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

[skeevy420]

Touché, I too have my faults. Sorry for coming on too strong.

It's all good. I know I can come off as stubborn and abrasive, especially on topics like these where we all get a bit passionate, so I try not to read too much into it when people get upset or defensive...not sure the best term for that I'm coming from the nicest place with best of intentions if it doesn't read that way.

[cynical]

The problem with this kind of option is that in practice it simply boils down to replacing proper desktop software with inferior mobile apps that are also less uaer friendly, period. This whole idea of "convergence" has always been dead on arrival. Apple isn't doing it, Google isn't doing it, MS tried and had to eat the humble pie for the first time in its history, Canonical tried and nearly went bankrupt for it. Yet GNOME developers still believe that this is somehow the way to go.

Google does not have a desktop operating system, but they still do convergence. Their applications adapt from the phone to tablet form factors. You are completely wrong about Apple. They will probably be the first to succeed with convergence. Every year they lessen the differences between iOS and Mac OS. Now that they are both running on ARM it is inevitable. If you think they aren't doing convergence, then what is this? In reality developers are dragging their feet on porting because the emulation layer works so well, but eventually it will happen. Give it a few years and you will see "Mac" apps that just work on iOS or Mac OS and adapt their UI to the proper form factor seamlessly.

Even Bill Gates admits that he screwed up Windows mobile, and developers have been burned so badly they are sticking to traditional Windows APIs instead of trying to develop applications using the new ones.

Canonical didn't just dip out of convergence, they also stopped working on their own desktop. It's really sad because Linux would be far and away the leader here if Canonical was driving the direction of development, instead we'll just have to admire Apple's implementation for a few years before we get it right. Everyone is going in this direction though, and for a perfectly logical reason. Why the hell would you want to develop two distinct code bases, one for mobile and another for desktop (or three for a tablet, or four for in-car entertainment) when you could just make one code base that adapts depending on what environment it is running under? It's just common sense.

Not all applications are usable in mobile, but for those that are, tell me why you would want to write them two or three times?

[skeevy420]

Google does not have a desktop operating system, but they still do convergence. Their applications adapt from the phone to tablet form factors. You are completely wrong about Apple. They will probably be the first to succeed with convergence. Every year they lessen the differences between iOS and Mac OS. Now that they are both running on ARM it is inevitable. If you think they aren't doing convergence, then what is this? In reality developers are dragging their feet on porting because the emulation layer works so well, but eventually it will happen. Give it a few years and you will see "Mac" apps that just work on iOS or Mac OS and adapt their UI to the proper form factor seamlessly.

That really looks like someone took KDE, blended Breeze and Oxygen very well, and configured it to look like GNOME with an AppMenu plugin on the top bar. AppMenu top bars kick ass. While I've never been a fan of right side window management controls, it works on the macOS header bar because at least a user will never accidentally click an app function for a window management function. Window stuff over here, app stuff over there, typing stuff in the middle. Logical. Everything has it's own place. That really isn't a bad looking setup. Give it a dark theme and I could learn to like it.

Dammit. Shit. Why do I have to notice these things? I don't think it's been 24 hours but, well, macOS has a Jim Crow Header Bar. Window stuff goes in it's place, typing stuff goes in it's own place, app stuff goes in it's own place. It even promotes gentrification. As more App Stuff gets added it starts to gentrify the Typing Stuff area into an App Stuff area.

[jacob]

Google does not have a desktop operating system

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

but they still do convergence. Their applications adapt from the phone to tablet form factors.

That's not convergence. Developing for a small mobile screen and a slightly larger mobile screen makes sense. Developing for mobile (small screen, touch, no mouse, no keyboard, online 100% on the time) and desktop (no touch 99% of the time, mouse and keyboard 100% of the time, one or several huge screens, offline operation an absolute must) does not.

You are completely wrong about Apple. They will probably be the first to succeed with convergence. Every year they lessen the differences between iOS and Mac OS. Now that they are both running on ARM it is inevitable. If you think they aren't doing convergence, then what is this?

Another mobile framework just like every other one? Let me know when we see a video editor, a debugger GUI, a fully featured office package or CAD software developed in "convergence". But please note this: if your argument is "yeah but those things won't be developed against mobile APIs" then you miss my point, which is that designing the graphical toolkit itself for "convergence" (in practice, mobile UI design patterns, full stop) like libadwaita is doing, means that such apps WILL thus inevitably present a mobile, not desktop, UI.

In reality developers are dragging their feet on porting because the emulation layer works so well, but eventually it will happen. Give it a few years and you will see "Mac" apps that just work on iOS or Mac OS and adapt their UI to the proper form factor seamlessly.

The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is that developers are dragging their feet. You can say it's because they're all lazy and/or stupid, but it can also be that they don't want to make their product suck.

Give it a few years and you will see "Mac" apps that just work on iOS or Mac OS and adapt their UI to the proper form factor seamlessly.

As I said above: wake me up when XCode or Keynote are developed against mobile APIs and have lost zero of their usability. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. Apple are evil but they are not idiots especially when it comes to UI design.

Even Bill Gates admits that he screwed up Windows mobile, and developers have been burned so badly they are sticking to traditional Windows APIs instead of trying to develop applications using the new ones.

Which once again probably means something about the convergence idea. If developers hated it, there might be a reason.

Canonical didn't just dip out of convergence, they also stopped working on their own desktop. It's really sad because Linux would be far and away the leader here if Canonical was driving the direction of development

Oh. And why did they stopped working on their own desktop? They released a mobile OS after all, but the "converged" desktop never materialised until they just stopped working on it. It didn't work because it can't.

instead we'll just have to admire Apple's implementation for a few years before we get it right. Everyone is going in this direction though, and for a perfectly logical reason.

That's called buzzword compliance. Remember when "everyone" was doing ActiveX because that was guaranteed to be the future? Remember when "everyone" was going in the direction of XML everywhere and for everything? Before that "everyone" was doing CORBA. Before then... etc...

Why the hell would you want to develop two distinct code bases, one for mobile and another for desktop (or three for a tablet, or four for in-car entertainment) when you could just make one code base that adapts depending on what environment it is running under? It's just common sense.

The point is that it doesn't make sense at all. It's just a new reincarnation of the "develop once, run everywhere" fallacy that so far has been only tried about a million times. Every single time it has resulted in "develop endlessly, debug everywhere, use nowhere". Remember Corel's Java Office? Where is Java Office now? Where is Corel while we are at it?

Not all applications are usable in mobile, but for those that are, tell me why you would want to write them two or three times?

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. Case in point, music players. Take Lollipop for example, in a misguided quest for convergence its settings are accessed as a separate page in the main window, which is an obvious mobile UI design pattern that is terribly modal, confusing, user unfriendly and simply alien on a desktop. Look at mobile word processors; would you want to use that on a desktop? Would you want to use Libre Office on a mobile? In each case the UI is and must be so totally different. For such software, zero commonality between mobile and desktop UIs is an explicit design goal.

[markus40]

Those systemd rants were priceless among other reasons because it was all about that notion of Init Freedom(tm). Then they were prophesying a mass migration to BSD because on BSD you, like, totally have Init Freedom, right?

Those were hilarious. Also, the argument about one big development tree which was supposedly a problem that went against the Unix philosophy. They didn't really study how BSD is developed didn't they .

[t.s.]

One can blane RedHat for many things but the reality is is that they aren't the default in the Linux ecosystem because they have power, they have the power because they are the default. There is simply no other player in the market atm with the same developer support and the same involvement in so many essential open source projects. It's regrettable but so far that's what it is. On the subject of desktops, KDE botched its launch because Qt was then non-free, which meant that distros decided they didn't want it. Even today the open source future of Qt seems to be perpetually in question. Then the likes if XFCE&co. aren't really comparable to GNOME. They are OK-ish strictly as desktop user interfaces, but what is really needed is not just a UI, but also a consistent environment for develooers to build apps on. And only GNOME (and KDE) provide that.

I'm not blaming RedHat. At least, not entirely. They contribution for linux ecosystem is huge. Although not all of the contribution is positive, but I benefitted much from them. Qt and KDE? Yes, it's a pity. But with what GNOME's doing now, we don't have much choice, do we? If only they want to hear others opinion (and reduce their memory footprint).

There's one DE that's quite promising: Englightenment. It's blazing fast, have minimal memory footprint. Quite lack in feature department 'cause not enough man-power I think. But comparable or maybe more than XFCE feature-wise. I find that it's one of the earlier DE that try to have a convergence layout before everyone else. But the popularity is not that good. And IMO, the layout should have major overhaul (sorry, raster).

[t.s.]

Oh, you got me here with this phrase enough to go pay my traffic lights dues to Google and register. I do know about SteamOS, indeed.

SteamOS was not targeting Gnome. SteamOS targets Steam client's Big Picture mode as a DE. Yes. Seriously. ...

Apologize. Sometimes ago, IIRC I read news about SteamOS using GNOME, and their Big Picture based on GTK. Thanks for the clarification.

[t.s.]

So what would good convergence actually look like? Why "is" it the future and why should we be all for it?

Bottom line: desktop and mobile have entirely different use cases and require radically different UI designs.

Imagine, our phone is our computer. Example: when we want to use it as a phone and want to browse though our contacts. The views, the way to interact with the UI (UX) is using a kind of a phone one (like iOS or Android). But then, when we dock our phone to a keyboard-mouse and monitor, the UX is for keyboard+mouse and monitor. Or when we use google spreadsheet on phone vs using it on desktop.

I agree that desktop and mobile have different use cases. But in the future, when we have good enough mobile phone, why not using it for desktop too? Heck, our high end phone SoC is more powerfull than pentium/i3. Why not using it for desktop use.

[t.s.]

If I had to rant about every quirk I encountered in my life with desktops, I would never stop. You all got too much hung up on what you don't have instead of what you have.

For you, it's rants. For me, it's constructive feedback. If I were the UX developer, their critics is a positive input for me.

I really don't care for the ranting, please continue. I just like to poke a little into those stupid frustration I see. Mostly I find it entertaining and funny. The best rants were the systemd rants and the mass migration to BSD and Slack. The whole 22 years of Gnome rants and the constant moving of goal posts is also quite entertaining. Please continue, I don't care. I'm not hung up on Gnome, I really like the 'not the typical' desktop thing and I have fun using it. That is why I use it as my desktop at home. For me, that means something because I used, and by that, I mean worked and developed on, many desktops professionally. So, no matter what you or whoever else say. For me, it is a really great product that I prefer above all that came before and have to use today. Except my Amiga 500 and later 4000. I mourned when I had to buy a Win95 desktop in 1997 when my 4000 died. I didn't care for using computers at home for a year. Luckily, then I discovered Linux, wiped Windows and installed Red Hat 7 with Gnome on it. I could develop on my desktop for the workstations at my workplace. That time was magical, and the fun was back and it never stopped.

1) Rants (you) vs feedback (me). It's about PoV. People voicing their opinion is not necessary ranting.
2) Me and the other here didn't rants about systemd, did we?
3) If you read the "rants", it's not 22 years of GNOME rants. It start at GNOME v3.
4. ..We're out of topic. Now the focus is about you, not GNOME.

[markus40]

4. ..We're out of topic. Now the focus is about you, not GNOME.

Fine, the focus is on me. Whatever that means.
For you. The focus is on Gnome v3. Also fine. For me, it is a continuation of 22 years of, let me put it in other words, frustration of Gnome.
That's fine, really. But nothing chances in my stance and opinion. I'm glad there is a desktop who tries to take another path.
Building a desktop is hard. I experienced a lot of them and most of them. Even the ones with loads of cash behind them, were frustratingly bad. But I had to use them and I adapted. Maybe that makes me appreciate what we have with Gnome in another way then you.
Maybe, I'm wrong and XFCE is how the 'real' Linux desktop was meant to be, but I'm glad that this is not the case. That paradigm belongs, in my opinion, to the past.
Even on my work T41 with Win10 the taskbar, full of icons started by tasks my employer wants to have running, has become a meaningless tool, where I don't see the tree in the forest.
I never go to the windows menu and search in the application tree. I type what I want. All those things Gnome 2 was great at, are, again in my opinion, obsoleted. Sue me...