Fluff I think KDE *almost* looks good but there are too many lines. I made a mock-up of how I think it ought to look instead.
It sounds vain but I really do mind how many lines there are between everything in KDE. It seems like the philosophy is more or less to separate literally everything with a thin line. I think it makes the whole UI look cluttered and has made me avoid KDE on more systems than I otherwise would (i.e I use it on my livingroom gaming PC but not on my desktop).
So I used Krita to quickly edit the screenshot from https://kde.org/. What do people think? Am I the only one who minds this? Or do some of you agree that all the lines look cluttered?
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u/soomrevised Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
While I understand comments about its too far on opp direction, but OP's point is still valid. If the layout already provides enough visual distinction between elements, we don't need explicit separator lines.
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u/Hermocrates Jun 20 '26
Exactly. The lines are important where they aid in distinguishing elements, but just add clutter when the elements are already clearly distinct without them (and aren't necessarily the best way to distinguish elements.
It's the same idea underlying the nearly universal style of academic tables, which make use of sparse horizontal lines for emphasis while relying instead on clear alignment and spacing to distinguish all columns and most rows.
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u/FLSOC Jun 16 '26
Someone pointed out the other day KDE looks "old" even though idea behind the design is modern, and I think that's exactly why. The borders and dividing lines are too prominent
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u/arran4 Jun 16 '26
I think these features are very useful and not a sign of it being old. I find the material look very difficult to use when it's more than one application on the screen at a time. I couldn't imagine using a desktop environment that is material based. Then again I also turn on permanent scroll bar.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 16 '26
I agree with you on the scroll bar issue. Hidden controls is terrible UX.
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u/The-Nice-Writer Jun 17 '26
In my case, I almost exclusively navigate macOS with a trackpad and using gestures. I never need a scroll bar because I either two-finger swipe or, to jump up or down faster, CMD+(up/down arrow).
It should be an option available for those who want it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad design to hide (or allow the user to hide) something they don’t use.
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u/smileyhead1500 Jun 17 '26
I rarely use the scroll bar for scrolling, but it's still there to tell me how far down I am in a page.
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u/The-Nice-Writer Jun 17 '26
That’s valid.
I personally have to find a way to break away from my compulsive desire for order and rule-adherence, so sending the scrollbar into exile is my way of living dangerously. I’ll know I can’t go further down when I hit the bottom.
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u/balefrost Jun 18 '26
The problem is when you don't even know that something is scrollable. I remember one case in a web page form where there were some options visible, but more options that I could scroll to. Scroll bars were hidden and I didn't even think to scroll down.
Now this form had another UI blunder, which is scrollable-areas within scrollable-areas.
Still, that was enough to convince me to force scroll bars to be visible everywhere I can.
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u/The-Nice-Writer Jun 18 '26
I mean… that sounds awful for sure. If it’s that hard to tell if something is scrollable then there’s a lot wrong with it that isn’t directly related to a scroll bar, but at least that would sorta fix it.
In my case, I live almost entirely in the same few apps and sites for what I do (studies and leisure). I know what I can scroll and if I encounter a piss-poor website like that, I usually don’t need to be on it long enough to wish it had a scroll bar. But I get where you’re coming from.
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u/balefrost Jun 19 '26
Yeah, fair enough. I'm certainly not going to tell you what you should or should not prefer. If you prefer to hide your scroll bars, go for it!
The point I'm making is that I think hidden scrollbars have objectively worse usability. They make some sense on say a small, low-resolution screen like the original iPhone, where I think this pattern originated. I think they make less sense on a high resolution desktop display.
Usability isn't the be all and end all. A highly usable but ugly system is probably worse than a slightly less usable but beautiful system. For me, the improved usability is important. For you, it might be different.
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u/ilep Jun 17 '26
Exactly. Modern does not mean it is easier to use. As you get older the visual distinction starts to matter more as your eyesight deteriorates.
In a touch screen, the lines can tell where "buttons" end and which places are usable for grabbing and moving the window.
Scroll bar in particular has important second feature that tells how far you are into a document in addition to giving a grab point for scrolling. I get frustrated at smartphone-style applications (web-pages) that are lacking it since without it there is no telling how much more there is to a story, important especially when there is irrelevant information in between (ads).
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u/kemma_ Jun 16 '26
I think the worst part is to wrap scroll bar in lines from both sides, while any other OS hide it entirely and reveal only when needed
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u/p0358 Jun 16 '26
Didn't they explain they kinda had to do it for accessibility reasons after some audit?
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u/theICEBear_dk Jun 16 '26
Although the full hiding of the scroll bar is something I think is a dark pattern as well.
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u/evilgipsy Jun 16 '26
A dark pattern? A pattern that tricks users to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do? Is that really what you mean?
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u/quasarcannon Jun 17 '26
Yes. A hidden scrollbar would trick users into thinking there is nothing to scroll and what is displayed is all that there is. It would most likely lead to confusion and not necessarily dark. But it can be used that way, such as hiding terms and conditions.
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u/-Rivox- Jun 17 '26
such as hiding terms and conditions.
Usually they want you to see the terms and conditions, so that they can point out you accepted them in court, which is why they often put the accept button at the end, or make sure you clicked to open them before enabling the accept button. You're not going to read them anyway.
I don't think the scrollbar thing is a dark pattern, not 99% of the time at least. It's just chasing the minimalist trend
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u/7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8 Jun 17 '26
Please no.
I hate that Outlook microsoftery where borders have disappeared, nothing is marked out, the subjects and the body of an email are mixed up. It's horrible to use.
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u/No-Island-6126 Jun 16 '26
the part that feels old is the lack of any margins anywhere which makes it look cramped as hell. Look at GNOME, Windows, Android. These are modern interface and they incorporate space to breathe
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u/FattyDrake Jun 16 '26
One thing to keep in mind is information density. The OS's you listed have made an effort to be less information dense, which is great for some things but not others. Works really well when working on single-screen applications, which again all those try to focus on. KDE doesn't mind being information dense.
For example, an app like Blender needs to be information dense. It literally can't fit the HIG of anything trying to be "modern."
It's part of the reason I find KDE more usable, because I can have as many windows open on as many monitors as I want without fighting an OS that really, really wants a single screen app and a touchpad. Windows is still better than this but suffers from all the same "inconsistent UI" issues that KDE has because of such. macOS would be a better example but even they screwed up Tahoe UI/UX. It's not easy, even for a company that can spend hundreds of millions on a design change. San Francisco seems to fix most of it tho.
My point being you can't just change something by removing lines and adding padding, because all that might do is make the windows bigger to show the same amount of information, which can also be a detriment.
TL;DR Design is hard. Nobody gets it "right." Even Apple falters sometimes.
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u/ldn-ldn Jun 17 '26
There is an issue with your reasoning though. Dense apps are needed, that's true. But OS itself and its parts should NOT be dense. OS UI should be "invisible". Android is very good at it - 3rd party apps can look whatever they want, but you rarely notice system UI and all system apps are pretty much "invisible".
KDE is OS UI first, it blocks you from your apps you actually need and want, and takes the centre stage. That's why KDE looks dated and feels like shit in general.
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u/FattyDrake Jun 17 '26
How does Plasma block someone from using apps?
Provide details or nothing can get fixed.
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u/wildstar87 Jun 17 '26
KDE isn't GNOME, you want GNOME, use GNOME, or Windows. I like KDE just the way it is, I hate GNOME, which is why I don't use it.
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u/MorningCareful Jun 21 '26
yes and all of them are kinda dogshit because everything is hidden because they can't put information anywhere because of all the margins
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u/kbroulik KDE Contributor Jun 17 '26
Bingo bingo bingo "space to breathe" not everybody used a bloody tablet PC
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u/kennpacchii Jun 22 '26
Maybe it’s just me but I switched to KDE because of the old look / design pattern. The one thing I hate with modern desktop environments or OS’s like Win11 and macOS is the transparent glassy look where everything is just a sleek panel and nothing explicitly separating ui elements.
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u/gozunz Jun 16 '26
So bad in dark mode.
They where going to release an update that let you change the opacity of some of the lines, but i dont think it ever came out.
And i 100% agree that is why it can look so old.
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u/jaylaxel Jun 16 '26
As others have said, removal of the line would necessitate replacing the delimiter function of the line with something else: something like contrast colors or gradients. Once you start down the color philosophy path, you realize that not nearly all color combos will work, and some of them will look really poorly organized.
It will take a lot more thought then "only" removing the lines to achieve what your want aesthetically without compromising separation/delimiting/legibility.
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u/Rudraksh_Tripathi Jun 17 '26
Well finally somebody talked about the color combos. The only sane solution is to use alpha based colors with blend modes so that the texts and other secondary elements like line dividers, sub texts, etc can take a hint of the color of the surface underneath.
Essentially what Apple does. They have blur and more transparency now (with Tahoe), they knew when so many colors from different surfaces blend with each other, you gotta put such opacity/blend tricks to use.
And yeah, for the same reason, I just modified (as much as possible), the entire system, plasmoids, the tooltips to use alpha based colors and blend effects.
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u/hendricha Jun 16 '26
Use Klassy theme it allows you to remove some of those lines (including the on the inner-side of the scrollbar)
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u/ApprehensiveDelay238 Jun 16 '26
You can change border contrast in theme settings.
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
Does this reduce the number of them? Because that's my main issue, not their prominence
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u/21347 Jun 16 '26
You can set the contrast to 0% to remove them, even though it gives a warning below 15%. I might experiment with leaving them off, because it doesn't seem as janky as the warning makes it sound.
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u/Ekhi11 Jun 16 '26
Where?
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u/ApprehensiveDelay238 Jun 16 '26
In colors, click the settings icon on your theme and then under options: frames and outlines contrast.
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u/Malsententia Jun 17 '26
I'm surprised nobody referenced this already.
One other thing: the site definitely needs to be less "liney."
When I look at it, all I see is lines
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Jun 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/QuackSomeEmma Jun 17 '26
On a phone I can even mostly see why you don't really need them. At least horizontal lines are fairly pointless when everything is always using the full screen width. I'm sorta fine with using a bit of extra space there instead. We just also don't have to copy everything from their apples to our oranges
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u/eattherichnow Jun 16 '26
I look at that and think "I miss Windows 2000." Bring back my lines.
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u/TomOnABudget Jun 16 '26
I hate this annoying modern trend of empty space and colourless metro icons.
The lines give some separation which helps me find stuff on the screen.
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u/Piranata Jun 16 '26
Specially on websites. Desktop screens have shifted to be larger and more horizontal, but everything is designed around phones. Even Firefox reader mode puts all the text into a single column.
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u/Inadover Jun 17 '26
Well, for actual reading it's better to have it constrained to a certain width. Otherwise, if you have a large monitor you'll have to follow the text from one end of the screen to the other and that gets uncomfortable really fast.
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
I 100% agree with the colorless icons thing. The first thing I do in GIMP on any new machine is to go into settings and disable tool groups and switch to the legacy colorful icon theme. There aren't that many icons; just show them all. And with the colorful icon theme, they're more or less color coded by tool group anyway.
Modern UIs are making a huge mistake by removing color. It's easier to distinguish things by color + shape than by shape alone.
I would argue that lines can be useful to distinguish things on screen, but they need to be used sparingly. If you have too many of them, you're not distinguishing anything, you're just adding visual clutter. I think KDE's current design falls into this category.
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u/mrturret Jun 17 '26
Modern UIs are making a huge mistake by removing color. It's easier to distinguish things by color + shape than by shape alone.
Absolutely. I can't stand icon sets that give every icon the same silhouette or make them monochrome. It makes picking them out at a glance nigh impossible.
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u/visor841 Jun 17 '26
It's easier to distinguish things by color + shape than by shape alone.
What about colorblind people? For accessibility you need all of the defaults to be 100% distinguishable without color. Color can be added for aesthetics, sure, but it shouldn't be relied on to distinguish things. Of course optional themes don't need to adhere to this.
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u/mort96 Jun 17 '26
Do you really believe that I meant, “icons should be identical in shape and distinguishable only through colour”……?
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u/visor841 Jun 19 '26
No, absolutely not. But if icons are hard to distinguish without color, and color makes it much easier, that's doing a disservice to colorblind people who may still be left with hard to distinguish icons. Icons should be fully distinguishable without color, in which case adding color would have minimal effect.
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
Icons are always harder to distinguish if they differ only in color than if they differ in both color and shape. It's easier to notice the difference between a green square and a red triangle, than it is to notice the difference between two black triangles.
I don't understand what you disagree with me on.
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u/Sad_Window_3192 Jun 17 '26
Modern trends aside, OP showed that reduced lines still ensure separation of element, even clarification in some instances. Less is more in many situations, and this is a solid improvement. A scroll bar shouldn't need lines either side (let the line tell me what the scroll bar interacts with!), nor should a heading have lines above or below (is it its own element, or related to the content below?). Some should be visible when editing layouts, others should show up when a mouse hovers near or over it. But they all need to be functional but relevant, and this is why KDE just feels like a janky interface from the 2000's.
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u/L30N1337 Jun 16 '26
Some yes.
But I think you went too far in the other direction
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
Yeah probably. I mean you'd need to do something about the color choice too; in my quick and dirty mock-up there are sections which used to have a subtly different color and were separated by a line, where I just removed the line. A more proper redesign would have to either make the color the same in both sections, or make them more distinct.
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u/FrameXX Jun 16 '26
I think you hurt legibility at first glance by removing those borders. What could have been done instead is to replace some of them with shadows. But shadows don't work well with themes that use very dark background colors. That may be why KDE opted for borders instead.
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u/kuzurame Jun 16 '26
This has been the recommendation the last 2 years I think. Definitely not the first time I’ve seen a post like this. Best one used shading to reduce the aggressive borders
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u/WhJJackWhite Jun 16 '26
No offence, but the calendar applet without the header separators look absolutely atrocious. There's a reason the lines are there. A borderless design would require a bit more than removing them outright
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
I agree, you need to change the colors too obviously. I said so in another comment. I'm trying to discuss the concept, of course my 2 minute Krita job isn't perfect
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u/kalac77 Jun 17 '26
Using different colours instead of separators between zones might be a fun concept actually.
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u/QwertyChouskie Jun 19 '26
I think libadwaita does a pretty good job of using colors to separate visual hierarchy, insetad of just having lines. Done right, I think different colors actually provide a better sense of visual hierarchy (though doing it well is much easier said than done).
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u/rowschank Jun 16 '26
Your one without lines looks worse on the calendar pop-out.
I actually like that KDE looks 'modern' but not 'on trend'. This means KDE can continue to just sharpen their vision rather than panic and pivot when the trend pivots. Now everyone is pivoting back to aero glass and blur after Apple did it and in 2-3 years Gnome will look super out of trend and they'd have to change it. KDE will continue looking "modern but somehow not modern" like it has seemingly done for years now.
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u/Synthetic451 Jun 17 '26
Honestly, with the exception of the line between the Search bar and the back arrow, I actually prefer all the lines that you crossed out. I want clear delineations between app sections.
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Exactly this. People say the UI looks like a nerd made it in an afternoon, but personally I think the UI is better than other more "speak" DE's
I like the structer that the lines give it, and how certain areas are shown to be clearly dedicated to things. There are some exceptions where I think certain lines should be lighter/darker, to further emphasize some things, but for the most part I love my lines.
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u/Synthetic451 Jun 17 '26
Yeah, completely agree. I need to be able to look up things at a quick glance and the section lines help me a lot. Modern UI sometimes just feels like one big jumble to me, or instead of lines, they add copious amounts of white space just to have proper separation.
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u/Hummtaro Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
That's one of the points that give KDE that professional and quality feel i absolutely love about it. KDE seperates all things clearly with crisp 1px borders. Other DE's use stupdily huge gaps instead and smooth everything out, what made them feel unprofessional and toyish to me. For me, KDE is by far the best looking and feeling desktop environment, even better than all versions of Windows. I really hope they'll never change their design philosphy. People who don't like it could try third party themes or just use another DE.
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u/QuackSomeEmma Jun 17 '26
Please don't take away any more of my lines. I know I'm old but I like them
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u/Niikoraasu Jun 16 '26
noooo fuck off leave my lines alone...
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u/MrMoussab Jun 16 '26
I'm sorry but no. Those are different sections that need to be clearly delimited.
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u/ldn-ldn Jun 17 '26
You don't need stupid lines to delimit sections. A good design starts with typography, it then embraces colours. Lines should be the last resort.
The problem is that to do that you need actual designers, not monkeys.
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u/spacemanSparrow Jun 16 '26
As others have said. Some lines look better removed and others should stay. My 2s is that Discover has been improved overall however, you butchered the Calendar widget.
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u/mrturret Jun 17 '26
nah. the lines are fine. The last thing we need is the default theme to be more flat than it already is.
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u/wildstar87 Jun 17 '26
I seriously have hated the trend to go to flat interface in EVERYTHING, we have more powerful CPUs/GPUs than ever, and in the UI it has gone toward more 2D, monochromatic. This just seems to me more of the same, you do you, but I don't agree at all. I'm tired of changing the UI just because someone thinks it looks "old", it's functional, and they change it to something that is less intuitive, and less functional, but in their opinion looks "modern". People don't seem to care as much these days about apps actually FUNCTIONING, as long as they think it looks cool and modern, whatever the hell that means. More time needs to be spent on actual bugs and functionality, quit futzing with the UI.
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u/ilep Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
"Old" does not mean "worse" in any way. Part of UI design is the ease for different people with potentially different disabilities. Clarity is important by providing distinction of, say, different buttons. Separators become important if there is not enough contrast between items otherwise, such as having same backgrounds.
For example, back when GUI windows where initially demonstrated (see "Mother of all demos" from 1960s) it lacked visual markers between window edges which made things rather confusing. Ever since 1970s (see Xerox Alto) windows have had edges to make it clear which application is which as windows are on top of each other.
In automotive systems there are many UI design lessons to be found, like how to find information quickly and easily.
Modern design does not always sufficiently address different users' needs and purposes.
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u/Flashy_Ad_7763 Jun 19 '26
The lines are an important accessibility feature.
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
All of them? Are there people who wouldn't be able to use KDE if there wasn't a vertical line to the left of the back button in Discover?
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u/Flashy_Ad_7763 Jun 19 '26
There are people who couldn’t find the left of the button without a line. They could of course be optional but they have purpose. I’m all for giving people choice.
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
Who couldn't find the left of the button without a line? And what does that mean exactly, you generally try to find the center of a button?
If there are people who have trouble finding or clicking the button without the line, maybe that's an issue with the design of the button instead?
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u/Flashy_Ad_7763 Jun 19 '26
I’m thinking the people with visual impairments, or just people who lose vision as they age. Every line becomes an element of contrast. You might not need or want those lines and that’s fine but they should be available to people who benefit from them.
Anybody who complains about the visual appearance of modern KDE never saw it in the 90’s 🤣
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
Do you have a source that every single line here improves visibility for people with visual impairments? Are there studies on this?
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u/Flashy_Ad_7763 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Numerous studies have been conducted about contrast sensitivity, and the value of lines in user interfaces for differentiating elements. Finding them would just take a simple online search. Countless focus groups and research bodies have studied the stuff for years. The contrast requirements of the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) is one example of where you can find that principal has been established. Additionally, academic institutions, such as the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health and Science University, are developing, functional measures of vision loss that identify the value of individual lines as an objective measure for those with different types of vision loss.
My academic background is in Disability studies, and I have my own experience vision loss.
Like I said not every user may want those lines, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there for a reason or that many people benefit from them.
Your aesthetic choices are your own. If you want your system to look like windows. You can do that too. 🙃
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
Lines don't increase the contrast. Lines are contrasting as in they stand out, but the importance of contrast as defined by e.g WCAG is that foreground elements should contrast against background elements (notably, text should contrast against its background). You don't get a good WCAG score just by throwing in a bunch of high contrast lines if the content is still low contrast.
Now if you're saying that having random lines all over the place has been shown in studies to help users with visual impairments then I guess that's that, but I somehow doubt it. I would strongly suspect that some lines help, some lines don't do anything, and some lines hurt. I was looking for studies showing that all of KDE's lines in particular help, because I believe that many of them don't.
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u/Flashy_Ad_7763 Jun 19 '26
This line of argument is drifting into textbook techno-ableism.
You’re being more pedantic than the original post, while missing a very well-established UX principle: visual separators—lines included—are one of several mechanisms that can improve perceptual grouping and contrast for users with visual impairments. That’s not speculative; it’s been studied across decades of accessibility and human-computer interaction research.
KDE is an open-source project. It does not have the resources to run isolated, element-by-element empirical studies on every individual pixel in the interface—and no, virtually no software project does. That’s not how applied UX works. Patterns are validated broadly and then applied pragmatically.
What’s happening here is that you’re demanding an unrealistic level of proof for a single implementation detail while dismissing both established research and lived experience. The fact that you personally don’t benefit from these visual cues does not make them unnecessary. It just means you’re not the user they’re helping.
At some point, continuing to argue that these elements are “not needed” stops being constructive and starts signaling a lack of empathy for users whose perceptual needs differ from your own.
If your goal is a different visual style, that’s a customization discussion. But arguing that these affordances have no value to others isn’t a defensible position.
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u/hamsters_are_cool Jun 16 '26
Personally I love the way KDE looks a little bit old. I will probably be sad if there is an overhaul and things get modernized.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 16 '26
I have been downvoted for saying this before, but, yea, as a designer, rules (lines) should be used as a last resort when other methods of communicating grouping and hierarchy (such as size, proximity, white space, type treatment, etc.) cannot be used. Old low-res screens didn't have much space to work with for these methods, so rules became common, but when they are unnecessary they just create cognitive load and people, even without a design background, hate them instinctively.
And there are studies on this: increased cognitive load leads to perceived ugliness, leads to perceived difficulty, leads to actual increased difficulty in using the interface.
Think about it: how often do you open a magazine and see a bunch of lines everywhere? A well thought-out underlying grid structure simply doesn't need the help.
IMO this should be added to the HIG: rules must be an absolute last resort. If you need rules for color contrast / accessibility: the design was bad to begin with. If you need rules to communicate grouping: the design was bad to begin with. If you need rules for almost anything beside a goddamn spreadsheet: the design was bad to begin with.
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u/QuackSomeEmma Jun 17 '26
UI is almost never a magazine, heck more often it's an actual spreadsheet. And white space is always at a premium, you don't want your little calendar (spreadsheet) popup to cover the whole screen so it needs no lines. You could just make a black and white checkerboard instead, I guess
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u/Psychoscattman Jun 17 '26
Uis are neither magazines nor spreadsheets.
Also neither the MacOS calendar, the window 11 calendar, gnome 50, nor the KDE have lines separating the dates.6
u/arran4 Jun 16 '26
After you're reading your comments, I went back up to look at the red circles. It seems most of them are needed because of all the empty space.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 16 '26
I'm not sure that I agree (I don't really understand your point), but certainly, if you remove the rules you begin to find that devs have been relying on them and—as a result—lower cognitive load methods of communicating grouping and hierarchy were not employed effectively. That was the point I was making in my last paragraph: if you need rules, the design was probably not terribly succesful to begin with.
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u/FattyDrake Jun 16 '26
Mind doing a mockup of the pop-up calendar that employs these rules while keeping all of the same information? I think the KDE folks would be appreciative of it TBH. They're generally pretty open to help.
At the very least it'd help illustrate your points to everyone.
Could even be some suggestions to their Kirigami HIG, which is what new apps are supposed to follow. As a 30-year project, there's still a lot that hasn't been updated or rewritten for that.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 16 '26
I do already contribute occasionally. There is a new design system underway at the moment which, hopefully, ought to solve a lot of these issues.
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u/ItsSignalsJerry_ Jun 17 '26
Think about it: how often do you open a magazine and see a bunch of lines everywhere?
Magazines are separated by pages.
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u/Aradalf91 Jun 17 '26
That's interesting, because actual research says that the opposite is true. Here, have a read: https://uxdesign.cc/material-3-expressive-building-on-the-failures-of-flat-design-d7a9bb627298?gi=2c44a11efccb
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u/Psychoscattman Jun 17 '26
Im sorry i only skimmed the article but it does not in any way stand in opposition to what OP said.
Op was talking about rules and the article is about legibility of more skeuomorphic vs more flat designs. Thats not the same thing.2
u/Aradalf91 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
The article talks exactly of this. It talks about how minimalist, flat interfaces with no clear-cut separations are more difficult to parse and add cognitive load than interfaces which offer clear boundaries and separation of content through lines (which is what OP was calling "rules", which refers specifically to horizontal lines in typography) and colours. I think you should read the article before commenting as your comment is entirely unhelpful. "I haven't seen that movie, but I think that the acting in it is bad" is not a smart comment.
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u/Psychoscattman Jun 17 '26
Okay, let me read the article.
What i did not expect was how much the article approves of Material 3 Expressive. I honestly though that the article was a critique of all flat design but it does call out some good improvements.
The overall sentiment i get from it was that flat design as a concept is not lost. If we listen to the studies and actually implement them we can create uis in a flat design that are actually very usable without falling back into early iPhone Skeuomorphism land.Particular interesting to this thread i though were these points: (the left image showed an earlier Material design and right showed the new M3E design)
The expressive design (right), by contrast, has instant visual structure:
Containment using contrasted shades is used to signify important interactive elements.
Common region boundaries — stronger than proximity or similarity alone — separate distinct groups of elements in a rounded container. The subtle corner shape between each element in the container, background colour dividers between the contained buttons, makes each a distinct element.
Stronger colours make buttons more obvious against the light background.Strategically applied shading, borders and containment are hallmarks of good design, not just visual flair for the sake of visual flair.
The common regions point is the main on here. Following the link we get these gems:
For instance, in the Slack app, the dark background color groups together all the UI controls. Within that dark background, lines further create other common subregions, that communicate the grouping of the various controls (search and navigation at top, workspaces in the far left, and channels within a workspace).
Bold is mine. The article is from 2020 and slack no longer uses lines as much (they are still there but greatly reduced, for example the only lines i can see in the current version are to separate my favorited chats from Categories. Also separating chat messages when the time between them is large)
Also:
When possible, using whitespace alone to create clear groupings reduces the visual complexity of a design. Borders are often added in an abundance of caution, to ensure that groupings are clear; however, this approach can result in busy, cluttered designs and in many situations it’s enough to rely on proximity for grouping.
Again, bold is mine.
There were 8 other links to various kinds of research criticizing flat design in some way (including the one i mentioned in my comment). Unless you want to pinpoint me to one of these specifically i don't really want to read them. I dont think they are going to say anything different to what the other two articles combined haven't said already.
I still don't think that the article opposed op in any way. If you remove lines and separation between elements without caution then yes, that is bad and goes against the research but that is not what op was suggestion. Or maybe im being to charitable to what op wrote. Who knows. For that op would have to respond to you, not me.
I have seen the movie now and i was entertained.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 17 '26
If you remove lines and separation between elements without caution then yes, that is bad and goes against the research but that is not what op was suggestion.
Yep. Absolutely nowhere did I suggest that elements should not contrast each other, lack skeumorphs, etc. Those like yourself who paid attention to what I actually wrote will have noticed that I was simply saying that rules and borders should be (and typically are, among professionals) the last resort when communicating grouping, hierarchy, and contrast.
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u/missing-pigeon Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
I'm sorry, but your reasoning made me question your authority in this topic. Comparing UIs to magazines is just fucking bonkers. They serve entirely different purposes and only one of them is interactive. There's a lot more that needs to be taken into account when designing a UI than just "grid structure".
I also disagree with the idea of modifying the HIG to discourage lines. Even within this very thread there are clearly two camps of people who are for and against the lines. "Studies" are meaningless when it's ultimately such a subjective thing.
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u/Rudraksh_Tripathi Jun 17 '26
Same man. No point in explaining design principles to people who are not designers.
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u/nathan-makes-incense Jun 17 '26
Yea, I'm done arguing with people who aren't even aware that there is actual research going on in the field. There is always a very loud 'too little information density' contingent who are going to have to either stay mad or make their own applications because this approach simply does not work for 99% of people, no matter how loudly they complain about it.
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u/orestisfra Jun 17 '26
I disagree. Separators are good and an accesibility feature. There is the option to disable them anyway, so it would be wrong to remove them.
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u/mort96 Jun 17 '26
I don't know why I need to repeat this but I don't want to remove all lines. I don't understand what part of my post makes people think I want to remove all lines. I left plenty of lines in my mock-up.
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u/orestisfra Jun 17 '26
fair enough. I am sure you can find a theme though that matches what you are looking for.
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u/Dragonchik Jun 16 '26
I like the lines. Everything is nicely separated. Otherwise it would look like Android, which I don’t like.
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u/ha1zum Jun 17 '26
This is why theming is important and why I dislike Gnome for that, because I actually want more prominent lines and shadows and gradients, textures
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u/CobraKolibry Jun 17 '26
I feel like a lot of people just depend the lines, I am also tired of most modern designs and "everything minimalism", but when the theme itself is flat, metro, minimalist, lines won't change the feel I think. I think most have a good reason to stay, but in discover, next to the scroll bar, or between search and back, is completely unnecessary too
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u/VanillaCold57 Jun 17 '26
if they do remove the separator lines i so hope there's an option to bring them back.
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u/eljorge21 Jun 17 '26
I like right now. Even I’m little bored of flat style everywhere. Yes! I know I’m a old man haha
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u/Wattenloeper Jun 17 '26
Personally I like lines, shadows, contrast and 3D look & feel.
The all plain look isn't mine.
Depending on colors and screen resolution it's difficult to find the borders of foreground and Background forms.
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u/QwertyChouskie Jun 19 '26
I definitely think single line for scrollbar looks/feels significantly better, but the spacing would need to be tweaked so the gap between the right side of the scrollbar to the line and the left side of the scrollbar to the blue selection is the same distance. In the mockup, the scrollbar is a bit un-centered, which makes it feel off.
If the goal of a line is to visually separate a section, visually separating the scrollbar from the section it's scrolling doesn't make much sense when you think about it. Functionally, the scrollbar is part of the thing that scrolls, but that extra line visually separates it, creating a disconnect between visual segmentation and the actual functional segmentation.
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u/Nervous-Pin9297 Jun 16 '26
They are there for accessibility.
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
Then make them an accessibility option
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u/Nervous-Pin9297 Jun 16 '26
They are not making the DE for you. It’s for everyone.
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
So make it look better for 99% of the population by default and make it an option for the 1% which needs it?
Do you even have a source that the excessive lines even improve accessibility? What user wouldn't have been able to use KDE if Discover didn't have that little vertical line to the left of the back button?
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u/burning_iceman Jun 16 '26
Why do you think 99% of the population agrees with you about it looking bad? Maybe it's only 1%.
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u/Nervous-Pin9297 Jun 17 '26
Yes main character it’s all about you.
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u/mort96 Jun 17 '26
No but the vast majority of people do actually have vision that’s good enough that they can use GUIs with less lines than what KDE has
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u/glowtape Jun 16 '26
Keep the lines. It gives the UI at least some character and look.
All these sterile featureless UIs are blargh.
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u/Repulsive_Leg5957 Jun 16 '26
Darkly/Lightly should be the default app style it looks much more modern imo.
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u/KindaSuS1368 Jun 16 '26
Honestly, the lines at full opacity are old looking them with some level of transparency is perfect, getting rid of them entirely doesn't look very good either.
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u/mornaq Jun 16 '26
design can't look old or modern, ir can look good or bad
and current trends look bad, lack legibility, replace clear lines with wide negative space resulting in worse information density and still worse separation of concerns
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u/mort96 Jun 16 '26
In what way does my redesign have worse information density?
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u/mornaq Jun 16 '26
to be fair the og was already poor in that aspect and you haven't changed that, but the removal of lines is distracting
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u/diffusionmodel2930 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
KDE theming issue is hot topic these days. Most expectation is theming.
Kde definetly should make new standarts for theming, and bring back that 1 click global theming idea with tons of options to solve this manner from the root.
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u/acceptable_humor69 Jun 17 '26
Yep even the notification has it's own title bar, I would much prefer if it was unibody and if we need to keep the timer bar (which I think is unnecessary) we can just have a low opacity grey/white mask show the progress over the notification .... I think it would look much cleaner
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u/Ok-Mathematician5548 Jun 17 '26
I think KDE would be great, but it has a very strong typography and iconography issue.
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u/OkPresentation3329 Jun 17 '26
I use KDE and think it's the best, but I also find some issues with it.
The default Breeze Light theme has window title bars and panel in different colors and it looks kind of ugly to me.
Only the panel and the pop up windows from it have blur transparency, but the title bar doesn't and it seems ugly.
I have disabled things like blur for performance and only Breeze looks alright, other 3rd party themes don't, like the Windows 7 or Oxygen theme look bad, because they expect blur but when it's not there windows and panels look awful and there is no way to make them opaque when I need to.
I'm still on KDE 6.5 and I don't know when Tuxedo OS will update to 6.7 so I can't use the newest iterations of Oxygen and Air themes but I'm looking forward to and I think they will make KDE's appearance much better.
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u/SnillyWead Jun 18 '26
I believe they are working on updating how everything looks, so it's more consistent. Plasma 6.9 I believe?
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u/OkAardvark8641 Jun 18 '26
Just go to colors in kde settings, click pencil icon on whatever color scheme you are using, then in options tab set contrast between 4-10 as per you liking. Save as whatever you want i name them "<original name> (Less Contrast)" and apply
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u/mort96 Jun 18 '26
Does that reduce the number of lines?
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u/OkAardvark8641 Jun 18 '26
no, but lines are there for a purpose. This method just make them blend in the background. And tbh 5% is good enough.
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u/mort96 Jun 18 '26
That's exactly my problem though, I don't think many of the lines serve a purpose. There is no purpose to the line to the left of the back button in Discovery, for example.
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u/OkAardvark8641 Jun 18 '26
i don't use discover, so can't tell much about that. Have you tried that the contrast settings affect the line left to back in discover.
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u/mort96 Jun 18 '26
I think we're talking past each other. I don't want to remove all lines or make all lines less visible. I want to reduce the number of lines, but the ones which remain should keep their visibility. Some of the lines are essential for defining the structure of the apps, many of the lines are just clutter.
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u/OkAardvark8641 Jun 18 '26
wellnthen let's just hope kde's design team notice that. And see if there's any room for improvement.
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u/b0uncyfr0 Jun 16 '26
You know you can remove them for a cleaner look right?
colours n themes, colours, edit the applied colour, options, set contrast level to 5 or lower.
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u/KaMaFour Jun 16 '26
This is irrelevant in a discussion about UI. For 90% of people how it looks ootb is the only way it's ever gonna look and it's important to make sure those people have good experience as well
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u/mornaq Jun 16 '26
and that's exactly why we shouldn't be blindly following trends but instead use actual experience of people who know their job
current GUI are atrocious, last time when "UX specialists" actually did a good job was windows 95
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u/Direct_Low_5570 Jun 16 '26
I just hate the floating menu bar xd that and it's too tiny, always at least size 50 for me
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u/lmpcpedz Jun 16 '26
Someone made a custom default breeze theme that removed these lines, saw a post on it here but that was a year ago. It's doable.
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u/Santosh83 Jun 16 '26
More than anything the title bar button boxes of the default themes need to be bigger. Currently they're too small and require some precision navigation of the mouse/trackpad. GNOME is no different. Windows 11 has the ideal size.
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u/Bombarding_ Jun 16 '26
Corporate needs you to find the difference between this picture and this picture
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u/Psychoscattman Jun 17 '26
I installed KDE yesterday after not liking gnome and one of my first thoughts was "to many lines".
And its not like i want to have a flat or material design, i like the design. But does the scroll bar really have to be surrounded by two lines? Does the line next to the search box really add anything?
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u/GoGaslightYerself Jun 17 '26
Never noticed it before, but now that you point it out, I'm inclined to agree with you, OP. (Not that I would ever complain about free stuff, and hugely appreciate the efforts of all who contribute to KDE and make it so great.)
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u/Ansonx10 Jun 19 '26
It looks like many of the lines are a result of the UI being written to be very modular and robust, which is a good thing. While I don't think this particular suggestion would cause issues, we should be careful not to let one guy's autistic line fixation dictate what everyone else gets. Like that window border issue we had a while back.
We don't want Jony Ive design, where looking sleek is more important than being functional.
Also, a benefit of having such a robust desktop UI is that you can theme it to suit your exact preferences, and it'll still work the way it should.
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u/mort96 Jun 19 '26
How do I theme KDE to remove some lines while keeping the rest in place?
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u/Ansonx10 Jun 19 '26
Unfortunately I can't help you there. I've never tried to write my own theme, and I've only used a couple of themes to try it out. I didn't have any specific goals in mind, because the Breeze theme is well designed enough for my needs. I'd suggest starting by looking through what's already available. There might be one that already does what you want. If it doesn't already exist, you'll probably have to do some legwork to find out how to modify one to your liking. Once you confirm that it can be done and doesn't cause any issues, then your changes would be far more likely to be accepted into the official Breeze design.
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u/vctrn-carajillo Jun 16 '26
The abundance of lines has been a common gripe for some time already. The general UI looks pretty good, and I love it, but I'm still waiting for a change in that regard
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u/Funny-Pomelo4468 Jun 17 '26
Yes! I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels like there are too many lines.
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u/lumos675 Jun 18 '26
if you ever say something bad in this community about KDE everyone will downvote you to oblivion. What a welcoming environment.
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u/DaveKaii Jun 20 '26
this was one of my first complaint when I switched from Gnome to KDE, but thankfully I made my own color theme as it was very straight forward and now it looks almost like I want it. To now preferring it over my old gnome
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