Kewl sucks

[vakkotaur]

I've been setting things up on icelandic and have run into an old complaint of mine: "Kewl" default skins or themes that try too hard to be coolkewl and end up being ugly or difficult to read.

There's nothing really wrong with skins and themes in and of themselves. But is it too much to ask that the default be the "boring" useful, readable look

Comments

[yakko]

If you wish to use xterm, you can put an alias in your .bashrc:

alias "xterm=xterm -sb -rightbar"

(drop the -rightbar if you want the scrollbar on the left)

You can also configure any launcher within XFCE to make it run xterm -sb -rightbar when you click on it.

[vakkotaur]

Aha! Another solution. I'll try that tonight. It might save me the hassle of attempting graphic work, which is probably best for everybody.

[foolscap001]

I'm a little puzzled. XMMS skins, like WinAmp skins, just about all keep the metaphor of the CD player, with the option of tacking on a graphic equalizer. Just about everybody's used both devices, and hence can pretty trivially figure out how to use a program with the same interface.

There is such a thing as going too far--the reason xmms et al. work as well as they do is that clicking a mouse is pushing a button. If someone were to try to write a mouse-driven driving or flight simulator, the result would be horrible. I don't understand how people can bear the game interfaces for simulated martial arts, which are necessarily counterintuitive and a pain to remember.

[vakkotaur]

For me, it's that Eterm and XMMS try to be "kewl" and instead of being better, just become harder to read. In the case of XMMS, I have to be able to easily see where to click and I'd rather not guess. Using HeliXMMS takes the guesswork out of things.

[foolscap001]

That I can heartily agree with. Admittedly part of it may be that I'm getting old and my vitreous humor is getting stiff--but MANY xmms themes seem to have been designed with legibility very low on the priority list!