Design discussion here

[JosephMcc]

To help avoid a bunch of random threads and help keep things organized, put all design discussion in one place. Don't use this issue for bug reports or problems. Please post separate issues for each bug you encounter.

All ideas are welcome. Not every idea can or will be implemented. Theme styling is subjective and people have a very wide variety of tastes and ideas. We would like the feedback though.

[Redsandro]

Contrast

At first I was worried about the effectiveness of the lack of contrast in mint-y-dark as mentioned in #12. Mint-y-dark is a flat theme, but just as our visual perception of a gradient from black to white is actually non-linear (hello gamma), contrast on a dark theme can be higher for the same visual effect as a light theme.

But the theme works for other settings and the dim contrast might be exactly what people are looking for, so for a more contrasty theme it would be better if we/I/someone would create a custom theme based on mint-y-dark for that purpose.

Contrast on tabs

That said, I do find myself carefully moving my eyes over all Chrome and Terminal tabs to find which is the active one more than usual when trying out this theme. I do want to put forward the idea of making the active tab stand out more, one way or the other.

Overshoot indicator (dashed line)

Since no-more-content in lists is indicated by a green android-esque gradient, should the dashed line that indicates more-content perhaps also be green to signify a visual connection between both indicators?

[ccprog]

I don't understand why Cinnamon uses its own font, and with Futura one that was never meant as a on-screen typeface. Readability is really lacking in my opinion, especially the smaller variants of the dark theme.

Cinamon Calendar: weekday font is definitely too small, week numbers are off for me. (Cinnamon 3.0.5 on LMDE 2, Futura Bk BT is installed. - I know the windows/controls parts are unsuitable here, but the DE part should make no difference.)

[JosephMcc]

@ccprog that's a good point. I didn't realize it was attempting to use Futura which I don't have installed. I feel thats more of a bug and I'll fix that.

[agurenko]

To be honest this particular Calendar applet has same issues with Noto Sans and and Cantarell fonts as well. It's a problem of lack of customization of applet itself, rather than a particular font imo.

[JosephMcc]

The default sans font seems to work well. I removed the use of Futura. I'm not sure the location of the week numbers can be moved in the theme.

@Lord-Phoenix if you discover a problem in the actual applet itself please open an issue on the cinnamon github page. Provide a way to reproduce the issue and maybe a screenshot of what's happening so it can be fixed. If the problem is with the actual applet this isn't really the place.

[agurenko]

@JosephMcc no,no don't get me wrong, it's more like a feature request really. Default sans works, just as well as most of the fonts, but it all depends on a screen resolution & dpi. At FHD on 14" no matter what I try, it's too small to be comfortable, on the other hand, it's just numbers, no integration for events or anything, so at this point, kind of whatever :)

[ourichermath]

I don't know if it's a function of screen resolution, but I think the spacing between the program icons at the left side of the panel is too small (same feeling about Mint-X under 17.x). The default spacing is 1px. That just leaves the icons smashed up right next to each other. A bigger spacing would be nice (I use 5px). From cinnamon.css:

#panel-launchers-box {
padding-left: 7px; }

.panel-launcher {
margin: 1px;
padding: 1px; <====== HERE IT IS
transition-duration: 200; }
.panel-launcher:hover {
border: 0px solid #9ab87c;
border-bottom-width: 1px; }

Apologies if this should be in its own thread.

I find that it is hard to see which button is highlighted on the shutdown menu.

The menu I have in mind is the one that appears when one presses the power button (on a laptop) or selects 'quit' from the MintMenu. The overly subtle highlighting - which does matter because it indicates what will happen if the user presses return - varies with 'Control' theme. With the Mint-Y theme, the highlighting is, to me at least, too subtle.

I would attach a screenshot, but Mint's inbuilt function for that, and indeed a third-party tool that I use, have trouble taking a shot whilst Mint's shutdown dialogue box is open. Still, to reproduce the issue, all ones needs to do is to select the Mint-Y Control theme, then start shutdown, and then move between the buttons with the cursor keys.

Although the highlighting does alter with (at least some) themes, the problem may in part owe to Cinnamon . .

[JosephMcc]

The entire color scheme of Mint-Y is more subtle than that of Mint-X. It's not going to fit everyones taste and is a large part of the reason Mint-X is still there as a choice and a used as the default.

Making this particular bit of highlighting - or all button highlighting, if the change could only be global - slightly more pronounced seem to me to be desirable and simple.

It is desirable, for it would restore some functionality, in that one can now much more easily see what one is doing with the dialogue in question. It is simple, because I imagine (please correct me if I am wrong) that it could be done without altering other aspect of Mint-Y.

Users could avoid the problem by changing to another theme. What, though, if they like Mint-Y in all (or nearly all) other respects? I for one do like it in nearly all other respects.

I would like to add two things - or, rather two questions.

(1) If for reasons I find hard to fathom (why have a highlight that it is very hard to see, and so functions poorly as a highlight?), the highlighting is not going to be changed, could you please help me out by directing me to the part of the theme that codes for this so that I can change it on my own system? Thank you.

(2) Seemingly, in the shutdown dialogue to which I referred before, no button is highlighted by default, even though pressing return will select one of the actions. It seems to be that this should be changed - but where should I report this, please? The Cinnamon bugtracker? EDIT: Ah, this problem is in fact theme specific. It doesn't happen with the theme Mint-X-Blue, for instance . .

[JosephMcc]

(1) needs to be changed in quite a few places to get it matching across all versions of the theme, gtk2, 3, Cinnamon, etc.

(2) This could be improved in the theme