[876] in athena10
Re: ATN-4: Prettier greeter: jdreed did a mock-up.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Wed Jan 21 23:09:19 2009
Cc: wdc@mit.edu, Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>, athena10@mit.edu
Message-Id: <6C84F8E9-B9ED-46FE-9DFE-0B4A753A4C72@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Geoffrey Thomas <geofft@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0901212201190.1055@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:08:21 -0500
It's worth nothing that this was on the agenda for release team today,
and we decided to go with Friday's mockup (screenshot-alt.png in
Jira), at least for now. That having been said, I will preview one
more mockup tomorrow. In addition I think we can probably tweak the
login screen between now and June.
> Hm, maybe I'm biased here, but I don't really see the advantage over
> the present theme. It keeps the same garish giant red background
> (which will only be more imposing on widescreen cluster machines),
> although I do like punting the other UI elements from the center.
> I'm also not a huge fan of the gradient and the fuzziness around it.
The present theme was a good choice for Debathena, because it made it
look less intimidating and more familiar to Athena 9 users. However,
it was decided that we want to make Athena 10 more visually distinct
from Athena 9, and move away from the xdm/xlogin look and feel.
As for the gradient, I have created one more mockup with the gradient,
but no feathering ("blurring"). I will post a screenshot of it
tomorrow morning, since gdmflexiserver apparently fails miserably over
both remote X11 sessions and VNC.
> I'd be interested to see some texture or full-screen abstract design
> in the background.
So would I. Someone should design one, preferably an SVG, so we don't
constrain ourselves to one resolution or aspect ratio.
> The bar at the bottom with buttons and icons at the bottom and a
> date in the bottom right has a too-strong resemblance to gnome-panel
> or somesuch.
And as such provides a natural place on the screen where users might
look for widgets, such as the Session and Actions buttons.
> I do agree with comments elsewhere in the thread concurring with the
> move to Gtk-native or at least non-flat buttons; my design
> explicitly aped Athena 9's login screen and the website's color and
> font scheme, and didn't try to be visually appealing in its own right.
Noted. The design of a new theme arose out of a desire to make Athena
10 visually different from Athena 9, and is not intended to be a
criticism of your theme.
-Jon
