[nwh]

So "Material Design" is "Flat Design" with shadows?

I'm not sure I can quite get used to this particular theme at all. The colors are pretty gaudy, the main action buttons (brown and purple) particularly are almost unreadable to me. I couldn't find the input boxes at all even though they had a header, they just parse as horizontal rules rather than something I can click on an add text. I respect the effort that has gone into creating this, but on a fundamental level I don't feel this is a good step in interface design.

[stephenjwatkins]

After looking through Google's own material design guidelines (http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introducti...), I find them much more pleasing than this bootstrap theme. When it comes to material design, it seems that context and execution details will play a big role in delivering an experience that looks and feels right.

[FezVrasta]

My project is just a 1:1 conversion from Polymer Paper project to Bootstrap. It's still in early developement but I'm sure it will become much better in future :)

[higherpurpose]

It doesn't feel that way, though. Your colors for example seem significantly "darker".

[riffraff]

agreed the colors seem to have higher saturation in the bootstrap version

[bsimpson]

The most important aspect of Material is the layered animations. This library is missing them.

[dmix]

Thats what I thought until I tried Android L...looks flat + shadows when you look at screenshots. But I was wrong. It's about layers and movement after interactions. You have to experience it with animations, sliding down notification menus, and tab-switching between apps. It feels like an very smooth remake of the Android 4 redesign, that flows cleanly between panels and screens.

The flat/shadowy UI elements are secondary IMO to the layering effects that have been added. Something bootstrap themes can't really capture.

[goldfeld]

The Google stuff looks eerily like Metro to me, but perhaps flat design with strict guidelines and good principles converge into similar looking aesthetics.

I just find "material design" obnoxious, pathological cargo-culting and can't bring myself to elocute it, except maybe if I'm referring to someone designing synthetic leather.

[Kudos]

The flatness isn't the key point of Material Design, the interactions are.

[pron]

> So "Material Design" is "Flat Design" with shadows?

... and bright colors, yeah.

But it's really just a return to early 90s GUI design (flat, high-contrast, shadows): http://files.vforum.vn/2013/T08/img/diendanbaclieu-98580-tur...