Short White Plank Theme Doesn't Work Well

IMHO consistency with Slingshot doesn't really work here because:
1) Indicators are now in popovers too, so we're consistent with all of them and nothing in particular
2) The white bar not completely covering the icons just doesn't ring the Slingshot bell or even remind me of indicators because they all fit their content into the background

Of course we need to push consistency, but this just looks insufficient to me now. I'd prefer something along the lines of http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-puB3Stk1_t0/T3KGsJizW6I/AAAAAAAAA0A/goPzbEc3CWY/s1600/true-app-center.png

Another problem I've discovered with the white theme is the fact that some foreign icons have shadows which are of course invisible on a dark dock and therefore the dock always looks flat. However, shadows are visible on the white dock and combined with same flat borders they just don't feel right. I'm attaching a screenshot showing that.

I agree about contrast; now it's definitely harder to tell what belongs to window content and what belongs to the dock. Especially so since window content tends to be bright/white (that's why we have a dark cursor).

Also, with a white dock a dark wingpanel is not visually supported by anything. Making it the only dark patch on the desktop is not a good idea.

So I'm also leaning towards fixing the dark theme instead of working on this white one.

Hey, I like this new theme! Is way better than old one! I think old Plank theme looks very "gloomy" and "heavy". Now it looks very, very good :) +100 from me for this change :)

Okay here we go haha

1. The problem is that Wingpanel is full-width and Plank is not. Since wingpanel stretches the full width of the desktop, it shouldn't contribute to weight it all. It should feel like a part of the bezel and that the screen is simply shorter because of it.

2. but Plank isn't always visible. It hides on maximize. Which makes more sense with the more-typically-transient white style of menus, popovers, and dialogs.

3a. Icons in the set are drawn on a white bg and meant to viewed on lighter backgrounds. A lot of icons look like total shit on a black background because their borders were just not meant to be displayed that way.

3b. This dock is actually much shorter than the old black dock. So, the issue of potentially overlapping windows should be much-reduced.

3c. I don't want the icons to stand out. The shell should fade into the background when you're not looking for it. That's why wingpanel is black, to fade into the display bezel, and this white dock fades into the wallpaper and doesn't contrast or fight for attention with the more important things: the apps.

4. I dunno if 1 release is considered "always". If you want to get technical about it, the very first elementary dock was matte white. Not a strong argument either way IMO.

5. Let it grow on them. When Robert first tried his half-dock Plank theme I too was kinda meh about it. But after you use it for a while, you like it and everything else feels bulky. There's no faux-3d intention at all. It's just shorter and less intrusive.

6. Haha, don't feed the trolls.

7. Like Adrian said, the old dock is heavy and gloomy. It's bulky and it makes the desktop feel smaller. That's the #1 thing I hate about Ubuntu defaults is that is makes the display feel smaller. This lighter slimmer design opens up the desktop more.

8. (this one's for Sergey) A low-contrast and slim dock makes for less of a "context-change" when we hide-on-maximize (OH DAMN. NO HE DIDN'T JUST DO THAT)

So to recap:

1. The Shell shouldn't attract attention.
a. Full-width wingpanel is black to fade into the bezel. non-full-width Plank is white to fade into the wallpaper and apps.
b. Less height means less intrusion into working space and takes away less from the wallpaper.

2. Display icons how they were designed. Notice everywhere that icons are displayed it's on a light background.

3. Don't feed the trolls.

4. Any change is uncomfortable at first and someone will always complain about it.

I guess we should keep this a wait-and-see/opinion.

1.Regarding the weight, WingPanel definitely contributes to the weight of the display. Just like how artwork is framed with a matte, the desktop is framed by the combination of the display bezel and WingPanel (which adds weight to the top). Not having an anchor point at the bottom makes it feel top-heavy which I think is why it feels so off to me.

2. It's always visible unless a user explicitly hides it by maximizing, and even then it's still there (just hiding). If it were transient, we'd do the opposite; always hidden unless explicitly called up.

3a. Icon bug? ;) To be honest, would it be possible to do the same thing as window borders where we draw them as semi-transparent so they're more adaptive?

3b. Except that when an app is maximized there is the exact same chance of it overlapping (100%). Having the half width just clutters things IMHO.

3c. Should've phrased that better. No, the icons shouldn't stand out on their own, but they need to be distinguishable. Also, I don't think a stark white bar fades into much of anything.

4. We've always had it that way for our official releases. ;) Obviously something made it change from using a light dock to a dark one for the release.

5. For sure people will complain, but this has been less, "boo hiss it's different" and more, "what the fuck it's completely broken."

6. As far as trolls go, I'm not feeding them; I'm managing realistic expectations. We *will* get shit for it. And if that was the only complaint, I would be fine (fuck the trolls). But the fact that there are the other issues in addition to it make me second-guess it.

Also, it's impossible to tell if an application is launched or if it isn't. There's no difference between a running application and favorited item using the new theme.

Agree with Kenneth and think u all have some good points. Anyway I still prefer a shorter dark theme

If Wingpanel is supposed to be embedded in the chassis, why don't we make dock do the same for consistency?
Mockups attached, I still owe you some comments on them though.

Ok sergey, I don't like the two panels choice and that's why:

It's basically what DanRabbit said in point 7. Two panels imprison the desktop making the display feel smaller. Like Rabbit that's the #1 thing I hate more about Unity. Two solid panel makes the desktop lose the feeling of openness. The dock like Mac or elementary (hehe troll, cassidy fed me) looks like a suspended platform that give u access to a wide view, with open space on the sides.
I could add other points, but my english is bad so that's it. Hope you understand what I mean.

Vero, your English is pretty good. And i agree with everything that's in the post, it's not better than the old theme at all. The black OS X Tiger-like dock is the way to go.

http://shnatsel.blogspot.com/2012/07/application-dock-for-2010s.html
I'll just leave this here.

How about making the old theme just a bit lighter and more transparent?
At least that's what I do. I use plank with the old pantheon theme modified with this: FillStartColor=51;;51;;51;;169/FillEndColor=51;;51;;51;;169 (and less padding)

CruelAngel: could you post a screenshot?
I agree the old theme has ugly horizontal padding, but it should be a fairly easy fix.

I am for the white one.The only complaint is, all minimized apps should have shadows shown all the time rather than currently opened one only.Also a little darker shadows would be better.

Just improve the previous one. Problem fixed.

Let's target this until Luna Beta2, so we have time to do two things:

1. Get used to the change. Any change needs time to see if it's something we can get used to or if it's really a bad idea.

2. Get wider user feedback. The opinions I'm really interested in hearing are ones that aren't super used to how the dock behaves in Jupiter and previous Luna builds.

Kind of late on this but I got a chance to try it and my take on it is that the look is cleaner and nice looking and contributes to a better looking desktop. However the indicators are a major problem. A minimized or even app that is currently not being used has no indicator so you can't tell if something is currently open. I don't feel that one should have to remember or guess if an application is still open.

I agree the current theme hinders usability. I'd suggest considering the following:
1. Way too often, icons don't show well against high-frequency wallpapers (e.g. photographs). Also, they don't show well against maximized windows which quite often have a fair amount of detail neighboring the launcher icons.
2. I also find the lack of indication of running apps inconvenient. I find myself too often having to do extra clicks to find out if I have some apps running (e.g. IM client). IMHO, hovering should suffice.
3. In addition, I don't see much value on the current bottom highlight that seems to indicate the app with current focus. plus, the highlight has rather limited contrast against the current Plank theme for gray-toned icons which are common (e.g. switchboard, scratch, calculator, gnome screen, ).

In my desktop I use a custom theme based on the new Pantheon theme but smaller and the same color as Wingpanel (0;;0;;0;;178,5) and with LineWidth=0.
I like the new theme, with it everything fit's better.

Luxie, this is very good.

Could you make a white thin border? Like the one on the old plank theme.

I'm not sure, Plank theming is a bit strange, but I think is better for consistency the themes I made, they look like wingpanel.

After using it for a while I have to agree with the points Cassidy raises. When the dock overlays a webpage it looks really confusing. I honestly think that Luxie's iteration of it or something akin to how the first themes for plank were worked better for it.

The white, to me, is actually quite distracting as it is one of the brightest points on the screen.

Copied from another bug

"The discussion started here but i was told to open a new bug:
https://answers.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+question/208845

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I really think there should be some changes before luna will be available.
Currently it is really really hard to see what apps are open ( or active). Please change the theme in a way that you can see:

1. Which is the currently selected application (the shine currently implemented is barely visible)
2. Add an indicator which apps are running (and maybe how many)

Sure you can change all of that by yourself but thats not the point. Luna is about "out of the box", right?

Thx, i hope this is the right way to add my opinion. :)

A fix for 1. would be:
"I think we should change the IndicatorSize to 3 or similiar, because the indicators looks quite good and are useful. With that change we can fulfill point 2 of Andy's (sxxe) comment simply." posted by Raphael Isemann (teemperor)

A fix for 2. would be:
"It seems like the notification color is based on the icon color and most of the time plank picks the wrong color what results in the current situation. I would suggest a unique color for all icons or a better color picker algorithm. Anyway, i think even on the orange icons, where you can see the indicator, it is to subtle and barely noticeable.""

I think the best Plank theme should be like the one from my attachment, the only problem is that is very OS X Tiger-like.
The dock should be white, because the icons look bad in a dark background.

After using this theme for a good 1/3 year, it doesn't really bother me as much. ;) I have a few notes of things I like about the current theme:

1. It makes the apps feel more open.
2. It looks _really_ nice with the translucency we've been subtly adding to app icons (that video player looks damn gorgeous).
3. It still visually balances/grounds the desktop, it's just not as heavy.

I'm not opposed to tweaking it, I just don't think it's as big of a deal as we'd been making it. Still looking forward to more feedback, though.

Here's what I think:

1) Icons were drawn on a white background, so they would naturally look good on a white background. With a dark dock the icons will look terrible.

2) The shorter dock makes the icons feel a lot more spacious. In a "normal" dock where the background is taller than the icons, the icons feel very closed in and cramped, and it doesn't look good. And increasing the padding to fix that problem would just make it a very big dock. We want to desktop to be minimal.

3) The reveal animation is a lot more subtle with a shorter dock. With a full dock you have this huge thing dashing in from the bottom but with the short dock it just subtly appears.

4) Running indicators. Personally I don't really care if an app is running or not, and I don't multitask enough that I forget if an app is running.

I'm agree with you, Cassidy and Harvey, the actual theme it's awesome when you use it for a while, the big problem comes when you use some apps, because you don't know which are opened. It forces me to use Super + A to know wich apps are opened.
Why don't think in a kind of indicator? I'm not talking about the dots at the bottom of icons, why don't you try to make the dock colour change, like the one to indicate the last used app, but used for every running app?

I'm going to post a screenshot of what I want to say, because it's difficult to explain.