Simple UI Concept

[prof.spectre]

Hi ReactOS Community,

I've been lurking for a long time now and decided to register today to share my idea for a user interface theme. I believe many operating systems are becoming too flashy just for the sake of it without adding anything substantial to the user experience and often at the cost of it. It is my belief, for example, that the current Windows UI is atrocious - all these transparencies and colorful icons and (in Win8) huge ribbon toolbars distract from what is actually important.

With that in mind I tried to create a UI idea that would be clean and professional looking while pleasant to the eye. Since ReactOS' current user interface is based on W2K / XP classic I think it is a good starting point to improve upon. Additionally I tried to use a color scheme that would fit with classic applications so that potential visual conflicts could be minimized.

Here's what I've come up with. Please share your thoughts and feel free to criticize. Also consider it a work in progress and don't mind the content of the windows - I've taken some random file from google images. what you should focus on is the design of the task bar and the windows' chrome.

[ external image ]

Looking forward to your comments!

[cruonit]

i like it but need some more details/to be polished.
It would be great to have this one(with some modifications) and the elegant black as standard reactOS themes when the themes support comes out.

look at:
http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 3&start=30

Pisarz made an real theme, maybe he could try to do some improvements on your concept and release a theme that could be used as a standard theme for the new theme feature in reactos

[Pisarz]

Looks awesome, but the taskbar... It's too big, and if I were you, I would replace the "ReactOS orb" with something that fits in the taskbar and looks like one of the tray icons. And obviously - implementing UI based on this concept would require significant changes in UXTheme, which would obviously break compatibility etc.

Awesome, but impossible.

[EmuandCo]

Not impossible, but not doable with the recent uxtheme which does not support real transparency, like win7

[prof.spectre]

I see. I did not take into account that ReactOS was using msstyle files. Next week I'll try to adapt this design to uxtheme specifications. I made it quite conservative on purpose so it shouldn't be too hard. I'll get back to you when it's done.

[Smiley]

Not impossible, but not doable with the recent uxtheme which does not support real transparency, like win7

what do you mean with reac transparency?

[Pisarz]

I could work on msstyle when your concept is adapted to UXTheme specifications, if you want.