How anyone could consider the first screenshot of gedit prettier than the second is beyond me, but that is probably why I'm on OSX and not XFCE.
The human perceptual system does not change much from millennium to millennium and that our understanding of how that system works becomes richer over decades.
Can you explain how one set of afordances can be considered more modern than another?
I'm not being snarky, I'd really like to understand your idea of modern/old in this context.
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/modern#Adjective
EDIT: And by old, he probably means "old-style".
The modern design trend is minimal widgets and minimal chrome, where as older design trend are heavier on buttons and chrome.
Think of it like learning Dvorak. Sure, in theory, by some arbitrary histrionics, these new UIs are 3% more "effective". There's no real objective proof of it, but people just feel like it is. And hell, maybe it really is! So to gain that 3% advantage, they want you to throw out 20 years of muscle memory and familiarity. They want you to throw away all that you're used to and retrain yourself again and again. And sure, maybe after enough time, you might actually like it a little bit more. But all of the time you've wasted relearning everything will never make up for the tiny, marginal increase in efficiency you gained. Nor for all you had to give up to get there.
But this attitude of eternal improvement never ends. You jump on Dvorak because it's such an improvement, and you spend months, maybe years, getting up to your native speed again ... and along comes Colemak, but now it has competition with Workman. Which do you choose? Colemak or Workman? Gnome 3 or Unity? Gotta throw away that Qwerty and Dvorak mechanical keyboard; gotta throw away all those old GTK2 UIs; and start over.
The infinitesimal, unscientific usability enhancements are so subjective as to be irrelevant. Change certainly favors the young, and is hardest on the older generations; but true positive change has historically been accomplished incrementally through evolution (Windows 3.1 - XP, parts of 7). Yet nowadays, it's trying for revolution. Choice is no longer en vogue. And this attitude is ... pervasive. And that is absolutely terrifying.
But I'm sure you know that trendiness is cyclical. I just want off the treadmill.
And I feel exactly the same in reverse. And it's perfectly okay that we are polar opposites, so long as we each continue to have access to our choices. Gnome has thrown us under the bus entirely lately. Thankfully mousepad is a good replacement for gedit 2.x now. I just hope the Gnome devs don't force GTK+ 3 library users into their UI guidelines (like the aforementioned common dialog question.) So far, the Xfce 4.12 screenshots are a lot more promising than I had expected.
> but that is probably why I'm on OSX and not XFCE.
And I really hope you'll stay away from the Xfce dev team in that case :D