New theme seems excessively and needlessly vibrant
@aday suggested this be filed here.
I think the old theme has certain advantages over the new one:
- It uses needlessly bright, vibrant and unnatural colors. For the most obvious example, look at the selection color, which is a particularly loud shade of blue, and contrast it with old Adwaita. It is unclear why this new color is needed, because the old one was clear enough. Nobody had trouble seeing what was selected, so why do we need this eye-watering shade of blue?
- The headerbar is needlessly busy. In the old Adwaita, the buttons were defined by shape, not by color, and thus they didn't clash with the headerbar background. You can drag the headerbar by the buttons, so it makes sense for the buttons to be the same color as the empty space. Again, nobody had trouble seeing the buttons before, so what's the point of making them a different color? It just adds more distractions to the interface.
- The main background color is bright vanilla, whereas before it was neutral grey. I don't see the advantage of using a non-neutral color for the main background, since it interferes with color perception and distracts from the content.
- While the theme looks busier and more vibrant, the gui elements actually appear more washed out. The old theme used clearer outlines. Thus the vibrancy of the new theme doesn't actually improve usability at all, it just adds vibrancy for its own sake.
- (not applicable to this issue, but related) Similar concerns apply to the icons. It's very good that gnome simplified the style (for developers), but the brightness of the icons seems totally unnecessary. Wouldn't the Tango color palette with clearer outlines have provided a better definition? Again, nobody has trouble distinguishing Tango blue from Tango red, so the color change just makes the interface more distracting without increasing visibility.
- Finally, the old theme was distinctive and thus added something new to the ecosystem. You can't find any new theme that use natural colors (a la Tango) and well-defined 3D shapes. Every new theme is some variation on Material or Aqua design, and Gnome's new headerbar just looks like a Mac clone.
So to me it seems like the old theme may be worth keeping around as supplement (unless the new theme is changed to accommodate these concerns). Or maybe it's possible to provide a variant of the new gtk and icon theme that's closer to the Tango variant? In my ideal scenario, Gnome would just revise the new theme and use more neutral colors, but it's kind of a big an ask.