Hi, Jayson. I think Fedora currently ships the upstream Xfce layout. That doesn't mean that it can't be improved. For instance, the Xfce menu isn't the upstream menu as it adds an 'Administration' category and eliminates duplicities (I use this menu when I install Xfce 4.10; the latter has the upstream original menu). I think that your suggested modifications look nicer ( http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_alt_a.png ), although the xfwm theme that comes with the spin is nice too. Personally, I think that Adwaita is a good GTK theme to use on the spin if only because it's from GNOME and so it works properly (GTK3 up to now keeps braking themes). I don't use it, I use MediterraneanNight (from gnome-look.org ) because it has options for window background that ain't white. I also think that the panel width should be kept as it is; 24px can be small for some people. The second panel is also there so people are inspired to play with the panel capabilities. I use it for launchers in auto-hiding mode (try using a 1024x768 screen like me). Once I wrote to Christoph Wickert about adding a matching icon theme for Claws mail but it must be packaged, so there's this limitation too.
Personally I think the spin is very good. It's lightweight and brings only what one needs to start (more on this below). I don't think the looks is that important. If the default look was so bad we would report a bug upstream so they would fix it.
The most important thing I see now is to replace GDM and whatever GNOME stuff that ain't strictly necessary for the system (like NetworkManager, which works well and should be kept, IMO).
Ideally I think that there could be separate spins with and without Asian languages/input methods support. That's the only thing that's bloat for one that uses only the Latin alphabet.