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

[JackLilhammers]

Of course, I'm agreeing. But out of curiosity, I'm using Wayland for more than a year and not noticing anything missing. I find it a pretty smooth ride. What is missing in your opinion?

We're getting closer by the day and I'm pretty confident that everything will be fine by 2022. I just think that we're not there yet.
Personally at home I can't make the switch because I have an optimus laptop and as a "nerd" I know it's Nvidia's fault, but as a user I perceive that Wayland is not there yet.
At work on the other hand I can't use Wayland on a project that I'm developing because my company uses AnyDesk which doesn't support it yet. Again, it's not Wayland's fault, but as a user my experience is broken.
This brings to my answer, maybe this rollout could have been engineered in a less disruptive way. Maybe with better backwards compatibility.

I thought this was pretty obvious, not? They could not keep the developers on their platform with their tools and their environment. Most of the development nowadays is not for the desktop, it is not solely coupled with Microsoft development tools. Although they are undoubtedly excellent. Development is mostly for mobile and server backends. None of which are dominated by Microsoft. In 90s and 00 it was obvious they were trying hard to eradicate everything, not Microsoft related. Pretty aggressively too. Maybe the developer world was not in war with them, but Microsoft sure was in war with everybody else. They didn't succeed. Internet, (nginx, Apache, python, PHP), Firefox and later Chrome (JavaScript), and mobile (android, iPhone) happened. None of which controlled by Microsoft.

From that perspective they undeniably lost, and it was for the better!
Under Nadella though I think that they're winning back the mindshare without even fighting.
I don't even think they're trying to control things with the old EEE modus operandi, because they don't need to

[markus40]

I forgot Nvidia, and you're right, I don't have or use devices from Nvidia, because of this. This is something that should be solved before a big rollout. Users won't understand. I saw somewhere they were abandoning their implementation (EGL streams I believe), lets hope they come with an acceptable solution.

Under Nadella though I think that they're winning back the mindshare without even fighting.
I don't even think they're trying to control things with the old EEE modus operandi, because they don't need to

I agree, their comeback is strong, it became a better company, they learned to co-exist.

[t.s.]

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...

Yes, to each their own. Well, glad you all happy using GNOME.

[t.s.]

With GNOME we have the same choice as with any FOSS project: get involved, fork it or just accept what's given. One thing for example I've always disliked in Nautilus is that you can't preset a view (icons or list) for a specific folder. So for years now I've been using a patched version that adds this. That's how FOSS works, GNOME devs *could* be more responsive to the users but well, that's what we have. For the memory footprint I don't get your point: today's computers have 16G, 32G or more RAM, what's the problem?

As for Enlightenment I don't see much promise or even interest there, sorry. You might disagree of course.

Lucky me, I have other DE to choose from. And I don't have to fork it as there's other more sane DE using GTK. I'm more worried about about GTK's ways when handling things. Beside, I don't have those expertise. Plus still don't have time and money for that.

As for memory footprint, not everyone have 16G, or more. Have you ever use SBC like raspberry pi? RPi4 tops at 8GB, but majority SBC just have 4GB.

And yes, Enlightenment's still a niche DE. A pity. Cause decade ago, when it's E16 time, it's one of the best DE.

[t.s.]

As you say, it's a matter of use cases, not hardware. The desktop is not going anywhere, for what it's being used for it's irreplaceable. If you can install actual desktop apps (NOT android apps) on a phone and use them on a desktop, that's all fine with me. But that's making my point that desktop and mobile should stay separate and be designed (and implemented) differently. Convergeance might perhaps be the thing for Instagram kids but honestly i DGAF about that. I don't see how productive software could start using a mobile-style UI and still remain productive.

Not necessarily different implementation. If you've build application for Android phone plus tablet, you'll know what I mean. Most of the time, they just have separate design. I.e., if the DPI is > xxx, then use phone view. When DPI's between xxx and yyy, use tablet. For lowest DPI, use desktop view. Single code base, different interface and how to interact.

Convergeance might perhaps be the thing for Instagram kids but honestly i DGAF about that. I don't see how productive software could start using a mobile-style UI and still remain productive.

Looks like you've never develop responsive web-based applications nor use them. My client's quite happy with my responsive 'Instagram kids' application, cause when they open it with their phone, the views and way to interact with the app is suited for a phone. When using a tablet or desktop, we have more screen estate. So, can cram more widget there. Etc.. etc.. And my apps still third class. When you have use trully convergence apps, you'll learn to appreciate it.

[t.s.]

Claiming having lack of choice is subjective when posting in the topic dedicated on GNOME in this case. As a power user, you are free to build your own distribution with your favourite desktop environment thus in full control of your custom operating system. However, yoou have to respect other people's choice notably the distributors, developers and even users happy to run that particular desktop environment.
Frankly, ranting about a desktop environment some users have no interest to contribute in this topic highlights a sign of dishonestly. Effective way to provide a constructive criticism is in Bug/Enhancement tickets for that desktop environment instead of posting in a forum.

You're too sensitive?
1. I --and I think others that I spoke of-- never disrespect everything as you accused of. If you read from the 1st page, you'll know what we're talking here. It's just some people asking about GNOME UX inconsistency. What kind of disrespect is that?

2. Again, rants vs constructive feedback. You can go back to reba screenshots. If you're the one that create those UX and not appreciating those feedback, then you're hopeless.

3. Bug/Enhancement? What about people that open those tickets that were ignored? Oh, and you can take it from another perspective. If you're not that good at designing UX and there's someone that have a good feedback, but not at your usual 'place' --but still your a place you often go, what would you do? A good learner will absolutely head there and review the feedback. But then, I kind of understand those guys that opening those tickets feeling. Why bother? Cause "ranting about a desktop environment some users have no interest to contribute in this topic highlights a sign of dishonestly"

[Mez']

Well... I don't know.

It looks like a usability clusterf*ck to me and I get the impression there went either too much or not enough thought into this:

This list could go on...

Funny how critics always put more objectivity into these and have a better analytical mind to analyze these things with the right distance than Gnome fanboys.
This is excellent work.

These shortcomings come up even worse with the prominence inconsistency on icons/buttons of the horrible adwaita theme.

[guara]

...today's computers have 16G, 32G or more RAM...

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.

[jacob]

jacob I agree that poor convergence is worse than no convergence. Windows8 blew it and a few Qt-based systems did even worse.

Gnome? The traditional desktop devs was very reluctant to go beyond Touch-enabled paradigms. But the libhandy guys persisted and made it work on GNOME3 era applications. Without most people noticing. Phoronix underreported as well (no weekly blogs to copy from).

Now it’s GNOME4x era and libhandy is retired for the better libadwaita approach. This time the desktop guys and GTK guys are onboard as well.

TLDR Gnome Convergence is already here and it was so non-intrusive most people didn’t realize it.

We may disagree, but I contend that 1) most people definitely DID realise and are not happy (the GNOME UI design gets bashed all the time here and elsewhere) and 2) I would never call it "better", at least not better than a non-converged approach. In Gnome Boxes you have to jump through hoops to even be able to have multiple windows open at the same time - that USED to be a given on a desktop, but mobile phone UIs don't work that way so let us rejoice for crippling the desktop to bring it in line with mobile limitations. Yay. Setting screens implemented as modal panes in the (single, of course!) main window instead of a normal settings dialog are spreading throughout GNOME like metastatic cancer. Now adwaita wants to clutter the head bar as much as possible to imitate mobile phone apps because apparently wanting to be able to move a window is not "converged" enough. Nope. There is nothing good or beneficial about that.

[jacob]

Not necessarily different implementation. If you've build application for Android phone plus tablet, you'll know what I mean. Most of the time, they just have separate design. I.e., if the DPI is > xxx, then use phone view. When DPI's between xxx and yyy, use tablet. For lowest DPI, use desktop view. Single code base, different interface and how to interact.


Looks like you've never develop responsive web-based applications nor use them. My client's quite happy with my responsive 'Instagram kids' application, cause when they open it with their phone, the views and way to interact with the app is suited for a phone. When using a tablet or desktop, we have more screen estate. So, can cram more widget there. Etc.. etc.. And my apps still third class. When you have use trully convergence apps, you'll learn to appreciate it.

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.