I'm not saying you NEED custom design, it was a suggestion as I did not understand the whole reason why so many apps that I see look terrible.

If it can be done as is with elements that exist, then so be it. I just want things to look good.

The reason is that they are very early in development. Look at some of the more mature apps and you'll see that actually most look quite nice and are very usable.

EVERYTHING is possible, i'm betting there's much more freedom to customize than in iphone or android, you can change the whole UI framework, like with QT, or ELF or what have you. You can add all kinds of custom effects and whiz bangs. Look at some of the proof of concepts posted in Maemo-Planet.

I'm with Joshua. We need a concerted effort to make apps look better. How about we have a council or group or graphic artists that work together to work on app UIs? Most of the apps are free, and there's little incentive to make them do anything but work and adhere to the Fremantle standards. But if devs could finish the basics and pass them on to the UI Task Force for beatification, we'd have much more glamorous and sleek looking apps.

From day one, Joshua has been offering his graphical services free of charge, as his signature shows. Evidently not many are taking him up on his offer, but probably should. Apps could look a bit better, imo. I think he's just frustrated that there hasn't been more of a focus on UI and graphical elements in applications.

No offense, but not ugly. Just needing improvement. I'd love for Joshua to get ahold of Dial Central. It is confusing as to what it even does from a glance, and I think screen real estate could be used more efficiently without so many tabs. But I'm a big epage and DC fan, so I want that to be known. Just if Dial Central were an iPhone or WebOS app, it'd be laughed off the screen. We need to step up our game, and look past function and more into design as well. An inviting app can make a simple utility a hit. Look at IM apps, and the best looking usually win, regardless if its less feature complete.

And that Twitter app did look pretty bad. I hope he's able to update the UI soon, because I need a more feature packed Twitter app. Hahlo is ok, but I want something faster.

Hard to vote with dollars on free software...
Man, tex. You a few years earlier, and I'd nominate you to write a book in the Bible. Well put. You've got conversation and writing in your blood, and we all know conversation rules the nation. Ever thought about pimping? We could be rich! I'll be the banker and enforcer, you be the recruiter and motivational speaker.

"Now go get that paper, b***hes!! Let's go!"

lol...

Why not just try to help people with poor user interfaces?

Thats what I want to do, but it's hard to go around hunting for poorly designed apps, it would be better if developers came and "hired" designers wouldn't it?

I think that "better looking" can be very highly subjective, and to improve the looks by adding graphics can go beyond the line of making an app pretty and transform into a mess.

That being said, and with all due respects to Daniel Would, a way to improve his twitter app might be; to add icons to the buttons: a little clock next to timeline, a face talking next to mentions, a letter with an arrow in direct messages, a magnifying lens next to search, etc etc.Oh, and drop the blue color for the user names... I would use dark gray.

Now, on to themes themselves: the point Joshua made are that the buttons are just rectangles with rounded edges. If you compare them with the buttons on the iPhone or Palm Pre, you will notice that the buttons have gradients and shadow effects, that make them look a bit 3D, like emerging from the screen. More visually satisfying. And the background, instead of a plain color, could be a very diffused graphic of the current background wallpaer... or a picture of the Tweeter bird in watermark...

The question would be if Fremantle UI accepts this kind of improvements by default.

I said something similar (with pics) here: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=47

Going to come back and back to this thread often.

Force is a hard word, but you can be persuasive. Take Yerga adn WordPy. I really liked that app, and felt like you did. But I needed to make sure that in asking about what's possible to improve, that I also offered items to him that were doable.

A great looking UI also has an excellent process flow. If you will, seperate content from presentation from functionality. And so, with that app, the functionality was there, however the content couldn't flow with the user's expectations. We fixed that, and now the presentation layer can come in and be further cleaned up.

The UI was successful enough to move to Maemo 5 with little major changes to the presentation layer (icons and a few menus here and there).

Such successes come when a solution is presented, not just a critique. And I know you know this, so I'm more or less speaking in the hopes of helping others. But one of the best things about the Maemo community is that if you can think of something that can be better, you can package it up in such a way that even if you can't code it, that it can be well received.

Easy, make the graphics easy to use. Make the User Interface Guide a requirement when voting for best apps and apps to be profiled for the platform.

My take on the Twitter App, i know this doesn't work with the guidelines entirely, but is it so bad, or any worse than the original?

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=54

Joshua, that's an overreaction toward what's been said.

Custom is not a bad word. The point made by a few is that if you're going to go custom, go all the way and do it for a solid reason-- like, custom was the only way to do the app justice.