Progress On The GNOME 40 Shell Continues At Full Speed

[omer666]

That's just LibreOffice's version of ribbons, aka tabbed toolbars. A concept that's been around since the 80s

No, I hate tabbed toolbars. I misnamed it, it's called in fact "Grouped Bar Compact"

[JackLilhammers]

JackLilhammers The topic of whether menus are an efficient UX concept or not is pretty subjective if you ask me.

Not much really. I mean, of course is subjective, but literally 99% of the other desktops around uses them.

Putting all your mess into a single "burger" menu is indeed a bad design decision, but at the same time most GNOME apps respect this guideline quite well. For most "common" software, I tend to think menus are counterproductive.

The fact is that the best of both worlds is totally achievable by using a global menu.
That way you have the simpler apps with a clean interface and the more complex ones with a standard menu.
There are other ways of course, like hiding the menu and leave an option to show it. Like Firefox or Dolphin do.

At the same time I wouldn't imagine using Ardour or the Gimp without a full-featured menu, but LibreOffice's compact grouped tabs successfully does away with the traditional menu paradigm, so who knows...

That's just LibreOffice's version of ribbons, aka tabbed toolbars. A concept that's been around since the 80s

[JackLilhammers]

Virtualizer like GNOME Boxes which supports hardware acceleration is your friend.

You're right, I know, and I use them. Actually I never used Boxes, but you get the idea. However I don't run development versions of anything, unless of course I'm working on it. I mean, software in general tends to be buggy enough for me when is released as stable, I don't need dwelve into uncharted territory :'D

Then some users will complain about copying MacOS interface and the burden of maintenance. The hamburger menu style turned out more effective.

That would be quite naive, because copying is actually one of the key parts of progress.
And what would be the burden of maintenance?
The hamburger menu has never been effective, that's why everybody stopped using it on desktops more than 30 years ago.
It came back 10 years ago on mobile interfaces because the screen estate is limited, but in recent years its use has been reduced in favor of more discoverable alternatives.

Beside the point, I tested the new design of the layout and appreciate the progress.
After logged in, the Shell present its overview mode comprised on search on top, empty desktop in the middle and the dash at the bottom
The new navigation is actually intuitive and much easier to access than before following the human interaction . Having workspace on top in overview mode is much logical than having them on the right side. The dash at the bottom makes more sense and can get customized via Dash to Dock extension.
Granted there are some bugs which are expected.

Of course I appreciate the progress too, I'm just saying that some of the brand new things are not new at all and it was just a matter of not messing them in the first place...
I mean, the dash at the bottom? Really? Who could have thought of that!!
As if the 2 desktop operating systems didn't always have the taskbar at the bottom...
I'm not saying that some people can't prefer it on top or on the sides, but everybody else except for Gnome kept it at the bottom by default. Until now.
The same thing goes for workspaces on top. That's exactly how Mission Control works, since day one.

I think that logging into overview mode helps discoverability. A lot.
But that's because Gnome lacks in that department.
Every other mainstream desktop logs the user into a clean desktop and they usually find their way around.
The only ones that don't are iOS and iPadOS and other mobile GUIs.

[omer666]

JackLilhammers The topic of whether menus are an efficient UX concept or not is pretty subjective if you ask me.

Putting all your mess into a single "burger" menu is indeed a bad design decision, but at the same time most GNOME apps respect this guideline quite well. For most "common" software, I tend to think menus are counterproductive.

At the same time I wouldn't imagine using Ardour or the Gimp without a full-featured menu, but LibreOffice's compact grouped tabs successfully does away with the traditional menu paradigm, so who knows...

[finalzone]

There's absolutely no way I'm installing Rawhide. To me the stable version of Fedora is unreliable enough :'D

Virtualizer like GNOME Boxes which supports hardware acceleration is your friend.

* If only they had a wide and mostly empty panel at the top of the screen to put a global menu

Then some users will complain about copying MacOS interface and the burden of maintenance. The hamburger menu style turned out more effective.

Beside the point, I tested the new design of the layout and appreciate the progress.
After logged in, the Shell present its overview mode comprised on search on top, empty desktop in the middle and the dash at the bottom
The new navigation is actually intuitive and much easier to access than before following the human interaction . Having workspace on top in overview mode is much logical than having them on the right side. The dash at the bottom makes more sense and can get customized via Dash to Dock extension.
Granted there are some bugs which are expected.

[JackLilhammers]

Every time I see someone saying that GNOME is a copy of Apple's design, I know that person doesn't use Apple systems or GNOME. What the hell is similar between GNOME Shell and MacOS? Rounded edges?

First: moving windows is better, much more visual and focused.
Second: because I don't want to log in and see an empty screen, since the first thing I do is run an application. In addition, on GNOME 40 you will be able to run multiple applications without leaving the application grid, because you can drag the applications to the virtual desktops you want, so after logging in, for example, you can organize everything you are going to do in your session much faster. Superior, very much.
Third: GNOME 40 is very smooth. I am impressed, honestly. You can compile GNOME 40 on Fedora Rawhide and test it yourself or watch Baby Wogue demo videos.

• Both make heavy usage of client side decorations. Of course on Mac os you didn't lose the perks of having a full featured menu...*
• Mac os has desktop wide search since 2005. The biggest difference between Search on Gnome and Spotlight is the keyboard shortcut. Also Spotlight works way better**
• The application grid and Launchpad are very much alike
• Activities overview and Mission Control are the same concept and Gnome 40 brings the overview even closer
• The gestures are quite similar too

Anyway, what do you mean by moving windows is more visual and focused?

Dragging and dropping apps to different desktops to launch them can be good, but I usually launch apps by pressing Windows key and typing, because it works beautifully across different desktops and operating systems.
By the way the same speed can be achived with activities in Kde, or in some cases with session restoring, or by having the task bar/dock/panel with your favourite apps visible by default and launching the apps from there, eventually moving to another desktop to lauch those that you want there, assuming that you fancy virtual desktops or workspaces.
I mean in this case it's really a matter of tastes...

There's absolutely no way I'm installing Rawhide. To me the stable version of Fedora is unreliable enough :'D
I know that for many is Fedora is the best, etc. Not for me. Again, personal preferences.

* If only they had a wide and mostly empty panel at the top of the screen to put a global menu
** AFAIK KRunner is the one that comes closer to Spotlight at least when it comes to preinstalled desktop search apps

[skeevy420]

Every time I see someone saying that GNOME is a copy of Apple's design, I know that person doesn't use Apple systems or GNOME. What the hell is similar between GNOME Shell and MacOS? Rounded edges?

When you look at their plain desktops both have a top bar and icon app launchers. That's about it.

IMHO, macOS and XFCE are more similar. Their top bars look and behave closer than with what GNOME offers, especially if XFCE (or Mate) is using the App Menu plugin or follows a guide like this.

[Yofiel]

Why can't the just clone mission control from mac os? They're literally reimplementing a subpar version of it!
Then again the whole gnome experience is a bad copy of apple design.

The top three things that immediately come to my mind:

• Moving windows between virtual desktops seems harder with this new design
• Who wants to login into applications?! I'm hoping against hope that it can be configured
• Is it possible that gnome still isn't smooth?! I mean even on their video the animations stutter

Every time I see someone saying that GNOME is a copy of Apple's design, I know that person doesn't use Apple systems or GNOME. What the hell is similar between GNOME Shell and MacOS? Rounded edges?

First: moving windows is better, much more visual and focused.
Second: because I don't want to log in and see an empty screen, since the first thing I do is run an application. In addition, on GNOME 40 you will be able to run multiple applications without leaving the application grid, because you can drag the applications to the virtual desktops you want, so after logging in, for example, you can organize everything you are going to do in your session much faster. Superior, very much.
Third: GNOME 40 is very smooth. I am impressed, honestly. You can compile GNOME 40 on Fedora Rawhide and test it yourself or watch Baby Wogue demo videos.

[skeevy420]

I really feel the same as you, but I use XFCE in a very minimalistic way.
GNOME is really beautiful and everything is well integrated, I used it for months, but honestly, I've found that the animations and the way windows are changed end up being exhausting.
This feels like there is some traction that retains from changing windows. It's either hard to know where to locate the window you want to open or hard for the eyes because there are animations everywhere. Also, the icon view is not efficient because this is ordered by name (Gnome 38 improved that, but still.).
The worst part is that opening the app launcher set all screens to exposé mode and that is really hard for the eye-strain.
I've tried Dash to dock, Dash to panel, disable animations, Arc Menu, but in the end, the workflow is never optimal. That's just my personal view on it.

I feel the same way about GNOME. Three weeks. Three weeks is the longest I've ran GNOME before going back to Plasma. I mean I can plugin GNOME up and make it work, but I can also plugin up Cyberpunk 2077 and make that work. I'm just saying that my desktop isn't Skyrim and a bunch of user made mods shouldn't be necessary for a good experience. Some of us just want to put in a good game an play it; not put in an OK game and plugin it into a good game.

Funnily enough, one of the first tweaks I do on Plasma is to increase the animation speeds. I like cool effects, but not at the expense of productivity. That's why I'm still into blur and semi-transparency -- being able to see behind my window increases multitask-ability.

[skeevy420]

Press "super" to open overview. Drag 3 of these windows each to a different workspace. Close overview. Now you can navigate between them using super+pgup/super+pgdown. Not as good as having 2 monitors, but maybe better than usual windows-like multitasking when clicking on app's icon on taskbar.

I do the something similar on KDE with their Activities feature to keep my taskbar from getting too clustered with random programs. I group common applications in each Activity and I can switch between them with super+tab or super+shift+tab...Default, Games, Multimedia, Projects, and Sys Tray (GTK stuff that doesn't minimize to a taskbar...PulseEffects).

The cool thing about Activities is it works with multiple monitors and each Activity has multiple workspaces. Each Activity is like its own separate session running within the main session. Very handy when utilized. GNOME, and most other DEs for that matter, doesn't come close to offering that.