Decorations: windows should have 0px (bottom and side) borders

[Doug McMahon]

Back in 11.04 it was decided to go borderless but was reverted mainly because of unity-2d. Since then users that wish this could easily adjust in metacity-1.
Now that's gone with the unity-window decorator.
Dark windows look bad with the light grey? 1 px. border, particuarly some video players, gnome-terminal ect.
(I understand that without a border 2 overlaping terminals may be weird but overall borderless looks better in general use

Or at the least somehow color it something less obvious & distracting.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: unity 7.1.2+14.04.20140217-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-8.28-generic 3.13.2
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.13.2-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Mon Feb 17 20:37:35 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-02-17 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Alpha amd64 (20140217)
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

This is now possible in unity (from a technical point of view), but we need design input on this.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

If not 0px then is there any way to be transparent?
Also may be worthwhile to note the current existing borders seem to cause some issue with compiz > place plugin as noted in Bug 1281816

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

2014-02-24 1:05 GMT+01:00 Doug McMahon <email address hidden>:
> If not 0px then is there any way to be transparent?
Yes sure... If you want to try it you only have to edit the file
/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/unity.css to match your
preferences...

> Also may be worthwhile to note the current existing borders seem to cause some issue with compiz > place plugin as noted in Bug 1281816

Yes, that's a known issue and I've already fixed it locally.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@mc3man; could you provide a visual mockup of the proposed change so we can review and make a decision on whether to implement. Thanks!

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

This is how things look by setting the side and bottom borders to 0, it's quite nice for things that don't include a border on their UI (like terminal without tabs), although I didn't change the top-side CSS, as in this case it should have no side border as well...

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

I don't know if there is any value now to note that the intention was to use 0px & it was generally well received for the short time it existed.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/733233

The negatives were laid out here -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/733431

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@Treviño; thanks for the screenshot, I'll review with Marcus when he is in the office tomorrow and let you know.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

@JohnLea, ah, nice if you want to increase the Shadows size as well...

You basically have to edit the variable defined in /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/unity.css and switch theme (doing Ambiance -> Radiance -> Ambiance) from unity control center (unfortunately gtk doesn't notify us when a theme file has changed, so you have to force this in this way).

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@Treviño; Just to confirm, am I correct to assume the actual invisible dragable area on each window border that a user can use to resize the window remains unchanged?

If this is the case +1 from design for 0px window borders, it looks much better ;-)

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

@John Lea: yes, draggable area remains the same..

All it's configurable through CSS, though (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/Theming).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-themes - 14.04+14.04.20140311.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
ubuntu-themes (14.04+14.04.20140311.1-0ubuntu1) trusty; urgency=low

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * Ambiance, Radiance: use borderless decorations, different shadow
    colors and opacity based on status (LP: #1281368)

  [ Lars Uebernickel ]
  * Fix styling of linked entries Needed for evince's page selector.
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Tue, 11 Mar 2014 18:50:51 +0000

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I agree that borderless looks better overall, since most windows are light and end up with a shadow that makes them easy to differentiate. However, since I've heard multiple times that we need to make the Unity desktop a delight for developers, the terminal use case is very important. I typically have many terminals (white text on black background-- a common terminal configuration) open at once and things start to look really weird when those terminals overlap since it is difficult to differentiate between them. Because of opacity, if the terminals are over another window or background that is light, then it is somewhat possible in a non-bright room to differentiate. When two terminals overlap over a dark background/dark window (eg, a third terminal) it becomes quite difficult to differentiate. Attached is a screenshot-- note, the brighter the room, the harder to differentiate (also, with the png I've attached it is actually slightly easier to differentiate than when looking at the actual windows on my monitor).

This has created a usability issue for me if I want to resize one of these overlapping terminals since I have to slowly drag the mouse to see the edge. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm a developer (among other things) and I spend much of my time looking at terminals and this change made my desktop more difficult to use. I've also heard 2 other people independently, without prompting say the same thing. One idea would be to blacklist various terminals from being borderless but have everything else be borderless. Perhaps a better idea would be to allow people to opt out of borderless for certain windows, or expose opting out of borderless entirely in Appearance (personally, I don't like this last one-- I like borderless windows for the most part, just not with terminals). Maybe there is another more creative solution that works better for everyone.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Just to get clear -
Is it customary for dev's to use a custom colored terminal (black) that negates the shadow?
And would not such dev's be in a better position in such cases to alter unity.css to meet there personal needs vs. common users?
(- I've reduced the current shadow here to a min & still can differentiate terminals using the default bg color unlike 3 yr.'s ago when it was no border & no visible shadow

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

> And would not such dev's be in a better position in such cases to alter unity.css to meet there personal needs vs. common users?

FYI you can override these theme settings also from CCSM (so they will
persist despite the theme you use).

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Anecdotally-- iirc, 6 out of 7 people on my team use white on black. Personally, I find the aubergine attractive for a terminal or two, but distracting when my while desktop is covered with them (I am *not* suggesting we change the default color of the terminal). I know when I walk around conferences, sprints, etc, I see more balanced mixture, but white on black is used enough to where, IMHO, we don't want to ignore it.

"And would not such dev's be in a better position in such cases to alter unity.css to meet there personal needs vs. common users?" - I think so, but my point is I don't think it should be too difficult for people to adjust. I commented in this bug i part because I don't know about how to do what you are suggesting. Is the documentation readily available for this? Can this be done per application (ie, I can adjust for only gnome-terminal)?

I guess I would ask what a common user is. In the past, I think it has been defined in part as someone who doesn't use a terminal. Within the last year, I've heard time and again from within Canonical that the developer use case is vitally important and developers must be included in our target users on the desktop for all kinds of reasons. The developer is a common user of Ubuntu-- whether that is a cloud developer, web developer, app developer, etc and while a developer may be capable of searching through documentation and changing CSS somewhere, I think we should make small but important tweaks like this easy for them (ie, let's not take any of the delight of using Ubuntu away if we can help it).

Others options I thought of when responding: have a 3rd theme based on Ambiance that works better with dark windows. Another is it could also be cool if when changing the color scheme in gnome-terminal, if it is some sort of light on dark, that the css for gnome-terminal be adjusted accordingly. That is of course gnome-terminal specific, but this would likely satisfy the largest proportion of developers.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

"FYI you can override these theme settings also from CCSM (so they will persist despite the theme you use)."

Is CCSM supported now? I heard some time ago (early switch to Unity) that CCSM should not be used for desktop stability reasons. Has this changed?

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

Jamie, not officially supported, but it can be used to tune some options.