>
>> On Thu, 3 Jan 2013, Lisi Reisz wrote:
>>
>> >On Thursday 03 January 2013 19:42:46 Timothy Pearson wrote:
>> >> The people who haven't used TDE will think that
>> >>
>> >> > it is always the same old project as KDE3. It just looks too old
>> and of
>> >> > course, the more actual Oxygen icon theme will go this way one day
>> or
>> >> > another, but as of now, I think that it would be a good idea for
>> TDE to
>> >> > use Oxygen or another icon theme, at least this updated version of
>> >> > Crystal SVG.
>> >
>> >It seems to me to be a pity the way things are changed purely because
>> they
>> >are "old".  For everyone who is scared off TDE because it looks too
>> like
>> >KDE3, I would venture that there will be at least 2 who will heave a
>> sigh of
>> >relief that _someone_ doesn't think that things should be changed
>> purely to
>> >look "modern".  If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
>> >
>> >Lisi
>>
>> +1
>> Jonesy
>>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> One thing I should say is that, of course, the icon theme has nothing to
> do with the quality of the desktop environment. It doesn't add or remove
> features to TDE. It might be my personal tastes, but when I boot in a live
> CD from 2005, I see that things are now made in a more modern way.
> Sometimes, it is more simple to do X thing and sometimes it is the same
> old thing, but it doesn't looks like it is from 10 or 15 years ago.
>
> Now, in general UI themes, there is less borders and separators lines
> everywhere than back in the days of KDE 3.5.x. Compare a theme like
> QtCurve or like Oxygen to an older theme like Plastik. We don't have to
> use a theme that looks like what it was 12 years ago,
> back in the Win XP and 2000 era. It should be noted that we are in 2013.
>
> Just my opinion...
>
> -Alexandre
>

This is just my opinion as well, but I have found that the removal of the
separators and borders has made software more difficult to use and less
organised, as developers can now just lump UI elements together in a great
big jumble with no need to deal with logical grouping.  The human eye
lalso appears to look for outlines to categorise items; removing the
outlines while leaving the same number of items therefore makes locating a
specific item (or items which relate to a given item in terms of
functionality) more difficult.

I suspect the grouping indicators were removed to save space on small
screens, and when developers realised it also removed the difficult
interface design task of showing similar UI elements in one particular
location, this philosophy was applied to all applications. ;-)

Just my $0.04.

Tim