[Poll] What do you think about the new "Opera Standard" skin for Kestrel?

[Poll] What do you think about the new "Opera Standard" skin for Kestrel?

OK, what do you think about this new "Opera Standard" skin for Kestrel? Do you like it? Hate it? OR it really doesn't matter to you? Share you opinions with the rest of us, & hopefully you can provide some useful hints/ideas to the Skin/UI Designers to further polish & improve the new "Standard Skin".

NO flaming, hijack, personal attacks...etc, please! I know everyone probably will have very different views, so please be civilize.
Please included the version of Kestrel you're discussing; as more changes & improvements might occur in the future release.

I hate dark themes because they're hard to read. Just take a look at the Top Rated Skins and see how few dark skins are included.

The new DTA skin is excellent. Large icons, Clear, and Bright colours.

1) The Tabbar beeing dark is in contrast to everything else, be it the rest of the Opera-Window or anything else on the Desktop (running WinX and Gnome)
2) Panel icons are monochrome, alot other icons aswell (back, forward) - it reminds me much of Opera 7-8.x (I believe it was 8.5 that came with the current skin) and thats been the only Application for which I taken the time to DL a skin because its default appearance annoyed me too much, I usually dont care for looks. (Well, the only App in the last 15 years, I also couldn`t stand the default iconset of the Amigas Workbench )
3) Smooth gradients and sharp edges dont mix well IMHO (Speaking about Tabs and Panel-Buttons)

-> Dull and shady icons...
-> Dark page bar...
-> Reminds me of a rainy day!
You want more...
Here we go:
-> Still NO sorting order change possible of status and personal bar e.g. when both at bottom...
-> Menu bar still not usable for other buttons or fields...
-> Still NO resizing of Preferences dialog...
-> Still NO comfortable enlargement/extension for Page bar and Panel toolbar...
-> Still NO scrolling window for custom buttons in Appearance dialog...
(buttons simply disappear and are only reachable after extensive enlargement of the whole dialog window!) - UNUSABLE!

great theme. love it.

The theme is great. It should be available in different color-styles (brighter, black, pink ...)

I like it. But the drop down menus still seem out of place (like in 9.2 with non-native skin). It seems like the menus are just standard Windows menus.
Can't this be changed?


Because it looks like I'll be using this standard skin in 9.5, because the new native one looks bad.

I would like less dark stuff. The fact that windows vista comes in black, does not mean that everyone wants black for everything. Please live it silver or some more 'icy' color... hehehe

The theme works well with color schemes (too bad there's so few color schemes listed), though for some reason it seems to ignore "System color scheme". The icons are a touch dark. Related ... that "+" New tab icon really doesn't work on the File menu, they need a different icon there.

Honestly, it only looks real good if you do use a color scheme. I picked a slate gray color from the extended menu, and that's pretty. (Not what I'd call slate-colored, but still pretty.) Set opera:config#Colors|Skin to #2f4f4f and opera:config#UserPrefs|ColorSchemeMode to 2 and see for yourself.

A bit large for me, I still like Breeze II, so I voted "It's OK, but ..."

i prefer slimmer skin like breeze micro, but overall i like the idea of the new skin, seems cooler!

I quite like the new theme, it needs to be put on a crash diet though, there's too much wasted space. That might not be a problem on a 22'' screen but on a 17'' one (which is what most people still have i think) it's just a waste.
There's also the problem that some buttons do not fully occupy their bars when the size is set to below 100%, which is quite ugly.
I do think the tab bar should be lighter, the contrast with the rest of the skin is too great now and some favicons are hard to see. So are some buttons for that matter. Try putting a buton from the status bar on there and you'll see what i mean. Perhaps buttons of different colours should be included?

EDIT: another thing, quite small, the close buttons. On an active tab the close button is very bright and dulls when you hover over it. Should it not be the reverse?

"It's OK. But it could be better if..." they can keep the "Opera Classic" skin as a selectable skin in the default install.

It seems the dark background color do cause quite a bit of problems...
Take a look at this screenshot of the Managers' tab:The dark color icons for Managers' tab is "conflicting" with the dark background...
The icons almost invisible when the Manager's tab is in the background.

Hmm, yeah. The whole thing could be slightly brighter.

I love the look of the new theme but it could do with a splash of extra colour to make things easier to navigate.

I have two primary suggestions on the new theme.

1. Other people have brought up the lack of color, and I do think it's an issue. I like the logic of using airport-style icons, and monochrome can be slick, but it can also be a bit unfriendly/staid and affect usability. I love how the stop/refresh button not only uses clean icons but alternates red and green. I think many other icons could be enhanced by a splash of color - not necessarily making full-color, photographic-style icons, but at least and maybe one color to some icons.

2. While the new tab button on the right looks sharp, I don't think it's that usable a setup. For one, the position of the button changes based on how many tabs I have open. But more importantly for me, most of the time when I'm clicking a button it's on the left side of the screen at the top - that's where the back/forward controls are, the home button, the start of the address bar, etc. If I have a bunch of tabs open, though, I now have to go to the other side of the screen to open a new one. Before anyone calls me lazy, it's simple things like this that improve usability. It makes more sense to me to have the new tab button on the left as before, though I understand the current setup adds the visual feedback of a new tab appearing where you click the button, hence the arrow design.

(btw, if you disable the righthand "new tab" toolbar in the latest build, the last tab slides under the reverse-arrow shape of the trash can - rather annoying.)

Otherwise I don't mind it too much... the tabs are a bit dark, especially with some favicons as has been pointed out. Personally the menu also looks a bit out of place on top of the dark tab bar, but that's not a huge deal.

For the new skin, I think that dark-on-light and light-on-dark versions should be available. Everyone I know that really dislikes the skin dislikes dark/black skins generally, the main reason being the contrast between skin items and web-pages which tend to be dark-on-light.

Apart from that, the ability to remove the "new tab" button, and move it to the left as before. The > cue doesn't really work when "new tab next to current" is set. Currently, it's only possible to turn it "off" as a toolbar, which leaves an ugly vertical line on the display.

There are some bugs that need fixing, connected with the fact that some buttons act as toolbars.

Don't like the new icons next to the root items in the mail panel. Can we switch them off?

Finally, please don't break 9.2x skins with this new upgrade!!

Seb

Originally posted by theharmonyguy:

I have two primary suggestions on the new theme.

1. Other people have brought up the lack of color, and I do think it's an issue. I like the logic of using airport-style icons, and monochrome can be slick, but it can also be a bit unfriendly/staid and affect usability. I love how the stop/refresh button not only uses clean icons but alternates red and green. I think many other icons could be enhanced by a splash of color - not necessarily making full-color, photographic-style icons, but at least and maybe one color to some icons.

2. While the new tab button on the right looks sharp, I don't think it's that usable a setup. For one, the position of the button changes based on how many tabs I have open. But more importantly for me, most of the time when I'm clicking a button it's on the left side of the screen at the top - that's where the back/forward controls are, the home button, the start of the address bar, etc. If I have a bunch of tabs open, though, I now have to go to the other side of the screen to open a new one. Before anyone calls me lazy, it's simple things like this that improve usability. It makes more sense to me to have the new tab button on the left as before, though I understand the current setup adds the visual feedback of a new tab appearing where you click the button, hence the arrow design.

(btw, if you disable the righthand "new tab" toolbar in the latest build, the last tab slides under the reverse-arrow shape of the trash can - rather annoying.)

Otherwise I don't mind it too much... the tabs are a bit dark, especially with some favicons as has been pointed out. Personally the menu also looks a bit out of place on top of the dark tab bar, but that's not a huge deal.

Copy that...

One comment I made before in the desktopteam blog: the shape and position of the New Tab button don't make sense when you have enabled "Open new tab next to active" in Preferences. The button suggests that the new tab will be added at the right end of the tab bar which isn't the case with said setting (I know is not enabled by default, by the way).

One other thing: the top border of the right side of the tab bar doesn't match that of the toolbar next to it. The light-colored line is missing (see screenshot).

"I like it! It would be great if..."
I was going to vote "Awesome", but there's always room for improvement...
for example, I hate huge space-wasting toolbars

so I modified the skin - made the Tab bar thinner, and added a cool color (purple)
I now LOVE this new skin - anyone else like this?

Originally posted by Pesala:

I hate dark themes because they're hard to read. Just take a look at the Top Rated Skins and see how few dark skins are included.

The new DTA skin is excellent. Large icons, Clear, and Bright colours.

Agree totally... I use the DTA skin and its so much better than the standard Opera skin. On Win2000 and my not so high resolution laptop screen, the new skin is way too big. The tabs panels are huge and should be able to be shrunk like the navigation buttons can be....

At least Im happy that I can choose my own skin... but Opera should look 'slick out of the box' - The new skin doesnt cut it for me.

Originally posted by skye11:

so I modified the skin - made the Tab bar thinner, and added a cool color (purple)
I now LOVE this new skin - anyone else like this?

Have you tried the 'Colour scheme' feature of the Appearance dialog? It gives you a colour scheme very similar to that...

If it ain't broke don't fix it. I hate dark skins to begin with but this is one of the worst I've encontered. The lack of contrast, and the tiny close icons strain my eyes. I find the unnecessary height annoying, and while I managed to make a "new tab icon on the left, I can get rid of the one on the right. I copied the current Opera Standard theme from an older build , several things are broken because of the new theme, but at least it is usable.

It's OK. But it could be better if...

• the tab bar was brighter
  Well that's a subjective matter, maybe someone wants to keep this shade of grey. It would be great if there were brighter colours in the "colour scheme" dialog, too.
  
• this skin would make more use of colours
  Although I don't like excessive use of colours in applications, that new "reload-stop button" changing its colour is more than just neat, it's awesome. I'd love to see Opera's new skin using more colour this serviceably.
  
• the tab and/or address bar were slimmer
  There's a bit wasted place to spare, but not a desaster though.
  

The position of the new "new tab" button and chasing it for opening more than just one tab can't be that bad as accused here. After five minutes using Opera you start hitting Ctrl-T, double clicking the tab bar, middle clicking the tab bar or performing the mouse gesture anyway.
This also goes for the size of the "close tab" button.

BTW, this new skin - while not perfect - is still better than the 9.2 "Opera Standard" skin, easily. IMHO, of course.

If you add a New Tab button before the Tabs like there used to be, there is an ugly space left as shown below.



I really only use the new tab button so that the tabs are indented from the side of the screen. I always use mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts to generate new tabs.

Originally posted by VJgamer:

If you add a New Tab button before the Tabs like there used to be, there is an ugly space left as shown below.

it looks even worse if you put it between the Tab Bar and the Panel button (which is by default at the left side of the Tab Bar), as the New Tab button somehow is smaller than both the Tab Bar and the Panel button.

You know, I wonder if that's more along the lines of this issue?

I like it! It would be great if...

- it would lite up a bit
- the icons in menu etc. get some color, like the reload and home icon
- the buttom right corner would get the triangle area for resizing the window

Originally posted by Pesala:

I hate dark themes because they're hard to read. Just take a look at the Top Rated Skins and see how few dark skins are included.

The new DTA skin is excellent. Large icons, Clear, and Bright colours.

same here. i too like light colored skins:)

The more I work with the new skin the more I get convimced the new tab button should be on the left. I saw somebody who said that it is more natural to go to the left with the mouse (I guess that is true for right handed folks like me). I agree here; the action is easier. It is not that big a deal with just a few tabs open but with many tabs open it is not the most convenient way to move.

Originally posted by EricJH:

The more I work with the new skin the more I get convimced the new tab button should be on the left. I saw somebody who said that it is more natural to go to the left with the mouse (I guess that is true for right handed folks like me). I agree here; the action is easier. It is not that big a deal with just a few tabs open but with many tabs open it is not the most convenient way to move.

Then just drag it to the left...
I thing it is right at the end of the tabs (or just use Ctrl+T)
It's how you are used to it, I still have the tabs at the buttom because I'm used to have it at the buttom of the screen.

It's an awesome skin. It complements Windows XP's Royale Noir visual style really well. The only gripes I have with it are the thickness of the tab bar (although I've become quite accustomed to it now) and the size of the Close Tab button. The Close Tab button is slightly too small. I wish it was a couple of pixels taller and wider.

Tab bar too dark. Otherwise fine.

IMHO the new default skin is not ready for a release. There is lots of little things that must be addressed before that, like the stupid green reload button on a otherwise gloomy monochromatic skin and the colored favicons on the panel selector tab, the black mail icons vs some categories like mailing lists and feeds, and againt vs the favicons on the feeds, some icons are against the common sense, like the camera icon in show image selector (a camera is more a image capture device), distinct icons for the trash can, etc. Not to mention that lot of people dislikes dark themes.

Overall, Opera with this skin looks like an amateurish application, and the first impressions of new users most likely will make them run away from the program.

In 9.27 new, unread tabs opened in the background turn their titles blue when they have finished loading. This has been dropped from 9.50! Is this due to blue not being unintelligibly black enough for some developer? The new icons, especially forward, back etc. look bad on Windows Native with the normal grey toolbar as their background. Active tab is also hard to spot now because it's no longer depressed like it used to be. Rijk stated this was done due to complaints - well, I'm complaining the opposite.

A splash of colour for the sake of usability wouldn't hurt.

For example, when using Opera Mail, all the icons for Reply, Reply all, Fwd, etc. are.... well, small and black. They used to have colors to make it easier to distinguish them.

Look at the reload button (green) and the home button (blue) and the stop button (red). That's ease-of-use. Using black-only is not so smart.

Originally posted by Immanis:

IMHO the new default skin is not ready for a release.

It's a BETA snapshot, not really a "release". I think it's a good idea to pre-release it to get some users' feedback, that's the reason I started this thread - help the UI/Skin department to get some users' feedback to identify anything that needed to be change or correct before the official final. So, speak up now if you found anything that need improvement or you got some great idea that might be useful to the developers.

We do want a final release to be as perfect as possible, including the new skin.

Originally posted by dude09:

It's a BETA snapshot, not really a "release". I think it's a good idea to pre-release it to get some users' feedback, that's the reason I started this thread - help the UI/Skin department to get some users' feedback to identify anything that needed to be change or correct before the official final. So, speak up now if you found anything that need improvement or you got some great idea that might be useful to the developers.

Sure thing, but that post was originally for the thread New snapshot.. preparing for launch, and since that thread addreses general issues I decided to repost the same here. But I'm lazy so I didn't change a thing, sorry for that.

I hate it, because:

While the original buttons and icons were clear and sharp and worked perfectly with any colour scheme, the new buttons have built-in chrome, which means that they only work with the default Opera colours. I've always used the Windows colours for Opera, so the new buttons stand out like sore thumbs.




All the new menu icons are grey and lifeless, making it hard to easily differentiate them - plus they are hard to even see on my theme's dark grey menu background.

As for the new "Opera Standard" theme itself, its colours are searingly over-bright mixed with very dark sections (the tab bar), creating a far too busy, contrasting and distracting appearance. Vertical tab size has increased for no apparent reason, leading to more wasted space.

Originally posted by skye11:

"I like it! It would be great if..."
I was going to vote "Awesome", but there's always room for improvement...
for example, I hate huge space-wasting toolbars

so I modified the skin - made the Tab bar thinner, and added a cool color (purple)
I now LOVE this new skin - anyone else like this?

how to make tabs thinner? i managed to screw up entire skin.ini file, and everything changed apart from tab thickness.

Hmm... Seems like there are a few fixed & improvements in the RC.
1. The Manager's tab icon is now "white color", visiblility 100% improvement!
2. Scrollbar now looks a bit better during "rollover", very good!
3. New Tab button is now able to be removed, & disabled it will no longer leaving a thin line at the end.
4. The glossy effects in the tab is further soften! Greatly improve readability of tab's title.

Problems that I noticed:
1. There are still a very sharp crisp line "smack" right in the middle of the tab bar horizontally...
Caused by high contrast of the background colors, it's very annoying because it's visually unpleasant.
2. Buttons inside dialog & window still looks 2D during "rollover"...
3. All button in the Head section of tab bar is still not even with the tab bar if icon size were shrunk.
4. Overall, buttons & icons still lack of colors...
5. Tab bar & Address bar height still need to be reduce a few pixels.
6. Tab bar's dark background color is still doesn't matched with majority of (dark color) buttons & icons...
7. Transfer panel background texture is mismatched! The lower section has a different texture than the top section...
8. Monotone color scheme inside panels make it looks flat, duotone will great improve the panels...Red color outlined area need to be lighten up a bit to give the panel a 3D feeling, just like the rest of the browser skin.

I voted I don't like it because :
1. I don't like the grey touch (kind of black and white feeling)
2. I think could be better in many ways. The bottom line is it seems like the skin stepping up the stairs to a level whereothers already standing or can get past easily. i would like to see opera step up high such that others can catch up easily.

One of the things that would help eliminate questions about color/shade/existing color scheme etc is to implement a "color chooser" as I already mentioned in one of my wishlist posts.

Vote, I like it...

I use the *System color scheme* version (blackish/grey).

The skin makes it easier to focus on the colorful content, as toolbars and buttons appear less visible... except those having/changing color due to special activity/function (stop, wand, reload, home, etc.)... Less is more

Room for improvement:

1. able to space panel toolbar buttons, when set top/bottom
2. larger close active tab button (if hard to hit on laptops using pad)
3. more color choices (of more buttons)
4. customize icon size (%) should change tab hight as well (proportion)

Originally posted by theharmonyguy:

I like the logic of using airport-style icons, and monochrome can be slick, but it can also be a bit unfriendly/staid and affect usability. I love how the stop/refresh button not only uses clean icons but alternates red and green. I think many other icons could be enhanced by a splash of color - not necessarily making full-color, photographic-style icons, but at least and maybe one color to some icons.

The blue home button in 10057 is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about! Thank you, Opera! Now please add some more...

Originally posted by chriskindle:

how to make tabs thinner? i managed to screw up entire skin.ini file, and everything changed apart from tab thickness.

first of all, before modifying any files, save a backup copy so that you can easily reinstall them if you mess things up
find and decrease the following settings (those numbers work well for me):

for a thinner Tab bar (Pagebar):

[Pagebar Button Skin]
Padding Top = 4
Padding Bottom = 4


for a thinner Toolbar:

[Toolbar Button Skin]
Padding Top = 4
Padding Bottom = 3

[Toolbar Button Skin.selected]
Padding Top = 4
Padding Bottom = 3

[Toolbar Button Skin.pressed]
Padding Top = 4
Padding Bottom = 3

Originally posted by skye11:

Originally posted by chriskindle:

how to make tabs thinner? i managed to screw up entire skin.ini file, and everything changed apart from tab thickness.

first of all, before modifying any files, save a backup copy so that you can easily reinstall them if you mess things up
find and decrease the following settings (those numbers work well for me):

<snip>

thank you ... and yes, I was modifying the copy, not the original. i learned everything about back-ups while making winamp skins ^^

The good parts:
The gradual color change in the mail/feeds tab feels very good.
The reload button and home button are beautiful.
The skin does not steal focus from web pages.


Not very goods:
The contrast between the tab bar and the other parts are obvious
- tab bar :
--- feels too cyber
--- lighter background color means active
- other parts:
--- feels old
--- lighter background color means inactive
The black tab bar that I don't want to look at is making other parts irritating.
Several grey toolbars placed together looks like a jalousie.


My suggestion:
I would suggest using a color similar to the nearby toolbar for the place without any tab.

Also, make the tab color, the new button and trash can buttons brighter.

Upside down the color gradient for acvtive/inactive tab.

Like the following (of course, don't inverse the text as well )

I find the general form of the new skin nice. but it has quite a few flaws in my eyes.

I agree with people on it being rather dark and boring because of the lack of colours. I wouldn't want some big colour fest myself in a skin but a bit of colour isn't bad. I find the tabbar rather dark aswell which makes it a bit hard to read (specially on a somewhat older CRT screen but also on my laptop with brightness turned down (running on battery to conserve power)).

also I noticed that the bookmarks I have on the personal bar are strangely aligned with some added whitespac between some? that wasn't there in older builds I think.

It's OK. But it could be better if...

- I really would like more colors on the buttons (aside from this, I like the buttons : simple & efficient)
This would be good at least on the folders icons (favorites, mail, etc...)

- the scrool bar is grey on grey, lacking contrast. Maybe black on grey would be better ?

- I also think the bars (especially the tab bar) are too big (read : too thick).

Apart from this, I like the strong contrast between the tab bar and the other bars (It really gives opera an identity), but maybe this is too much, especially for people like me using the main bar, the personal bar AND the adress bar.

The "active tab is lighter" behaviour does not disturb me, but I think the strong gradient attracts too much the eye.

That's it for me:cheers:

I have to say, I've got used to it faster than I thought it would.