Regarding wallet GUI improvement:
The standard proposed by Minotaur is truely a great improvement from a visual perspective. I'm so happy to finally see this being taken care of. I'm very pleased to see DRKLord and the community using these recently designed mainstream graphics which were discussed earlier here at darkcointalk.org (coming from Minotaur's designers). Good choice, even though some people opposed this mainstream look in this earlier discussion, it's exactly what Darkcoin needs!
Congratulations and many thanks to initiate parallel development. Taking care of the non-technical elements is just as important for various reasons. The wallet needed attention desperately so it could be in tune with the beauty of the underlying core client. People who don't bother to read up on Darkcoin will be more easily convinced when they see that wallet design. Some people look at different things to recognize value. This might do more to raise the price than core improvement, no matter how strange that sounds to some hardcore ICT engineers.
May I however propose two "nice to have" ideas to take it further. This could perhaps even help to initiate some viral marketing, word-of-mouth advertising, some *hype*:
1/- Could you investigate what is required to make the
wallet GUI themeable as also proposed by some others, i.e. with an external config file allowing customization of (icon) images, fonts and colors. Obviously the wallet would still come with the standard mainstream theme for the end user, possibly allowing them to choose another alternative standard theme included in the official software package. A set of rules for the external information would need to be followed of course, but I can imagine a whole array of fanboy/girl themes being made for the Darkcoin wallet. There's many artists out there that would have fun making a Darkcoin wallet theme, provided the functionality is there to easily add a new theme. This would also please the people who truely oppose mainstream graphics.
2/- There's this one specific thing however which I'd really like to see happening (over time) with the Darkcoin wallet GUI (perhaps for a second revision); DRKLord and other developers, please investigate the feasibility of integrating a feature allowing to set a '
walletpaper' to the Darkcoin wallet. What I mean by this is to allow the end user to set 'any' image as the background of the wallet. This would probably need to have some configurable transparency settings and 'best fit' type of settings. I can imagine people sharing or boasting about their pimped/customized wallet with for example their favorite hot girl sitting behind their stack of darkcoins. I can imagine many people posting their nicest customized (sexiest) Darkcoin wallets... *could help a bit to make Darkcoin go viral?*
Darkcoin is very technical for average people, they know it's valuable to have privacy improvements. Great innovation is being implemented in the core protocol, but some people, including myself, would also like to see more "fun stuff" while we're waiting for a robust anonimity implementation. I'd love to play with my wallet trying to find the best setup which identifies me as the person that I am. Sure there will be plenty people who have no imagination and will gladly accept the slick mainstream standard or revert to the non-enhanced GUI, but there will be many people who prefer to be unique and will get creative. A themeable interface with custom walletpaper would allow you to do that. Take your wallet for example, isn't there something to it that makes it really yours? Something you changed or added? Maybe some people just want to use a family picture as their walletpaper, et cetera. Would be really nice. At least I think so.
Only a suggestion for the Darkcoin wallet roadmap...
I've had this idea before (as many people probably have), but I have actually recently discovered a cryptocurrency who is working on this feature:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=685968.0 (this is not an advertisement, simply proof that it can be done, hope you don't mind)
