Themed Taskbar and buttons (glossy looks)

[Mark]

2008/4/4, Dave Slaughter <slaughter.dave at gmail.com>:
>  Hey,
>
> i'm having some suggestions for nodoka in the next fedora version.
> My general idea for fedora is to have the themes polished in F10.
> Nodoka can do a lot to get that done.
>
> Oke for the first one.
> When you hover a button or anything that's nodoka controlled like the
> buttons: minimize, maximize and close. When you put your mouse on one
> of them the image behind it is instantly changing to the hover state
> (or something like it). My suggestion would be to make a effect of it.
> Fade out the old one and simultaneously fade in the new image so that
> you get some nice effects there. Also do this for every other thing
> that has another state when it's selected, hovered etc.
>
>
>
>  That is very interesting. One thing I've noticed, though, and since
> Metacity allows for that, is that if you change the order of the buttons
> (using gconf-editor), the properties of the buttons will be inherited by the
> new elements in their place. For example, I like to have the close and
> minimize buttons together at the upper left corner of the window, and the
> menu and maximize buttons on the right corner. The problem with the current
> implementation of the theme is that it "locks" the buttons to the right
> corner of the window and even though all effects are "inherited" when they
> are changed, the "highlight" around the buttons persists and is locked to
> the buttons on the right hand corner[1]. Maybe the first step would be to
> lock the highlight border to the properties of the buttons instead of a
> location in the title bar? (is this even possible in GTK? [or any other
> toolkit for that matter?])
>
>
>
>
>  The second one is something i've requested before but never got in.
> Theme the taskbar! fully theme it, not just change the colour but
> really give it a theme. As far as i know this has never been done in
> fedora. I will try to make a mockup of it sometime soon.
>
>
>
>  This sounds VERY interesting indeed... It also opens all sorts of
> possibilities for themes... Like having both the lower and upper panes have
> different colors/combinations/highlights, etc. Make launcher icons stand out
> as buttons, give a glossy look (or not), etc. And have the lower panel (with
> the "Show Desktop", "Window List" "Recycle Bin" and "Desktop Pager" applets)
> a completely different, but complementary look than that of the upper panel.
> Have the Window List applet have its own properties so that (as some people
> do) if a user deletes one of the panels (to reclaim desktop pace, for
> instance) and moves the Window List to "the other" panel, these properties
> are retained and what not.
>
>
>  I hope that by "glossy look" of the launcher buttons you don't mean to
> have them with another background than the panel background! that
> would not have my preference to say the least. But having it glossy
> when hovering (like in vista/xp) is a nice idea to have!
>
>
>
>  Third.
> A while back i made a mockup of a themed notification message. the
> current one looks kinda plain. The one i had made was one you all
> seemed to like one way or the other but never got implemented. I will
> try to find that mockup and post it again to see if this could find
> it's way in Fedora 10.
>
>
>
>  I think that having a glossy look to buttons when you hover over them, even
> on the taskbar, ie: dropdown menus and such, is actually a great idea, I
> have used other distros ( and modified my own themes) to do just that, it
> lets you know for sure where your mouse pointer is, and adds that special
> touch to the look and feel that would really make Fedora great looking out
> of the box. While my css coding skills leave alot to be desired, the artwork
> side of it is pretty strait forward, just create the image, and then make a
> highlighted/glossy version to match for  when it is hovered over. Maybe even
> make it animated, so when you hover, it kind of "wipes" the highlight over
> the button.
>

All fine with me _except_ showing the glossy part when you don't hover
those launcher buttons. Animating the stuff is something i would
really like.

And a (coding) suggestion on the animating. I think nodoka needs to
interact with the X Composite extension. it's being loaded by default
anyway and that even gives you true transparency on the vesa drivers.
So instead of reinventing the wheel for those fade in and fade out
effects just use composite instead. (i didn't check if nodoka is
already doing this but i doubt that is the case ^_^)

Package needed for that composite stuff: libXcomposite-devel (gdm
should use it as well)