Air was the wallpaper we introduced in KDE 4.2, but that is just the beginning of something larger. Air is supposed to be different than what Oxygen is, something that tries to appeal to a user base looking for a more "sexy" experience than Oxygen (yeah I know you are out there :) ), but to still have the capability of merging nicely with what we have now. The first thing we started working on was a Plasma theme. Plasma, with it's immense plasticity and a fantastic coder team, allows us to try to push for new ideas. Another extremely cool thing about Plasma is it's ability to become anything you want it to be. So a user in KDE 4.3 might have a desktop that looks like this, if that is his wish, without having to use external software: (click for fullscreen mode) This is an example of how simple one can make a desktop in the 4.3 Plasma once we all manage to get all of our plans working. The new systray speck will help, the work being done on the task bar will allow you ...
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And it really looks great!
However, it has to fit to the rest of the system, and I haven't seen it yet used in a current KDE setup - or in a KDE 4 preview which actually shows what we can expect with KDE 4 (at the moment the svn looks more like a buggy KDE3).
So it would be nice to see the icons "in action" somewhere, but that would require a first KDE 4 introduction, and it is to early for that I assume.
I know these aren't the final versions, but i really hope the default folder icons are given more thought as it's one of the most(if not the most) frequently viewed icon.
-my opinion currently of oxygen icons is that they are better than tango icons ;-)
Other then that, it's a great theme, couldn't have wished for anything better.
but thanks anyway : it's very nice !
This icon set almost seems to be designed for black-and-white monitors, with extraordinary over-use of black, and dark metallic shades, and hardly a bright color in use. The result are icons that are hard to distinguish quickly, and which deteriorate into a mess of dark grey at smaller colors, and, heck, a desktop that looks like it's about to head to a local goth hangout.
Maksim Orlovich,
KDE developer: styles, KHTML, et al.
What I like is that this theme is more colour neutral. The problem IMO with a theme like Crystal is that it can quickly conflict with colour schemes or other icon colours. Personally I like this more colour neutral approach better. I think what the creators also aim for is more contrast or shape recognition for the icons itself, but I could be wrong about that. Other then that, it's a matter of taste obviously. I hope KDE4 life's cycle will achieve a full mechanism so that your entire desktop colour theme can be adjusted on the fly, affecting your icons, styles and all the rest so we wouldn't need to have to 'enforce' colour schemes anymore.
I tend to agrea with some of what you say.
The theme is now a bit to black that has a reason, i wanted to make the icons more or less color independent so that colorblind people had no problem with them.
Its inportant that you use simple themes with it, plastic on light grey for exmple dough a new widget theme in tune with the icon theme would be nice.
One of main goal with Oxygen was that it would be a mature theme more sober and less childish.
But we still have a long way to go and somtimes i tend to agree that i over used black, somtimes no.
Thanks, all for all your great work!
It adds useful information which you else have to look up from the file extension.
I haven't seen the graphics for it or any hints that this is the look which is going to be used.