Contrast icons against their background

[gmeier]

With the current theme plank is not very easy to distinguish from underlying windows (usually maximised windows wih light background).
Plank should either use a shadow or switch to the same dark color like wingpanel. This would additionally make the desktop look more conistent.

[Adam Nagy (dmnagy22)]

That's why the dock should not hide at all, remember what happened to the sidebar in Unity? It was a pain to use cause the auto hide on maximized windows, they fixed it in 12.04, why does the elementary devs do the same mistake.

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

I think it makes the most sense to use shadows in Plank. We should have a fix that's theme independent.

[Cassidy James Blaede (cassidyjames)]

I'm not opposed to some sort of a shadow, though I don't know how good that'd look.

[Cassidy James Blaede (cassidyjames)]

Also to note: the app icons themselves are bright and easily distinguishable, so it's not like it's hard to tell where the icons are.

[Rico Tzschichholz (ricotz)]

@danrabbit: The fix should be dependent on the theme which is what the branch does. The shadow-size is part of the Theme-definition like one would expect imo.

[gmeier (gabriel-meier)]

@cassidyjames: not necessarily, eg it might be opened on top of a colourful website.

[gmeier (gabriel-meier)]

Shouldn't the dock itself (the gray bar) get a shadow, too? Right now it looks like the bar is on the same layer like the background, an the icons are on the same layer like the bar. Anyway, the icons are on a higher layer than the background. This doesn't make sense.

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

File a new bug.