Davyd Madeley made an interesting suggestion for redesigning the theme format. Assuming, as seems likely, we end up using Clutter, there’s no need to specify the structure of a window, which would need SVG. After all, all windows have a basically similar structure. Instead, we could style any item on the window usinga CSS file, parsed by libccss.
Don’t want a titlebar?
#titlebar {
height: 0;
}
Want a red background on the close button?
button#close {
background-color: red;
}
And so on. I think this is an interesting idea because it seems comprehensive enough to capture all the problems we face in theme design. I’m wondering whether it’s perhaps more powerful than necessary and whether it could cause themes to be able to be disruptive, though.
Photo © Sarah G, cc-by.
As long as we can still choose the theme we want, a powerful format is fine!
Aw man, I suggested this ages ago!
http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/16/squib-of-the-day-special-frame-style-for-warning-dialogues/#comment-907
Aw, sorry! I apologise for not getting it when you explained it the first time. Davyd just explained the idea to me in person and it clicked.
To be fair, I was thinking about a combination of the existing draw_ops and some CSS syntax for declaring where they should be drawn (much like HTML’s background-image) rather than trying to do the whole theming thing in CSS.
Still, I think it’s a rich vein of potential.
Wonderful idea! go for it!
IMHO if the allowed css rules are chosen carefully I don’t think the themes could become too disruptive.