>
> 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.
>
Yes, it is true that grouping UI elements is good, but the lines can be smaller (or less obvious than a big black line), as in newer themes.
By changing the theme, you can see that the separators are not removed, but replaced by smaller ones.
Once again, not seeing the separators doesn't mean that the options will go everywhere in a crazy order :)

> 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
>

By searching more on kde-look.org, I found out that the updated Crystal SVG from PCLOS MiniMe 2008 was that new version of Crystal SVG. I wonder why it hasn't been choosed as the default icon theme for the last KDE 3.5.x series.

I found an interesting icon theme that integrates well with TDE with colorful icons, brighter than those of Oxygen. Of course, it is quite different of what we are used to, but it worth trying it. I will probably use it in the next release of my livecd. It looks very nice!
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/KFaenza?content=143890

-Alexandre