> Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric.
Actually, it's dismissive of the app developers' egocentrism. In so far as theming breaks usability, they do have a point. Distributions shouldn't make potentially incompatible changes to the default theme without QA. But it's not all the fault of distributions and not respecting branding is not a UX problem.
Yes, I may be too harsh towards people voluntarily writing free software. Developers putting their branding and their "vision" before usability and user control is just a major pet peeve of mine. And diplomacy is not my strong point.
> Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not the theme.
Actually I would blame the theme, but yeah, the average user would. Wrongly assigned blame is a broader issue with free software and the distribution system though.
> On the topic of icons: just like language, they evolve over time.
The XDG Icon Naming Specification does not actually specify the names of concrete icons, but of meanings. For example, there is no "looking-glass" icon, but there is a "system-search" icon. If you use the "system-search" icon to display a looking glass because that's the metaphor the icon theme you're testing with uses, your application may display the wrong icon with a different icon theme.
If an application needs an icon that is not standardized, it can include it similarly to its own application icon.
> It's about being able to recognize the brand across different operating systems
No, it's about the user recognizing the application. Which they can. The Firefox icon the open letter used as an example is very much the Firefox icon, just in a different style.
> it's also [...] not designed for the purpose of user experience (but in a sense, they still are)
As someone who struggles with this too: The world doesn't care that you own it and admit it; they only care if you fix it, or at least work around it for them.
The Firefox/Thunderbird example is absolutely ridiculous - it's not up to these application developers to decide what icon or colour the user sees. It's up to them to provide defaults. As you say, it's clearly still Firefox - but even if it weren't, there are several good reasons I can think of that a distribution might want to change it.
What bugs me is the attitude that the solution is to reduce the usage of themes, as opposed to improve the theme engines and app dev toolkits. Why shouldn't the OS be able to impose a global stylesheet for colours, images used for semantic icons, sizes of common elements? If I, as a user, want to starting fiddling with my system theme, is it not likely that I might want all the apps on the system to play ball? Sounds pretty jarring to me to have one or two apps with their stubborn hardcoded "branding". (Oh wait, that's what we already have with Electron apps that don't respect the OS theme or conventions, and they suck!).
Oh, apps can't be restyled without manual work they say. "Until this perception changes..." they say. NO!
In an ideal world, applications could be built easily in such a way that allowed them to be themed without causing major UI bugs. The fact that this is such a large issue with GTK apps is surely further evidence that GTK has a bit of a problem - especially considering that other UI platforms are able to do a better job.
Perhaps - and I'm really pushing it here (/s) - solving the root causes of issues arising from custom themes relating to sizing and spacing might actually have other benefits as well. Like better support for UI scaling. Maybe the scope of themes needs to be reduced a little so it's easier for application developers to support?
Actually, it's dismissive of the app developers' egocentrism. In so far as theming breaks usability, they do have a point. Distributions shouldn't make potentially incompatible changes to the default theme without QA. But it's not all the fault of distributions and not respecting branding is not a UX problem.
Yes, I may be too harsh towards people voluntarily writing free software. Developers putting their branding and their "vision" before usability and user control is just a major pet peeve of mine. And diplomacy is not my strong point.
> Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not the theme.
Actually I would blame the theme, but yeah, the average user would. Wrongly assigned blame is a broader issue with free software and the distribution system though.
> On the topic of icons: just like language, they evolve over time.
The XDG Icon Naming Specification does not actually specify the names of concrete icons, but of meanings. For example, there is no "looking-glass" icon, but there is a "system-search" icon. If you use the "system-search" icon to display a looking glass because that's the metaphor the icon theme you're testing with uses, your application may display the wrong icon with a different icon theme.
If an application needs an icon that is not standardized, it can include it similarly to its own application icon.
> It's about being able to recognize the brand across different operating systems
No, it's about the user recognizing the application. Which they can. The Firefox icon the open letter used as an example is very much the Firefox icon, just in a different style.
> it's also [...] not designed for the purpose of user experience (but in a sense, they still are)
Exactly. User experience >>> branding.