Will Bitcoin QT ever look more "pretty"?

[belfOrt]

It's all about simplicity. I think it is fine as it is personally, it plainly shows me that it isn't bloated with unnecessary things. Clean and simple.

If you're keen, why not hack the client ? (My knowledge is dull on the client is dull, so excuse me for anything I saw poorly )

[gmaxwell]

lol of course this comes from a user named "kittycatbtc"
no disrespect. i think devs are still working on a robust protocol rather than glossy gui...but it will come in time i'm sure.

A good user interface is no less serious work than a robust protocol— doing it well, and not just pretty, but one that is pretty and easy without losing power or misleading users, is a serious challenge for serious talent... it's an area where more people with skills could step up and help, it's not an area where the existing active contributors are strongest.

[giveBTCpls]

Things I would like to see within the wallet:
-Chat (chatting to addresses so you can confirm the person is online and so on before sending a payment).
-Graphics from different markets
-Direct access to BTC shops and marketplaces
-Ability to change skins
-Some other extra shit

[R2D221]

-Chat (chatting to addresses so you can confirm the person is online and so on before sending a payment).

There's nothing inside the Bitcoin protocol that could enable chat in any way. You could use BitMessage, or maybe some 3rd party software that uses Bitcoin addresses as usernames, but since that would be centralized by nature, it would never be included in Bitcoin Core.

[giveBTCpls]

-Chat (chatting to addresses so you can confirm the person is online and so on before sending a payment).

There's nothing inside the Bitcoin protocol that could enable chat in any way. You could use BitMessage, or maybe some 3rd party software that uses Bitcoin addresses as usernames, but since that would be centralized by nature, it would never be included in Bitcoin Core.

P2P crypto chat is not possible within Bitcoin wallet? what is the tech being used by the wallets that have chats? couldn't they just add the same?

[R2D221]

P2P crypto chat is not possible within Bitcoin wallet? what is the tech being used by the wallets that have chats? couldn't they just add the same?

Could you give an example of such a wallet? I don't know any that does this.

[STT]

I thought the protocol is robust, this is more about concerns over phishing possibly.  Without a standard straight forward client and if it allows for the wallet to look like anything it could introduce confusion possible.   Meanwhile BTC can be stored on any website and its down to each company to assure its companies of their security in doing so

[bigasic]

I would rather have the functionality improved, etc before looking pretty, lol..

[capsqrl]

I really don't get this "Bitcoin Core is ugly" thing. Being based on the Qt GUI toolkit, it looks native on all platforms, meaning it fits naturally into the way software should look on whatever OS you use. It's a well-organised UI, it's easy to control from the keyboard and behaves the way I expect it to.

What is it that you would change? If you don't like the colours, Qt is wondefully themable, and you can set the theme without recompiling and probably without even restarting Bitcoin Core. If you don't like the way buttons, menus etc look, you can change that completely as well; just install a different Qt theme, or write your own, it's not super hard. So if you want that horrible pink UI with "I'm a Belieber" written diagonally across the whole window and 12 small animated fire-breathing dragons along the sides – you can do this. Just keep it to yourself; because out of the box, Bitcoin Core is just fine.

[griffga]

Things could be improved maybe by having some really talented designers do some magic for marketing and such, but did you use Namecoin back in the day? There was no gui and Monero was the same way so I love having the bitcoin-core gui that is available to us.

[lyth0s]

I think it's important to keep a plain, simple bitcoin client such as the bitcoin-QT client for purposes of running on old machines or creating simple hardware that can run them. If/when we want a fancier GUI then we should look to create our own branches of Bitcoin-QT or look to other wallet developers such blockchain, mycelium, electrum, armory etc etc.

I personally think all of these wallets are great in their own way and I support the various wallet developments, I enjoy having many options.

[wumpus]

The widget toolkit Qt is fully themable. By default Qt tries to look native (and boring), because it's commonly used for serious user interfaces such as for industrial systems. But you could use another Qt theme, or design one yourself. On at least Linux desktop environments based on GTK or Qt you can change the global theme of your desktop and Qt will pick that up.

As gmaxwell says there is a lot to designing a good GUI apart from it looking 'pretty'. Safety and usability is a first concern.

In general everything is possible. This is an open source project. If someone contributes towards making it look more "pretty" (and other people agree - I don't think a my little pony theme will be accepted as default), it will. It won't improve by just waiting, for any amount of time.

Edit: Also, going over the top with a 'pretty' interface means committing to redesign every two years, as the fashion trends change quickly and what looks exciting at one point looks ridiculous the next. Native widgets don't go out of style because they never were in style.

Yeah it looks pretty boring. More like some gray accounting software. It needs more bling-bling in my opinion. I think it should be golden, like the Bitcoins themselves. And a nice ka-shing sound when you receive a transmission. Maybe some rap-music in the background.

[Diapolo]

A serious time of my contributions to Bitcoin Core has to do with the GUI. I'm no designer but the GUI just HAS TO work, should have no logical errors or missbehave on certain user input and be easy to understand. Remember the old settings dialog, IMHO that is a big improvement over the one we had a year or more ago for example. If you want to change things try to contribute and don't just start new threads about how ugly the Qt GUI is . You could also send me 1000 BTC and I'm going to study arts and will redesign the GUI and include some rap-music ^^.

Another hint, you can switch default Qt themes by supplying for example "-style fusion" when starting the application (it has to be the last parameter).

Dia

[Razick]

It's OpenSource!
You can build your own QT with all the (supported) features you want.

cha ching.. this guy gets it

you can also if you only know VB.NET or other languages, make your own GUI that simply API calls the bitcoin deamon..

.. well thats what i did

You know, that is true, but this kind of answer is my pet peeve. This is what drove me crazy in the Linux community: I would say that something isn't working right and they'd say "It's open source, fix it yourself." Yeah, that's great and all, but I'm not a programmer (well, I know php and C#, but just as a hobby). This is why non-tech people don't use Linux.

[franky1]

It's OpenSource!
You can build your own QT with all the (supported) features you want.

cha ching.. this guy gets it

you can also if you only know VB.NET or other languages, make your own GUI that simply API calls the bitcoin deamon..

.. well thats what i did

You know, that is true, but this kind of answer is my pet peeve. This is what drove me crazy in the Linux community: I would say that something isn't working right and they'd say "It's open source, fix it yourself." Yeah, that's great and all, but I'm not a programmer (well, I know php and C#, but just as a hobby). This is why non-tech people don't use Linux.

the 100 devs that are doing the bitcoin core are not slaves, thy have their own reasons to do it, and also their own workload. maybe if you paid them to code in an imagebox into the background so that people can then load in their own images. then they may do it.

so heres the three choices
1. wait for the voluntary addition of 'skins' (low priority)
2. code it yourself so that its no longer on the waiting list
3. pay them to make it a high priority

the dev team are not slaves so dont think you can make 'demands' and add to their 'priority' work load for free. 'suggestions' are free, but made 'low priority'. as security ALWAYS comes first

[R2D221]

3. pay them to make it a high priority

I don't thing something like a background image would be a high priority even if the devs were paid for it.

[virtualx]

3. pay them to make it a high priority

I don't thing something like a background image would be a high priority even if the devs were paid for it.

I think it shouldn't be too hard to put this into the client for any developer, as the user interface is simply based on QT. I'm sure this isn't even on the todo list.

[wumpus]

You know, that is true, but this kind of answer is my pet peeve. This is what drove me crazy in the Linux community: I would say that something isn't working right and they'd say "It's open source, fix it yourself." Yeah, that's great and all, but I'm not a programmer (well, I know php and C#, but just as a hobby). This is why non-tech people don't use Linux.

To be fair, the tech support for consumers for something like Windows or Microsoft Office is also non-existent. Only if you're part of a large enterprise and can apply pressure through account managers you have any hope of getting your issue solved in any realistic time-frame. So usually with Windows, if something fails, you just live with it or work around it (using some workaround that you found on the net).

For Bitcoin Core (and most open-source software) it's on an best-effort basis. If it's a serious problem that is possible to reproduce (or you make very detailed bug report) it usually gets resolved quickly. If it is just a minor annoyance, or something that can be worked around, this can take much longer - if it is no-one's pet project.

If something really bugs you, you could hire an consultant/programmer to fix it for you (or through the vendor with a "service contract"). This applies to both open source and closed source software.

In a community project you *may* find someone crazy enough to do it for you for free as a pet project (for example for the 'cred'), but do not take this for granted.

In this case, Qt is themeable and themes exist 'out there'. Either you can find a theme and have someone integrate it into Bitcoin-Qt (may not even require c++ programming). Or have someone design a theme for you from scratch (probably going to be expensive - like developers,  designers won't work for free unless it's their pet project, and designing Qt themes is a rare speciality).