latest version. Those of us who refuse to upgrade will be forced to upgrade by planned obsolescence, or abandon the products. What makes “modern” operating systems “modern” is not because of good practice, it is pure (evil) business. Haiku needs to do everything to avoid following these practices.
My 2 cents is on keeping Haiku as is and let the users that wants “modern” eye candy change the theming. That is the sensible default route.