Why doesn’t Feren OS have rounded corners?
You know, I should probably answer this question. One thing I do hear mentioned frequently in Feren OS reviews that have a section concerning the design is the corners. They’re sharp in windows, it’s been a thing ever since Feren OS’s conception back in late 2014 (before releasing in 2015), in fact, the design dating back to ‘Zuro UI for Windows’.
That still begs, the question, however: Why the sharp corners?
It’s simple — I can’t think of any good way to handle titlebar buttons on the current design in a rounded corners setting.
Right now, the current titlebar design has titlebar buttons that extend to the edges of the server-side decorations. This works great for the sharp corners Feren OS currently has in its window borders, and is represented in the screenshot above with the Close button.
However, if you round that corner, it’d look rather odd in my eyes as every corner of that titlebutton will be sharp except the top-right one in this above example.
I could also make all the corners round in the titlebar buttons to accommodate for this, but… given how the titlebar buttons literally extend from top to bottom of the titlebar currently, this would also look bad in my honest opinion.
I could also add gaps between the titlebar edges and the buttons to make the corners work visually without the above issues, but… for one I’d likely reduce the button hitboxes in the process, and for two I’m not sure how good that’d look in the context of Feren OS’s current style… but with cornered borders. I know that’s what most others do such as Zorin OS and (to a point) Canonical with Yaru and GNOME with Adwaita (before and after making the titlebar buttons circular).
With all this to consider, and how much work would be required just to achieve a rounded corners style, given it’s C++ code, it’s honestly, for me, more worth it to just leave the corners sharp for the time being. If anyone has any design ideas for rounding the corners of the current Feren OS titlebar style, I guess drop them in https://ferenos.weebly.com/discord, https://twitter.com/Feren_OS or something.
