Adwaita vs GNOME Clearlooks
アドワイタ / GNOME Clearlooks
Both sit in Platform Screen Languages, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Adwaita
Adwaita is the name GNOME gives its default visual style, defined in the project's Human Interface Guidelines. One set of components has to carry a light style, a dark style and a high contrast style, so colour arrives as named variables that switch rather than as fixed values. A header bar crosses the top of every window holding buttons drawn with no background and no border, and interface icons are monochrome symbolics built on a 16 by 16 pixel grid.
GNOME Clearlooks
GNOME 2.12's standard theme made GTK applications friendly and simple through pale-gray windows, blue selection, restrained gloss and firm boundaries.
| Adwaita | GNOME Clearlooks | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2011– | 2005–2011 |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A single header bar across the top of the window, laid out on three alignment points with the window heading in the centre / Header bar buttons carry no background and no border, leaving only the symbol and the label on the surface / Monochrome symbolic icons drawn at 16 by 16 pixels with 2 pixel strokes and no perspective / A published palette of five steps per hue, including Blue 3 at #3584e4 | Pale-gray surfaces with blue selection bars / A quiet highlight only along button tops / Tabs and fields with restrained rounding / Small GNOME icons and a concise two-level hierarchy |
| Best used for | Building a Linux desktop app that has to hold the same structure in both the light and the dark setting · Adding a custom widget by riding on the existing style classes and colour variables instead of hard coding values | Aligning document, file and settings applications into one calm GTK environment · Recreating a 2000s Linux desktop without loud brand color |
| Type | Identify a control with either an icon or a label, not both. The exceptions are sidebar rows and view switchers. | Use a small system sans and create hierarchy through label weight rather than added decoration. |
| Composition | Put a header bar at the top, main actions at the start, the heading in the middle, menus at the end. Always leave blank area so the bar can be dragged. Group buttons with spacing rather than by linking them. | Stack menu, toolbar, work area and status bar shallowly, without ornamental regions. |
| Material | Take colour from the published palette and hold it as variables that swap for light, dark and high contrast. Draw icons as monochrome SVG and recolour them programmatically. | Use one blue selection color over pale gray, a slight top highlight and one fine dark outer edge. |
| Caution | Hard coded colour values only break once someone switches to the dark or high contrast style, which is exactly the state the author never looks at. | Old GTK widgets alone are not Clearlooks. State and hierarchy must be unified as a simple, friendly default surface. |