Comment 88 for bug 532633

It's funny how whenever there is bad press (and the net is full of hate now, because of this decision), they say file bugs, participate in the community.

And there's the stonewalling.
I really feel like Canonical is just giving us the finger here.

The success of Ubuntu was always about the community. And often when there was an 'issue' that divided Canonical from Ubuntu, canonical could count on a very large silent majority (for example, look at the issue of codecs).

But that silent majority is upset. They don't like many of the changes.
I've shows the look 'n feel to a couple of users I maintain, and they are very explicitely 'i don't want that'.

Not just about the window icons. The icon spacing also.
And they already hated the gdm changes that happened in karmic.

Just a general question, does Canonical do any user testing at all?

Because I literally showed this to my non-technical friends I have running on Ubuntu, just to get an honest response.
I wasn't suggesting I didn't like the theme or anything. I was really curious if this was one of those 'silent majority' situations again, where only us nerds get upset.

But it's not.

Mark I want to warn you.
This is going to seriously Ubuntu's popularity.

Not just the window button issue. But the complete inconsistency of the design.

To summarize the issues:
  - with lucid whether programs will have their buttons on left or right will be random in the eyes of most users
  - the close button is not at a corner, which will increase RSI
  - the GDM is still not usuable on 1024 width, (ever since Karmic). It simply doesn't fit.
  - the horizontal margins on the notification area are different from the vertical margins and any other visual language throughout the UI
  - red is only used on the window buttons
  - the window buttons are the only one's that look like spheres.
  - purple is only for both tooltips and window background, making them hard to read.
  - the scrollbars have a very different inconsistent 3d effect with gourad shading on them that's not used anywhere else.
  - the issue of the ugly position of notification bubbles is still there (because of the searchbox when we have firefox maximized? seriously?)

Maybe the designers you hired are very talented. Maybe they are not.
But the end result is a mutated monster with no vision, with no consistent visual language and it is upsetting everybody.
Stop stonewalling the community.

If the before mentioned issues are really design decisions (which I doubt), then we would love to hear the rationale.
So far, all we hear is stuff like 'opinions can differ' .. and 'its not final yet'.

Should design start with the rationale, and then be implemented.

Shouldn't it be easy to publish the rationale of stuff like the window button positions, icon spacing issues, gdm not fitting in 1024 width anymore, etc. ?

Or were the rationales not documented?
Or perhaps more likely, for many of these decisions, there was no rationale?

Look at how well established and consistent the branding work was.. and how easy it was to explain the rationale.
is it too much to ask to do the same for the style of _actual product_ ?