GNOME Human Interface Guidelines Being Updated For GTK4, Other Modern Features

[jacob]

I am quite sure that this does not apply to most users who bought stuff from 4 to 5 years ago and have no intention to throw away a perfectly functional machine. I still wonder why modern GNOME has such a high memory consumption. It has surely improved since the early days of GNOME 3, but 8 GB should be enough for running a DE.

Frankly even a RPi today has 4 or 8 Gb and that is enough to run GNOME. I think that writing Gnome Shell in JavaScript was one of the most terrible design decisions ever, but memory consumption isn't one of its problems - except of course when it encounters a leak, but that will kill it with 4Gb as reliably as with 64Gb.

[cynical]

What is ChromeOS? Hint: it doesn't converge with Android. For a reason.

A glorified web browser?

Let me know when we see a video editor, a debugger GUI, a fully featured office package or CAD software developed in "convergence".

You’ll never see convergence for those apps because you can’t do those activities on a phone. That doesn’t make convergence a bad idea, it just means it doesn’t apply to those activities.

Remember Corel's Java Office? Where is Java Office now? Where is Corel while we are at it?

Right and where is Java? Basically everywhere? And God knows it’s not due to the sheer quality of the language and its APIs…

Because not all applications need or should be designed with a mobile version in mind in the first place. There are mobile email clients and desktop clients like Thunderbird, Evolution or Outlook that are so feature rich that trying to avoid writing them two or three times means trying to force a square peg into a round hole and the result will inevitably be something crippled and cumbersome on the desktop and unusable on the mobile.

And literally no one is talking about that? I see the issue now. You seem to believe that convergence means “every applications needs to be designed for mobile”, which completely misses the point.

Convergence is about having the base system and simplest applications share one codebase and make appropriate changes to the UI to accommodate different form factors.

By definition they will be compatible with mobile because you are targeting the applications that are used by everyone. (File manager, browser, etc)

There’s nothing that says ALL apps have to be convergent though. There is nothing sensible about that at all.

And where is this idea coming from that they have to be somehow dumbed down or featureless? You just expose the advanced features on the desktop version, usually through a menu of some kind.

[jacob]

A glorified web browser?

Not quite but to an extent yes. Which doesn't change the fact that ChromeOS doesn't converge with Android and MacOS doesn't converge with iOS. Even a desktop web browser is a very different beast from a mobile browser.

You’ll never see convergence for those apps because you can’t do those activities on a phone. That doesn’t make convergence a bad idea, it just means it doesn’t apply to those activities.

But, and as I mentioned in my previous post because I anticipated this exact response, when GUI frameworks like GTK insist on built-in "convergence" (which, until proven otherwise, which it hasn't, means in practice that they won't support anything that wouldn't work for a web service-based app on a 3 inch touch screen), then how do you expect to develop those activities without being hampered by convergence (anti)features?

Right and where is Java? Basically everywhere? And God knows it’s not due to the sheer quality of the language and its APIs…

Not really. Java is used mainly to implement web apps (but losing ground to C#, Go and others) and on Android (but being replaced with Kotlin). Neither was Java's original purpose; the idea of web-based Java Applets, write-once-run-anywhere-in-theory never took off.

And that actually reinforces my argument that developing things like JavaOffice (which was the 90s' idea of "convergence") just proved to be a bad idea.

As for Java's qualities as a language and its APIs... well that's finally something we agree on

And literally no one is talking about that? I see the issue now. You seem to believe that convergence means “every applications needs to be designed for mobile”, which completely misses the point.

When the argument I was responding to was to have the same code base for desktop and mobile (because apparently you must always have a mobile version or else) then I say that's precisely what we are talking about. Case in point, libadwaita wants to replace windows' title bars with mobile style headers and hamper window moving and resizing in the process. To my dismay, the majority here seems to believe that it's a great idea.

Convergence is about having the base system and simplest applications share one codebase and make appropriate changes to the UI to accommodate different form factors.

Or, in plain English, they can't implement anything, especially in terms of UI workflow, that doesn't fit the most restrictive and least capable form factor.

By definition they will be compatible with mobile because you are targeting the applications that are used by everyone. (File manager, browser, etc)

And that's exactly my point. Using a mobile file manager or a mobile browser on the desktop is an absolutely appalling proposition. A desktop (not mobile) file manager must by definition let you open as many windows as you want, use the right mouse button correctly, support keyboard shortcuts and have drag&drop front and center (among other things). Neither of those things are even conceivable on a mobile, which means that a "converged" file manager can't support them and is thus automatically worthless and useless on a desktop.

And where is this idea coming from that they have to be somehow dumbed down or featureless? You just expose the advanced features on the desktop version, usually through a menu of some kind.

Have you compared mobile Firefox vs desktop Firefox? Mobile word processors vs LO or MSO? Mobile text editors vs desktop IDEs? You can't seriously claim that they aren't dumbed down and featureless more than just a little.

[cynical]

Even a desktop web browser is a very different beast from a mobile browser.

Not at all. They use the same rendering engines, they just require different UIs and a different feature set. Just have the feature set that is common to both exposed on mobile and leave the advanced stuff for the desktop. Simple. The Epiphany web browser is actually convergent, and a great example of what is possible. I keep it around as an alternative for testing sites that may not work well with Firefox. If there was actually a good mobile phone that ran Gnome it would be more useful.

But, and as I mentioned in my previous post because I anticipated this exact response, when GUI frameworks like GTK insist on built-in "convergence" (which, until proven otherwise, which it hasn't, means in practice that they won't support anything that wouldn't work for a web service-based app on a 3 inch touch screen), then how do you expect to develop those activities without being hampered by convergence (anti)features?

Because nothing changes for a desktop application unless it is running on mobile? Do you think Gimp will just stop working because some widgets can adapt to be usable elsewhere?

Not really. Java is used mainly to implement web apps (but losing ground to C#, Go and others) and on Android (but being replaced with Kotlin). Neither was Java's original purpose; the idea of web-based Java Applets, write-once-run-anywhere-in-theory never took off.

C# is Microsoft’s implementation of Java lol. And Kotlin is just a more modern version of the same thing. The JVM (write once run anywhere) is what took over backend web development. It is everywhere because people like to save time and money on rewrites for multiple platforms.

Java applets were replaced by JavaScript, which is honestly an even better example with how it has invaded desktop applications. People love being able to target the browser. It’s the #1 most popular application development platform for that reason.

When the argument I was responding to was to have the same code base for desktop and mobile (because apparently you must always have a mobile version or else) then I say that's precisely what we are talking about. Case in point, libadwaita wants to replace windows' title bars with mobile style headers and hamper window moving and resizing in the process. To my dismay, the majority here seems to believe that it's a great idea.

No the “always a mobile version or else” is something you came up with. Nobody wanting convergence expected to be able to run photoshop on a phone for example.

Headerbars have nothing to do with convergence. In fact they don’t adapt themselves for mobile by default, which is why libadwaita came about….

Or, in plain English, they can't implement anything, especially in terms of UI workflow, that doesn't fit the most restrictive and least capable form factor.

Ok, you’re not really understanding what convergence is, or it’s purpose. It’s not to have the same UI on both mobile and desktop, or in other words to fit the least common denominator. The UI can look totally different on both. The key thing is that the codebase is the same. The widgets are supposed to change in order to fit better depending on where they are used.

I think you are just taking how Gnome looks like now, judging that it was designed for mobile but is supposed to be a desktop, and thinking that is what convergent means.

Gnome wasn’t even adaptable until recently. It wasn’t convergent at all even when it had headerbars and big padding, which I take it you don’t like. Your issue seems to be more with Gnome UI design than anything else.

And that's exactly my point. Using a mobile file manager or a mobile browser on the desktop is an absolutely appalling proposition. A desktop (not mobile) file manager must by definition let you open as many windows as you want, use the right mouse button correctly, support keyboard shortcuts and have drag&drop front and center (among other things). Neither of those things are even conceivable on a mobile, which means that a "converged" file manager can't support them and is thus automatically worthless and useless on a desktop.

And why couldn’t it support those things exactly? All you need to change is limit mobile to one window. You could open as many as you want on desktop. The same goes for every other feature you listed.

Look I am a programmer. It is not hard. All you do is code the basic features for the mobile version, and then add the extended features under a feature detection flag. Something like, if there is a keyboard available, enable keyboard shortcuts.

Have you compared mobile Firefox vs desktop Firefox? Mobile word processors vs LO or MSO? Mobile text editors vs desktop IDEs? You can't seriously claim that they aren't dumbed down and featureless more than just a little.

That’s because they aren’t designed to be convergent. Firefox mobile is a Java application built specifically for Android using Android APIs. It’s not intended to run in a desktop, so why would they add desktop features to it? Think about it. They know for a fact it will never run on a desktop. What sense does it make to extend it to support those features?

Same for all of your other examples. They are written exclusively for mobile or exclusively for desktop, not for both.

If you started with the intention to write for both, you would approach it differently. This is a paradigm shift in thinking that has not occurred yet. It’s like talking about mobile applications before the iPhone came out.

You wouldn’t be able to comprehend apps as they are today back then. The hardware was too slow and nobody was even thinking about it. Then Apple did it and everyone realized it was the way to go. It’s the same with convergent apps.

In the future people will think that having the same OS + apps running on your phone and your desktop was obvious, but I’ll be able to point to posts like yours and say it wasn’t.

[cynical]

I am quite sure that this does not apply to most users who bought stuff from 4 to 5 years ago and have no intention to throw away a perfectly functional machine. I still wonder why modern GNOME has such a high memory consumption. It has surely improved since the early days of GNOME 3, but 8 GB should be enough for running a DE.

But it is. I run Gnome 3 on an HP Spectre x360 that I purchased in 2015. It has 8GB of memory and works great. Gnome does not have high memory consumption relative to something with equivalent features, in my experience. KDE and Gnome are comparable once you open a few applications, using around 1-1.2GB of memory. A good chunk to be sure, but only 1/8th of my total system memory and far less than Windows.

The memory consumption of applications has far outstripped desktop environments.

[cynical]

I think, convergence is the ultimate ego, the ultimate hubris of an UI/UX designer.
One set of guidelines to rule them all, one vision that extends to all computer interactions, write once, run anyw^W^W^W^W

Convergence is sharing code, not UI. A desktop application will look exactly as it does now on a desktop. The only difference in appearance would happen if you ran it on a phone, because desktop widgets don’t make sense on a phone, and vice versa.

You have confused Gnome’s UI design choices for convergence when they have nothing to do with each other.

[t.s.]

I have built several Android apps. And if you ever built a desktop app, you would know from experience that the UI paradigms and workflows are so different than pretending to handle them with the same logic as a mobile app is only a polite way of saying CRIPPLING it.

Again, I'm not talking about your average Twitter or Tumblr client. I don't care about those on the desktop any more than on mobile. I'm talking, say, about Inkscape (since it's in the news). When that starts being forced into a "convergence"-based UI it will be the end of it.

Yes, for now, there's desktop apps that still can't be optimized for phone views (like inkscape, krita, vim, etc). But we don't know about the future. Maybe in not too distant future we can have that luxury (maybe when AI develop well, or when voice command is near perfect).

[t.s.]

But it is. I run Gnome 3 on an HP Spectre x360 that I purchased in 2015. It has 8GB of memory and works great. Gnome does not have high memory consumption relative to something with equivalent features, in my experience. KDE and Gnome are comparable once you open a few applications, using around 1-1.2GB of memory. A good chunk to be sure, but only 1/8th of my total system memory and far less than Windows.

The memory consumption of applications has far outstripped desktop environments.

> 300MB is quite much for me (with 8GB) between KDE vs GNOME after cold start (CMIIW). And yes, applications memory consumptions far outstripped DE. As I'm heavily dependent on browser (memory hog), surely I want as much free memory as I can get.

[mos87]

Again with all the crap in the titlebar ?
Does Gnome people never drag the titlebar to the top or left and right sides of the screen and use the keyboard instead ?
They think that Windows developers haven't thought about this already and then they decided to drop it ?
Glad I'm not a Gnome user and the GTK programs that I use don't strictly follow these weird things.

wish I could like this a hundred times

[jo-erlend]

Again with all the crap in the titlebar ?
Does Gnome people never drag the titlebar to the top or left and right sides of the screen and use the keyboard instead ?
They think that Windows developers haven't thought about this already and then they decided to drop it ?
Glad I'm not a Gnome user and the GTK programs that I use don't strictly follow these weird things.

Can you explain that to me? You mean you think you can't drag stuff because they have controls? That's been done on Ubuntu in Unity for a decade.