GNOME Developers Working To Rethink Their Window Management Approach

[Weasel]

So you don't know you're talking about. You just use interfaces and you like what you like but you don't really know what makes it work.

The complete opposite. User interfaces are at their best when they are used. Nobody gives a crap what someone thinks they "should" be like when they aren't even using them but "designing" them to keep their jobs.

No idea what the field of UI design has to do with third world countries or lack of talent. You seem to think very little of people whose contributions you don't understand.

Because they are dead weights. Constant redesigns are a sign of desperate attempts to cling to their job and prove their "usefulness".

Also I'm obviously talking about the desktop use here. If they really wanted mobile designs they should stick separate versions, because I want the maximum efficiency for me first and foremost, not lowest common denominator with mobile peasants, or people who need to fit 3 giant letters on their 30" screen because they can't see shit.

[Weasel]

Personally, I never understood why people which claim to be power users have a need for a GUI at all. So you prefer something like this?

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That looks efficient for a settings window, yes.

And I know Myownfriend brought it up but who uses shortcuts for settings?

[oleid]

That looks efficient for a settings window, yes.

That's not a settings window, it's an application main window. I prefer command line wget. Much cleaner

And I know Myownfriend brought it up but who uses shortcuts for settings?

Read again. They didn't bring up keyboard shortcuts for settings, just shortcuts in general.
And yes, every power users uses these. I guess you should know that.

[kpedersen]

Personally, I never understood why people which claim to be power users have a need for a GUI at all. So you prefer something like this?

That GUI window is more useful than most others. Along the bottom you can see it generates batch files so you can see what the hell it ends up doing. Kind of like good ol' smit/smitty on AIX (probably the only GUI system management program I find viable).

Instead, try this (too large to upload / embed)

https://smallstep.com/blog/if-openssl-were-a-gui/

[Myownfriend]

The complete opposite. User interfaces are at their best when they are used. Nobody gives a crap what someone thinks they "should" be like when they aren't even using them but "designing" them to keep their jobs.

What counterpoint do you think you're making? Who said that they people designing interfaces aren't using them? Do you think that interface designers just work in Photoshop then have other people use the interface? No. That's not how anything works but I suppose you'd have to think that in order to have the opinion that you have.

I mean something like Gnome is literally developed out in the open with discussions about it's design decisions being readily available for others to read. There's no excuse being as ignorant as you are.

Because they are dead weights. Constant redesigns are a sign of desperate attempts to cling to their job and prove their "usefulness".

What constant redesigns are we talking about? Gnome 3 came out in 2011 and the next major redesign of the interface was in 2021, ten years later. Both have a top bar, system status area, overview, search bar, notifications areas, and workspace list. The biggest change was that overview was rotated and the visual hierarchy was improved.

Also I'm obviously talking about the desktop use here. If they really wanted mobile designs they should stick separate versions, because I want the maximum efficiency for me first and foremost, not lowest common denominator with mobile peasants

Fantastic, more dumb, self-important shit. What makes Gnome a mobile-only interface and what's preventing you from being at you maximum efficiency... other then how much you post on Phoronix?

In your mind, if something works well on a tablet then it must suck on desktop and vice versa and that's just not true. I'd really love to see the kind of interfaces that people like you would make so myself and others can laugh at it.

or people who need to fit 3 giant letters on their 30" screen because they can't see shit.

Good thing nobody actual does that. But please, stick to made up scenarios and continue to be very unspecific about what you're talking about when you're ranting.

[blackiwid]

You could as well write "some", since you're not really able to quantify it.

Sure I can't say for sure, but on the amount of gnome hate messages I read consistently under all Linux Desktop threads seem to be a good point of evidence, that lot's of pro-people have a problem with it.

Now it could be a tiny minority that is much much louder more active but I doubt it. It would make sense that a desktop with less configuration alone is better targeted at beginners than advanced users, the problem with that is that the really really at least beginner mindset or "stuck" mindset people use xfce instead, because for them even that very simple aproach is different enough from their beloved windows 95 / xp desktop they grew up with.

So gnome is a bit in a tough space. I guess the what do they call it classic? Mode could fix that, but I think somehow it get's not much love enough from neither devs nor users.

Sure this xfce users often are also concerned with having it run on their pentium 4 machines with 512mb ram (a bit polemic).

I just think gnome is at a tough middle ground thing, now sure all desktops have problems, but something is wrong that after all the 500 forks with cineman / mate and Budgie Desktop people still search for other desktops nothing seem to make them happy, you would think gnome could at least be the basis where other people write other shells for it, but it's basically not happening.

Now we have this popos desktop in the making... sure part of this is a boner for Rust, but it's not all in my view.

Now you can say that's great the power of opensource, but it's possible to write DEs for Windows and Macosx, too. Yet besides they have a much bigger userspace they have not a fraction of the linux desktops. And yes to a degree that is a advantage but everything has a optimal point, having to much choice is negative, "the Paradox of Choice", or in economy they talk about the Marginal utility.

And even on android while you have different starters you mostly or they are not bound to different apps. So it's more like a different app starter extension or something alike not different desktops.

And I think gnome should target advanced users, but I am biased I am such one, but it should target them without creating a big barrier for noobs.

And heck a few years ago Gnome made me with dynamic workspaces with keyboard driven usability and going away from windows similarity with gnome 3 with not having icons / folders on the desktop made me slowly consider tiling wms, not even so much because of the tiling itself but because they are programmable with custom shortcuts and well you could argue that this client side decorations with integrated menues also is moving towards tiling wms that also did hide the tiling wms.

But I digress a bit... I just say they need to do such things to stay relevant or maybe could reach out to people to get them back they lost in the way. I am not sure that is enough. And yes many people stick out of laziness / different priorities with them, but that was a important field more than adding or removing 2 buttons in Nautilus again.

[Weasel]

What counterpoint do you think you're making? Who said that they people designing interfaces aren't using them? Do you think that interface designers just work in Photoshop then have other people use the interface? No. That's not how anything works but I suppose you'd have to think that in order to have the opinion that you have.

Nobody cares what mobile peasants are using lol. Before the mobile era we used to call them "clickers" because they clicked on everything, and never used shortcuts.

I mean something like Gnome is literally developed out in the open with discussions about it's design decisions being readily available for others to read. There's no excuse being as ignorant as you are.

Not really, they have their minds set up already, if they don't like something they shut it down or even shadow ban you. Always been like this. There's a reason it's hated.

What constant redesigns are we talking about? Gnome 3 came out in 2011 and the next major redesign of the interface was in 2021, ten years later. Both have a top bar, system status area, overview, search bar, notifications areas, and workspace list. The biggest change was that overview was rotated and the visual hierarchy was improved.

I was talking about "design" in general everywhere, not specifically GNOME, because you started with it.

Here's an easy one. Why is it that old websites (that are perfectly functional btw) are also the websites that have the least amount of "redesign" for example?

If you need to fucking redesign your UI to "keep it fresh" then obviously either your bullshit reasons for having designed it originally in a certain way were wrong (and will continue to be wrong because you keep redesigning it, which proves that even YOU think they were wrong), or that humans evolve every year to be completely different animals!!!

"Let's put X there because it's the most efficient for human blabla".

Why redesign it 1 year later then? Humans changed?

I'm dumbfounded that you cannot see this simple fact. What a shill.

Oh wait you probably work in design or have a friend who does and need to justify your/their existence.

Fantastic, more dumb, self-important shit. What makes Gnome a mobile-only interface and what's preventing you from being at you maximum efficiency... other then how much you post on Phoronix?

In your mind, if something works well on a tablet then it must suck on desktop and vice versa and that's just not true. I'd really love to see the kind of interfaces that people like you would make so myself and others can laugh at it.

It's not like GNOME is the only thing that does it. Look at Windows. (and btw there is a reason people put effort to replace it, or "Classic Shell" or whatever, dumbass)

If you unironically like Windows 8's interface compared to Windows 7 on a desktop you need to be checked up by a professional.

I mean what do I expect from a clown who shills for Wayland.

[Myownfriend]

Nobody cares what mobile peasants are using lol. Before the mobile era we used to call them "clickers" because they clicked on everything, and never used shortcuts.

More egotistical masturbation.

Not really, they have their minds set up already, if they don't like something they shut it down or even shadow ban you. Always been like this. There's a reason it's hated.

That first part is part of collaboration. When you work as part of a group, you don't get to implement every single idea you have if there isn't some agreement that it's a good idea.

I'd love to see an example of the shadow banning you're talking about but I have a feeling that won't happen because you're allergic to using actual examples.

I was talking about "design" in general everywhere, not specifically GNOME, because you started with it.

Here's an easy one. Why is it that old websites (that are perfectly functional btw) are also the websites that have the least amount of "redesign" for example?

What websites are you talking about?

If you need to fucking redesign your UI to "keep it fresh" then obviously either your bullshit reasons for having designed it originally in a certain way were wrong (and will continue to be wrong because you keep redesigning it, which proves that even YOU think they were wrong), or that humans evolve every year to be completely different animals!!!

Man isn't familiar with passage of time. There are many reasons why website designs might change. Sites may want to add new features or make changes due to feedback, new technologies might become available, the site might need some changes to account for the sites growth in user base, the owners of the site may have different opinions on design as they grow, learn, and change, etc.

I'm dumbfounded that you cannot see this simple fact. What a shill.

Oh wait you probably work in design or have a friend who does and need to justify your/their existence.

Yes, I've designed stuff before, but it's not my job. The idea that you think design, in general, is bad makes me want to see the stuff you worked on more and more.

It's not like GNOME is the only thing that does it. Look at Windows. (and btw there is a reason people put effort to replace it, or "Classic Shell" or whatever, dumbass)

There are always going to be people who can't deal with change. You included.

If you unironically like Windows 8's interface compared to Windows 7 on a desktop you need to be checked up by a professional.

Windows 8 had some good ideas that were implemented poorly. The complete separation of desktop and the metro UI was it's biggest issue.

I mean what do I expect from a clown who shills for Wayland.

How am I shill? I have no affiliation with those developing Wayland. Why do you think I do?

Do you not know what a shill is?

[Weasel]

More egotistical masturbation.

Yet another irrational reply, befitting a clown.

That first part is part of collaboration. When you work as part of a group, you don't get to implement every single idea you have if there isn't some agreement that it's a good idea.

I'd love to see an example of the shadow banning you're talking about but I have a feeling that won't happen because you're allergic to using actual examples.

What the fuck you even talking about? YOU said they have "public discussions" about it. It's as much "public discussion" as politicians. They have their minds set already, it's all an ACT.

Your entire reply doesn't address this one bit. I don't give a SHIT about the REASON they don't, I'm stating facts that they don't. The reason is irrelevant. You brought it up that they do otherwise, which is pure bullshit and you haven't countered it.

What websites are you talking about?

Almost every "modern" website that changes its look to new "trends" or for no reason at all just to stay "fresh". Heck just look at browser UIs, not even websites. How many times was Firefox's UI changed in the past 5 years?

Man isn't familiar with passage of time. There are many reasons why website designs might change. Sites may want to add new features or make changes due to feedback, new technologies might become available, the site might need some changes to account for the sites growth in user base, the owners of the site may have different opinions on design as they grow, learn, and change, etc.

So you're literally shooting yourself in the foot?

YOU claimed that the designers have deep reasons to design things the way they did and it all has deep planning and everything. If their opinions change as they grow it only proves how weak and pathetic their reasons were to begin with, aka you're full of shit.

It's like teenagers designing crap for the first time and changing it faster than they change their socks. There's nothing deep here and you indirectly admitted it. They just do it because they want to / to keep their jobs.

Yes, I've designed stuff before, but it's not my job. The idea that you think design, in general, is bad makes me want to see the stuff you worked on more and more.

If it were good it wouldn't be changed. If something is designed with actual planning and objective logic in mind, then it wouldn't get overhauled or revamped except tiny incremental improvements.

"We placed this here because it's the most efficient for..."

OK: Later: "Slightly shifted it to the right because it increases efficiency".
Clown: Later: "Completely overhauled the original design, come check out our FRESH NEW LOOK!!!"

Look at keyboard layouts. DVORAK is the most efficient for typing English. It was designed with brain and actual facts/statistics based on letter usage.

Imagine if it got changed every year though. "Most efficient" my ass in that case. But that's not a retarded 3rd world country designer, it's actual science, so that doesn't apply. That's proper design.

There are always going to be people who can't deal with change. You included.

Nice switching the goal posts. I don't give a flying fuck about dealing with changes. Changes shouldn't happen in the first place if the design was actually objectively smart and deeply planned like YOU claimed. Deal with it, clown.

Windows 8 had some good ideas that were implemented poorly. The complete separation of desktop and the metro UI was it's biggest issue.

The point is, it went for mobile first design, and that's simply terrible on the desktop.

[Myownfriend]

Yet another irrational reply, befitting a clown.

It's what you were doing. Nothing irrational about it.

What the fuck you even talking about? YOU said they have "public discussions" about it. It's as much "public discussion" as politicians. They have their minds set already, it's all an ACT.

Your entire reply doesn't address this one bit. I don't give a SHIT about the REASON they don't, I'm stating facts that they don't. The reason is irrelevant. You brought it up that they do otherwise, which is pure bullshit and you haven't countered it.

It's irrelevant if the reason there might be a good reason someone's idea isn't used? Who is they in this example? And where is your proof that this is an act?

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design

Almost every "modern" website that changes its look to new "trends" or for no reason at all just to stay "fresh".

Examples. Use them.

Heck just look at browser UIs, not even websites. How many times was Firefox's UI changed in the past 5 years?

Firefox's layout from 2018 (58) to now (116) is way more similar than it is different. If you juxtapose the two, the main difference you're going to see is how the tabs and back button look.

So you're literally shooting yourself in the foot?

YOU claimed that the designers have deep reasons to design things the way they did and it all has deep planning and everything. If their opinions change as they grow it only proves how weak and pathetic their reasons were to begin with, aka you're full of shit.

This says a lot about you and it's funny BUT staying on topic, designers are not clairvoyant, all knowing, or perfect and design decisions make different amounts of sense as time goes on. Visual and UI design is similar to programming. As you learn more about programming and as you learn more about the problem you're trying to solve, you'll reach different conclusions on how something should be done. That doesn't mean there's one correct way that a programmer slowly moves towards. You can see in the programming world as well that there are different philosophies on how code should be written and different applications for the same task can have different ideas on how to approach that task.

But lets just look at UI design from the perspective of something that you don't seem to understand: the passage of time.

Lets just look at icons for example. In the early days of computing when monitor were low resolution, RAM was limited, processors were slow (part of the reason that Windows 95 didn't have seconds on the clock was performance reasons), and GPUs weren't really a thing, using small, fixed-sized, limited color bitmap icons made a lot of sense. They were computationally cheap and worked well for pretty much any screen that the software would run on at the time. As computers were able to display more colors and monitors became higher resolution, icons needed to become higher resolution. Instead of painstakingly recreate old icons in higher resolutions with more colors, it makes more sense to just make new ones. When high-DPI displays became a thing and hardware became more powerful, it started to make sense to use SVGs instead of storing several versions of the same icons and resizing them. So yet again, it makes more sense to redesign the icons instead of trying to recreate the old ones.

Now lets look at browser UIs. If you look at the design of Spyglass Mosaic. It had a menu bar and several buttons for Back, Forward, Refresh, Home, Open, Save, Clone Mosaic Window, Destroy Mosaic Window, Search Page, Print, Newsgroup Index, Stop Loading, Check Encryption, Check Security Status. The menu bar had all the same functionality that was provided by the buttons and more. Among the menus in the menu bar is an Options menu that includes options to toggle off tables, background colors, background images, underline thickness. These weren't weird design decisions at the time. Newgroups were a thing so dedicating a whole button and menu to it made sense at the time. People still printed out information from the Internet all the time because there was no other way to reliably bring that information up when you were away from the computer so always displaying the print button made sense. You weren't always connected to the internet and modems were slow so the act of saving a webpage to disk also made sense to. Website layouts were very simple. They were mostly text and CSS didn't exist yet. The most you would get is an occasional difference in background color. Because someone might print the page out, being able to toggle background images and colors off made sense.

Search engines didn't exist so why would anyone have thought to include a search bar back then? Eventually search engines were created and became the primary way for people to navigate the internet so adding a search bar and setting search providers made sense. As news groups went away, it made sense to get rid of features relating to them. As it became less common for people to Save websites, set a Home page, or Print out sites, it made more sense to hide those buttons, at least by default. As people started doing more stuff online more often, being able to group browser windows made more sense so browsers started implementing tabs. Tabs took up vertical space which, when so many laptops had fairly low resolution 16:9 displays, was an issue especially when the windows taskbar was eating up part of the bottom of the screen and so was the browser's status area. As a result, browsers started putting tabs in the title bar area and they tried making the status information pop up contextually instead of always using up screen real estate. At the same time, smart phones were becoming more popular and they had the opposite problem. They lacked horizontal screen real estate so merging the URL bar and search bar made sense. On desktop this also allowed for more of the URL to show or for more buttons, possible for extensions, to be shown.

As HTML, Javascript, and CSS started tp allowed websites to work more like applications with far less code than you would need in something like C, it eventually dawned on somebody that it would make sense to use them for the browser's settings. That would speed up the pace that they could make changes and would re-use code from their layout engine.

It's like teenagers designing crap for the first time and changing it faster than they change their socks. There's nothing deep here and you indirectly admitted it. They just do it because they want to / to keep their jobs.

I never said anything was deep. I said that designers do have reasons for their design decisions and they put more thought into those decisions than you put into anything.

IIf it were good it wouldn't be changed. If something is designed with actual planning and objective logic in mind, then it wouldn't get overhauled or revamped except tiny incremental improvements.

Again, time doesn't stay still. Depending on the task of the software/website, design goals shift, as the world changes. Touch screens didn't always exist. Social media didn't always exist. The Internet didn't always exist. When the original AT&T logo was designed, nobody had idea what the fuck a favicon or why it might be important for their logo to be readable at such a small size.

objective logic

"Logic" is one of the most misunderstood concepts by idiots. You can reach wrong conclusions logically. It all depends on the data you have. If someone is color blind and can't tell two colors apart then they might not see a pattern made with the two colors. It would look flat to them, so using the data they have, they would think there is no pattern and they were looking at one color. That doesn't make them right but it also doesn't mean that they reached their conclusion illogically.

"We placed this here because it's the most efficient for..."

OK: Later: "Slightly shifted it to the right because it increases efficiency".
Clown: Later: "Completely overhauled the original design, come check out our FRESH NEW LOOK!!!"

I don't know how many times I can repeat that time flows, the world changes, and people learn new information.

Look at keyboard layouts. DVORAK is the most efficient for typing English. It was designed with brain and actual facts/statistics based on letter usage.

Imagine if it got changed every year though. "Most efficient" my ass in that case. But that's not a retarded 3rd world country designer, it's actual science, so that doesn't apply. That's proper design.

Whats with the racist anti-third world shit that you keep on spewing and what does it have to do with design?

There are multiple Dvorak designs. It literally changed between Dvorak patenting the layout and the layout he promulgated. There's also single-handed left-handed, and single-handed right-handed version of it, an ANSI version, a programmer's version and probably a few more.

Based on the data that Dvorak used, the layout probably should have been revised more. He took into account the frequency of different button combinations in the English language and put a certain amount of weight in most people being right-handed. The Dvorak layout was patented in 1932, a time when stats on left-handedness had not stabilized yet so, he couldn't have put weighed handedness properly. Since the 1932, the English language has also expanded and many words and names became more or less common. Acronyms and emoticons became way more popular, different slang was introduced, and different foreign words and names have made their way into English-speaking regions. The stats he was working with then don't apply now.

Nice switching the goal posts. I don't give a flying fuck about dealing with changes. Changes shouldn't happen in the first place if the design was actually objectively smart and deeply planned like YOU claimed. Deal with it, clown.

I'm not moving any goal posts and you're expecting designers to be clairvoyant and for time to stand still.

The point is, it went for mobile first design, and that's simply terrible on the desktop.

They went for a tablet, touch-first design, and yea it didn't work well with how it was integrated into the desktop. It's ability to be used on a desktop is definitely downplayed by most people though. They took two completely opposing designs, both visually and behaviorally, and had them fight with each other. If they had combined the charms bar and taskbar, had the desktop and start screen share backgrounds, and had WinRT applications and Win32 applications work along side each other then it would have been way better. There was nothing dynamic about the way the layout worked.