Bring customization back to Gnome
Contents
Motivation
I know, consistency and brading are important, but i think with the current lack of customization options since Gnome 3, we are losing great potential for user satisfaction.
I won't explain all the theory behind this - if you're interested in UX Design you'll know how important such emotional prodcut-attributes are - but i'll try to explain in short, why i think we should bring customization back to Gnome 3. There are tons of research papers that point out, that the strive for individualism and self expression are really strong human needs (For a general overview see [1] & [2]) and the marketing industry knows this for ages. People want to distance themself from others, and they are willing to take some hurdles for that. You can see that on how some Windows folks behave, just get an unique desktop. They're taking quite a risk by patching .dll files and replacing the explorer.exe with ones from unknown sources. (Yes, you actually have to do this)
I think that aiding the user for his strive for individualism and self expression could be a real advantage over OSX and Windows, additionally it would also emphasize Linux' conception of freedom of choice.
Proposals
Customization Preferences
- All customization Settings are grouped under "customization" or "Personalization" in the main Settings window.
- Gnome-Tweak-Tool features already integrated
Wallpaper:
Themes: Change Shell, Gtk and Window Theme
Icons: Change System and Cursor Icons
Extensions:
Dynamic Highlight Colors
- Change the Gtk-theme highlight color depending of the wallpaper color.
Discussion
AllanDay - General Feedback:
System Settings already provides background selection. Setting a tint/highlight colour could be advantageous - we'd need to discuss how that would fit into the overall design of the system settings. However, I'm dead against gtk/shell/pointer theming, as well as extensions. Some reasons for that (this isn't exhaustive):
- Makes it harder for 3rd party application developers to target our platform (which themes/extensions do we 'support'? do they have to test against all of them?)
- Degrades the user experience - most alternative themes are relatively poor quality. We don't have the resources to make a good set of high-quality themes
- The default themes aren't merely about aesthetics - they are designed to convey the desired user experience.
- The default themes are designed to work in combination with one another - the shell theme and the gtk theme are designed with each other in mind.
- Extensions are essentially unsupported. Putting them in the system settings says 'these are supported as a part of the system'.
- We already have a web site for installing extensions - this is better than what you are proposing for extensions here.
These are all reasons why these things shouldn't be a part of the default system. They could be a part of the tweak tool.
Just because some personalisation is desirable does not mean that everything should be customisable (I strongly disagree with Maslow on theoretical grounds, I might add). That isn't to say that extra forms of personalisation cannot be evaluated, of course. A photo gallery screensaver is one possibility that has been discussed, for example.