“The GUI’s is an inter-website contest in which top graphics designers from around the world compete for USD 15000 in cash and prizes. This year’s contest focuses on WindowBlinds visual styles, IconPackager Icons, and Wallpapers. Anyone can participate as an individual or part of a team.” The winners in the two icon categories are already announced (most original | most usable), and the finalists in the most prestigious category, that of visual styles, are also announced.
Some of these are very nice looking, especially in the usability category, and are a huge improvement over the default Windows XP interface. I would like to have seen, however, an interface that accompanies rearranging the standard min,max,close button layout on the right. I’ve found that at high resolutions, a minimize button on the left side of the toolbar and a close button on the right side works better, as you won’t find yourself accidentally clicking the wrong button. Maximize at most higher resolutions is pretty useless (unless it’s an MDI program), and window borders are pretty much obsolete thanks to drop shadows. Of course this is entirely my opinion, but if WindowBlinds supports rearranging button layout, these themes should at least be designed with that mind. Some themes, like Acrylic, reflect this well; others, like GPod or Jitter, only work with the traditional button layout. This should at least be taken into consideration when the final “Most usable” theme is selected.
As for the “Most original” category, usability issues aside, I think that LORE takes the cake with the “OMGWTF where the hell are my buttons?” idea it has going on.
“I’ve found that at high resolutions, a minimize button on the left side of the toolbar and a close button on the right side works better, as you won’t find yourself accidentally clicking the wrong button.”
Try NeXTstep / GNUStep / WindowMaker.
“Maximize at most higher resolutions is pretty useless (unless it’s an MDI program), and window borders are pretty much obsolete thanks to drop shadows.”
I agree here. But there’s really nothing new – all features are available and have been (for years( in non-“Windows” GUIs.
This is the *Windows* GUI championships, or so it seems anyway. The icon sets don’t even include Firefox icons.
Good for Windows users at least I suppose.
Edited 2006-10-30 01:45
yeah. But if this is *Windows* GUI championships, then there’s no need to provide any other icons beside the ones originally comes with Windows…
And some of them is really nice, too bad it is packed to be used with WindowBlinds
I have had used windowblinds 4/5 and iconpackager for many months before getting my linux box back. The themes are very nice and professional, but it’s really only good if you look at the screenshot, desktop, explorer, and IE. Most applications, including vs.net and office, just can’t work with those themes, not to mention a lot of horrible icons hard-coded inside windows shell and various programs.
Still, it’s better than none, but gnome/kde or osx would never have such issues
Edited 2006-10-31 21:12
I vote for this one:
http://img85.imageshack.us/my.php?image=listenbonfire5kz.png
I just get this error:
HTTP Error 500-13 – Server too busy
I have tried a couple of times the last hour..
Well if everybody keeps trying it won’t get any more quiet, will it?
Is there any place I can download these themes?
Is there any place I can dowload these styles and icon sets?
It’s right there. But in WindowBlinds format (for the visual styles, at least)
Thanks, when I checked clicking on the pictures sent to non-existing files. I see that this is no more the case.
If you don’t have WindowsBlinds, but still want to see the icons, download the *.ip file, extract it using your favorite archiver (it’s a zip file) and then extract the icons from the *.icl file inside the archive.
There are some seriously talented graphical artists out there. Congratulations to the winners, all discussed themes are of an astounding high quality.
Now, to get them interested in doing designs for FOSS
Now, to get them interested in doing designs for FOSS
…Or other commercial OSS
I would like to see any of these icons pack with DRAWERS instead of FOLDERS for a certain operating systems that uses the drawer analogy for store files
ah, the memories
that’s why this championships should be called “Windows GUI Championships 2006”
They forgot the “Windows” apparently.
Plasmatron is something else. I wouldn’t actually want to use it, but it’s definitely something else. Anyone have any idea what those things are that look sort of like, um, roundish grills at the top of some, ah, panels/windows?
I could use that theme on KDE or GNOME… It's simply beautiful!
yep but it needs some open mindness, maybe they can open their contest to Linux or Mac OS X.
I think Linux is the OS that needs better icons set. Mac OS X don’t, it’s beautiful as it is.
What if we say to those artist to create their icon set for Linux. We should provide a full .zip file (yeah, do not think of gzip for them they will not use 7-zip or what so ever free software) with every default icon we have in a default installation. Everything from Xorg logo icon to Gnome gtk-stock-icons (those in the buttons), and of course everything from KDE.
After you provide those to them, they should procude something very good, and best of all it will be Gnome-KDE well integrated like Tango.
Why no-one has done this already. I really don’t get it.
There are plenty of themes available for KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, Xfce, etc, etc…
Just do a quick search on Google images for instance, and you’ll probably not find the same desktop twice.
Of all the desktops I’ve seen over the years I find the ones running on *bsd/*nix much more interesting than Windows versions.
Congratulations to all the artists involved in this contest! Those were all great icons, really. I didn’t expect someone could produce so great peaces of art