Toolkit 5 Theme workshop

Add your comments, ideas, guidelines for TK5 theme here. Aspiration here is to give enough background information for Jouni to create the right Theme for TK5.

It's best if you can add an screenshot / URL which describes your thoughts.

Jouni's theme suggestions

First theme candidate for Toolkit 5: /attachment/wiki/TK5Theme/toolkit5_theme1.png

  • Ville: Definitely the right direction
  • Ville: Is there a possibility to reduce "complexity" of the components or make them lighter? Complex/large/component-rich pages might look choked. Maybe.
  • Ville: More colors (very little) to emphasize certain elements or component parts.
  • Jani : General: nice! good looks but still with "serious enough" attitude
  • Jani : Usability: upper panels are not too easy to distinguish from background (too similar colors used)
  • Jani : Usability: for emphasized panel, consider using even a bit different colors for caption and actual container area
  • Jani : Looks: It's OK for me if more colors are used, current color wolrd is OK for me too
  • Joonas : Looks simple and elegant. Definitely a huge step forwards from 4.0. I would leave it as it is now.
  • Sami : Very nice balance with colors. Overall first impression is little blurry. Maybe this is the fonts or the background color?
  • Marc : I like it very much, would go with this. Some notes: 'desktopish', not 'servicelike'. Bluriness prob. due to font aliasing, not the same in browser.

Sales perspective

  • New theme should give a WOW effect for the prospect.
  • While thinking between desktop and web clients, theme should give an idea that desktop clients are not needed anymore. In terms of usability and look-n-feel
  • Theme should be something like Web 2.0 and Apple-kind of simplicity
  • Non graphical developer could produce good looking interfaces (important and contains the WOW effect)
  • Example of nice look-n-feel: [http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/screenshots/]

Marc's prespective

  • We want a "Oooh, nice" -effect while still being serious - theme should be usable as-is for most customers
  • Usability very important. Must feel 'solid' (e.g no jumping around while rendering)
  • Question: should it be desktop like, or not? Current trend is _not_. ("App" or "Service" look-and-feel?)

Some examples

Jani's perspective

Suggestions / questions for workshop

  • Suggestion: Jouni, add split pane to your screenshots, we got it on TK5 and it's an excellent component!
  • Suggestion: should we add new style for tree menu like in "style fruit term" menu, see GWT kitchen sink menu
  • Suggestion: jittering while rendering not an option
  • Suggestion: transitions (fadings, animations) should be quick or not blocking if used
  • Suggestion: slow responsiveness is a strong no
  • Suggestion: I vote no for "desktop", go for old school "one browser window per service/app"
  • Question: Should we have nice looking logo like JackBE / TIBCO when kickstarting Toolkit applicaiton?
  • Question: theme should not add bandwidth costs more than max. 15kb?

Misc. thoughts

  • I agree that theme should give a "WOW" feeling for the viewer, but I see usability as important as first impression of good looks
  • I'd say we can get a WOW effect with current proposal, but I think it's more about getting few new functionalities
    • (but, new components are out of scope of this workshop)
  • Jouni, while implementing: keep it simple, do not tease the browser more than it is required :)

Joonas' comments

  • First candidate looks great - I would leave it as is. Wonderful work!
  • To build towards WOW effect, I would add the following:
    • Make sure that all interactions give perception of realiability. There should not be "little glitches"
    • Make sure that everything seem (and thus is) REALLY responsive. Would prefer perceived responsibility over actual wall clock time.
    • Add effects and animations, but ensure the two constraints above do not suffer from it
  • Just to list couple of other nice themes, maybe flex 3 and ext 1.1 are some of the best.

Sami's perspective

  • We need somekind of uniqueness to leave a "memory print".
    • People should immediately notice that "this is IT Mill".
    • Maybe just a single element / color / form
    • This might even be something controversial (i.e. does not have please everyone)
    • This should not compromise usability
  • Ext and Alfresco look nice and clean, but still I miss the differentation?

Final candidate

The above version did not make into production - yet ;) - the one that did can be seen on the forum: Theme preview of coming Toolkit 5.0

Attachments