Some thoughts on the design

[finkrer]

Hi. First of all, I want to say I really like this theme. It's feels modern and native and does many things right. It's the first custom theme that I felt was good enough to use daily.

However, I noticed some things that I didn't like that much. So I decided to share some thoughts on how they might be improved.

1. The context menus

Wow!

Ok, so these things are huge! In LibreOffice, some of the menus are almost as tall as the entire screen.

Adding more space is usually a good thing, but context menus are really information-rich. When the elements have such large paddings and margins, the menus become absolutely massive, which doesn't look very good. In addition to that, such large menus are harder to navigate with the mouse, since you have more space to cover.

If you look at pretty much any OS - macOS, Windows, even KDE Breeze - menus are usually pretty compact, and for a good reason, I think. You did a great job otherwise with the menus, so every time I look at their size, they make me cry! (well, not really) I think at the very least the margins are not necessary at all, and the paddings could be quite a bit smaller. I mean vertically, of course.

2. The corner radius

Rounded stuff is cool for sure! But not everything needs to be rounded the same way.

Do you see it? The little chips in the corners? That's rounding for sure, but rounded objects don't really look well when placed directly near straight lines, or other rounded objects.

The solution? Well, on the web they would make the whole thing rounded, so the top element would have rounded top corners and the bottom one rounded bottom corners. But it's also ok not to round these at all. Like, we won't tell anyone, I promise.

Ok, another thing. It's the menu again!

The issue here is that the menu itself and the element highlighting have the same corner radius, but the inner element is smaller, so the radius is larger proportionally and it looks rounder visually. The solution is to make the radius smaller for the menu elements. How would that work with the radius setting? Well, let the user control the overall "roundness", not the precise values. One value does not fit all.

3. The control elements

Look good! But I have some complaints, of course :)

The checkbox and the radio button are noticeably larger than their Breeze counterparts. This makes them really tall compared to the surrounding text, which doesn't look good, in my opinion. Also, the checkbox feels... too fancy, handwritten maybe? Maybe removing the rounded tips could help.

Now some minor things... the tab bar feels really large, and the active tab just floating there is a bit strange. It's not a bad design, just makes me notice it sometimes.

The button hover/press effects are really extreme in terms of changing the color. The hover makes it really light and the press really dark.

Also, while writing this, I noticed this split button in Spectacle looks wonky. The icon has no margin on the right at all, and the splitter is too large.

4. Animations

I have to say first, I have the animations disabled. They look buggy, but I assume this is a work in progress.

What I wanted to say, though, is that not everything should be animated. Like, the text inputs could probably do without that. Most places could just do with transitions.

Also, the ripple effect on buttons only looks good if it starts where the user clicks. But that's, like, just my opinion, man. If done right, it's one of those effects that actually look good, though.

And, same as rounding, I think the slider should really control the duration multiplier on the animations, not a fixed number for all of them. Animations require a different duration depending on how much changes on the screen, with big changes requiring more time, and some small changes not needing an animation at all. It's best if you picked the right numbers manually.

Ok, that's all, I think! Not sure if you are going to care about what I said, but I'd be happy if you did, haha.