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Good point. In non-flat widget themes. the distinction between an "active" widget you can interact with and a background element is given precisely by the 3D look of active widgets. This is a simple and intuitive approach, whereas "flat" themes offer no real alternative.

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I keep hearing this point brought up, but I haven't seen a good case for flat widget elements being confusing. In this very form I'm typing in, all the clickable elements (hyperlinks and submit button) are flat, but different styles immediately distinguish them from non-clickable elements, even if these styles vary between web pages and browsers. It's never been the case that GUIs consistently used 3D appearances to denote clickable widgets. 3D elements add a lot of visual clutter for complicated interfaces, which is why those "flat UI sucks" posts only show <10 GUI elements side-by-side. Google "Word 95" and "Word 98," both have a flat menu bar, though Word 98 has the addition of flat toolbars which helps readability.

When it’s common enough that a menu bar and toolbar are part of applications, the user knows that the elements within are clickable.

When you have clickable elements in places where they might not be expected to be clickable, that’s when it gets confusing.

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