Left app pane background Acrylic not working

[carmellolb]

When app is expanded, the left panes are supposed to have background Acrylic, except they are all just grey. Please fix.

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• ID: c9faf87c-bd56-99da-70ed-07c68f9118a5
• Version Independent ID: 713b5c24-d710-303f-620e-9c7735797907
• Content: Acrylic material - Windows UWP applications
• Content Source: windows-apps-src/design/style/acrylic.md
• Product: uwp
• Technology: design
• GitHub Login: @mijacobs
• Microsoft Alias: mijacobs

[jevansaks]

This was an intentional change, always-expanded NavigationView no longer uses acrylic. That is reserved for "transient" UI, so only the compact/minimal pane flyout will use acrylic.

[carmellolb]

Why? Why do you add beauty and then remove it? It looked nice and was nice how it switched between background and in app Acrylic. Why did you remove it?

[YuliKl]

@carmellolb – thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. Although I agree that NavigationView’s pane with background acrylic looked beautiful, we strive to implement the default styles of XAML controls with more than just aesthetics in mind. The goal of the Fluent Design System is to provide thoughtful, coherent guidelines applicable to all of Microsoft’s controls libraries. We want to ensure that acrylic, when applied within the Fluent framework, is used purposefully and intentionally. As Fluent continued to evolve, we came to the realization that, thanks to its translucent qualities, acrylic’s most effective usage is in providing a visual bridge between layers of app UI. When NavigationView’s pane is placed side-by-side with the app content, this visual bridge is unnecessary and is in fact distracting because the acrylic invites unrelated content to shine through. To uphold the Fluent principles and ensure that the design system’s guidance about acrylic remained coherent for all app developers, we felt it was necessary to remove the background acrylic from NavigationView’s expanded pane and avoid implementing a style contradictory to acrylic best practices.

[carmellolb]

@YuliKl I understand what you are saying, but I think that aesthetics should also be important, and rather they seem to be being put aside and neglected, and therefore the apps’ designs are now looking more on the not so nice side. I understand what you are saying, but in my opinion, and in a a lot of other people’s opinions, it wasn’t, and it actually provided context, and showed that the menu had important controls. The plain gray rather lacks that importance, and has a very unappealing look that defies the beauty that you guys seemed to be striving for with Fluent Design, and the early concepts. I just hope you will reconsider, as the Acrylic on those panels was a pretty important component of Fluent Design for me, and many others.

[Felix-Dev]

@carmellolb @YuliKl

Unfortunately, I think MS was put off by cases like this:

where the colorful acrylic background could indeed unwantingly steel away attention from both the navigation pane content and other app content.
I do agree with @carmellolb though, the current uniform grey background really doesn't look visually appealing at all, especially if you consider these two examples:

With Acrylic background:

Especially in this case the point of "the acrylic invites unrelated content to shine through [and thus becomes distracting]" doesn't apply for me because the background - thanks to the colors - really is just subtle. It looks good (way better than just plain gray) and isn't distracting at all.

Following below is my overall thought about the Fluent Design/Win 10 Design Language:

Overall, I wish the Fluent Design team would establish a straight back-and-forth dialogue with the target platform users and don't just come and decide stuff we the users can't really avoid in the end (or just with additional work). Best example would be the recent rounded-corners push (apparently making rounded corners the new standard). Why not make that thought process open-source on github too? Instead, we just got MS seemingly pushing through without giving its users much of a chance to respond to such massive UI changes.
A good example for how I'd envision such a conversation can actually be found in this repo: microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml#242 A MS employee proposed a design idea and instead of just implementing it and gather user input after release, users had the chance to give ideas and state their objections which ultimately put the original design idea on hold (and give the OP a chance to refine the proposal based on that feedback.)

Instead, what we get are official MS controls (this very issue case) and even official MS Win10 apps (Settings) using acrylic background when suddenly that design is declared deprecated with little to no notice. What's next? Someone at MS pushing the switch 6 months later telling us acrylic background is the deal again?

Fluent Design needs to be developed by MS with the community together, not behind some closed-doors only someone at Microsoft is allowed to open. Why not create a github repository for the Fluent Design system? Why not give users a chance to communicate directly with the Design Team? Why not give the user the chance to influence the Fluent Design system?