It uses X. That itself is outdated before I start talking about out of date design principles.
I personally don't like the black menu bar, I don't like the big childish icons, I don't like the slate gray gradient window box and I don't like the UI design's 2000s take on Finder. It's just not pretty in my opinion. And that does count to me, and probably the majority of end users too.
> It uses X. That itself is outdated before I start talking about out of date design principles.
All major window managers and desktop enivornments use X today. Some, such as KDE, Gnome and Enlightenment have begun work towards becoming Wayland compositors, and their underlying GUI libraries (Qt, GTK, and so on) towards supporting Wayland instead of X. However, you'll be hard pressed to find any significant number of them running on anything but X today.
I too want Wayland to succeed and take over for X, and when that day comes, XFCE should hopefully be ready for it. Complaining that XFCE uses X today, though, makes no sense.
> I personally don't like the black menu bar, I don't like the big childish icons, I don't like the slate gray gradient window box and I don't like the UI design's 2000s take on Finder. It's just not pretty in my opinion.
This, it seems to me, is just an expression of your personal taste. While that certainly matters do yourself, it doesn't really bring much to the discussion.
I personally don't like the black menu bar, I don't like the big childish icons, I don't like the slate gray gradient window box and I don't like the UI design's 2000s take on Finder. It's just not pretty in my opinion. And that does count to me, and probably the majority of end users too.