New Unity Feature

[Jan Veteran]

That's your opinion, let me have mine. I'm finding Windows Aero very distractive and in your face. I absolutely hate the thick borders around everything and space it wastes.

Yeah the thick borders are disgusting, but a border-less design would simply not work with Aero.

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It seems most OSs are being inspired by Mac OS X, which certainly isn't a bad thing.

[.Neo]

Yeah the thick borders are disgusting, but a border-less design would simply not work with Aero.

There's no reason why the borders need to be that thick either. I know you can reduce them but it makes the window corners look weird. I posted a screen shot on Neowin a while ago comparing a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Finder window to a Windows 7 Windows Explorer window. The amount of space being wasted in the latter is insane and it made my former 24-inch LED Cinema Display look small. Let alone when using Windows 7 on a netbook or laptop.

I for one prefer the minimalist and space saving design Mac OS X and Ubuntu follows.

[Syanide]

Well, even Microsoft is realizing what a bling bling and not much more Aero was. Anywho, I really like how maximized apps look like in Ubuntu now, Ambiance theme proved to be a good choice. Great contrast:

Feels like your're in full screen mode, panels don't steal focus and there's almost no wasted space (not talking about Banshee per se). I also remember talks of introducing a hover statusbar to all GTK apps, wonder what happened with that.

[.Neo]

I like that concept. Where has the menu bar gone to though?

[Bengal34]

That's your opinion, let me have mine. I'm finding Windows Aero very distractive and in your face compared to Mac OS X (Snow) Leopard / Mac OS X Lion and Ubuntu. I absolutely hate the thick borders around everything, the space it wastes and pop-up balloons and borders everywhere.

The border thickness is adjustable. If you crank the setting down to zero it's only four pixels.

[.Neo]

The border thickness is adjustable. If you crank the setting down to zero it's only four pixels.

There's no reason why the borders need to be that thick either. I know you can reduce them but it makes the window corners look weird.

[OuchOfDeath]

I like that concept. Where has the menu bar gone to though?

It's where the mac menu is. In this case it's right under/over the window titlebar. It's hidden until you hover your mouse over it.

[remixedcat]

wow that ubuntu screenshot of the media player looks boring. I like my media players dark as well as media apps.

I love the glass cause it makes me feel relaxed ad it's more comforting to have some eye candy. I have my steelflash theme set to the darkest setting.

I am also a graphics designer so some of the UI elments I work around inspire me. If I use just a white and boring interface I have none of the surroundings come to me and I feel empty in an uncomfortable way.

it's like working in a nice plush posh office vs working in a cubicle. working in a tight white cubicle is depressing.

Also white boxed interfaces feel impersonal and linear.

[Syanide]

I like my media players dark as well as media apps.

I like my media players to follow the system theme :p

I understand what you're trying to say, but there are some great themes out there for Ubuntu (orta for instance), which look good without taking up extra space.

[Argi]

I don't see any good reason to remove scrollbars like that. They serve a clear purpose to indicate that there's more content on the page and they're used by people (my mum and grandma both use them, not the scrollwheel) so making them more obscure is merely form over functionality.

[Syanide]

They haven't completely removed it, there's still an indicator on where it is. The bigger problem I have is placing it outside of the windows.

[.Neo]

They haven't completely removed it, there's still an indicator on where it is. The bigger problem I have is placing it outside of the windows.

How does that work with full screen windows? Also do you have a screen shot of the menus when a window is full screen?

[AntiLuddite]

Wow, they are incredibly fugly even by Ubuntu's standards. Looks like Linux developers still haven't learnt anything about beautiful UI design.

[Syanide]

How does that work with full screen windows? Also do you have a screen shot of the menus when a window is full screen?

Actually I found a video, when windows are near the screen edge or maximized, it places it inside the window. That makes it even more confusing imo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOaPZfrqliU

As for menus, I'm not sure I follow, most apps don't have fullscreen modes? If you're talking about maximized windows, then I've already posted that, look at my previous screenshots. Menus are hidden behind the window title at all times, you need to hover over it to reach them. I think they are trying to de-emphasize the menubar altogether and to make apps use other ways of interaction. Their solution is an elegant one, though, apps that have simple layouts don't really need the menus, but they're still optionally there, while apps that absolutely need them (like Gimp or Inkscape) or don't use them at all (like Google Chrome) don't look too inconsistent with each other.

[.Neo]

That's terrible compared to Mac OS X Lion's implementation... If you're going to put on your photocopiers at least do so properly instead this currently half-assed job. :/

[Syanide]

Yeah, what's hilarious is that the person in the video misses the scrollbar a bunch of times.

[.Neo]

Yeah, what's hilarious is that the person in the video misses the scrollbar a bunch of times.

Is it possible to get that new blue Aurora color in Ubuntu 10.10 as well? I tried looking for it, but can't find it anywhere.

[Syanide]

In the beginning of the video you can see the theme is set to custom, so when he chose aurora, it probably just picked on the blue value set previously. That's all I can figure out, try playing with custom colors and see if you can get a similar effect.

[.Neo]

In the beginning of the video you can see the theme is set to custom, so when he chose aurora, it probably just picked on the blue value set previously. That's all I can figure out, try playing with custom colors and see if you can get a similar effect.

I noticed the new Aurora thing doesn't seem to be present in the current stable Ubuntu release, so I figured it must be new in the beta. The blue appears more "fresh" than the orange I have to say.

[Syanide]

You can now test drive applications in Ubuntu.

[Unix2]

You can now test drive applications in Ubuntu.

That's pretty awesome, don't even need to install the demo version!

[.Neo]

That's pretty cool actually. (Y)

[Syanide]

Seriously, I hope this makes it in the final, there are countless times I've installed a package with a bunch of dependencies just to find it's not what I was looking for.

[Growled Member]

Excellent. Something we all will find useful, for the above reasons.