GNOME Playing Around With New Middle-Click Action

[movieman]

What's the point in that? Their codebase is essentially Gnome 2, which the Gnome developers already ported to GTK+3. What's the value in doing it again, instead of just using the Gnome3 libraries?

The point, I believe, is to run the Gnome 2 interface with the Gnome 3 libraries. And if Gnome had just ported the Gnome 2 interface to new libraries, rather than throwing it away to go all Tablet on us, MATE wouldn't have to exist.

[intellivision]

Heh, this is silly...

Also, I still think that gnome 3.10 should be just re-named to 3.0 and we could make pact with the devs that we will forget all the shit they did in exchange for normal linux-like development

Also, MATE is dying legacy, but XFCEs development is soooooo slooooow and it have half the features... Cinnamon seems the normal way to go, but do they have enough manpower to fork WHOLE gnome?

You make it falsely sound as though Gnome Shell is the only up to date GTK+ desktop experience on Linux, when that is simply not the case.
All of those projects that you have listed have active development, so I fail to see the point of your post besides glorifying Gnome.

[Delgarde]

The point, I believe, is to run the Gnome 2 interface with the Gnome 3 libraries. And if Gnome had just ported the Gnome 2 interface to new libraries, rather than throwing it away to go all Tablet on us, MATE wouldn't have to exist.

Sure, but most of the Gnome 2 UI code was ported to Gtk+3 along with the rest of it - the old fallback mode was basically the Gtk+3 version of the gnome-panel and metacity, albeit with a few changes to the layout and colour scheme. The MATE guys don't need to waste their time porting their fork of the Gtk+2 code, when the work has already been done and been used in the wild for a few years.

This is the big mistake the MATE guys made - rather than re-create the Gnome 2 UI on top of the Gnome 3 libraries, they took the Gtk+2 versions with all the cruft that the Gnome guys had since cleaned up, and now they're repeating the work that's already been done...

[liam]

I really wish someone other than apple would implement zoom on select. Even with a mouse, precise selection is too fiddly. With touch, its absolutely frustrating.
My understanding is that apple only has a design patent on the particular zoom implementation of a magnifying glass. What gnome snould do, if they had any interest in REALLY improving experiences (you can tell they don't considering their absurd personas), is implement those kinds of changes instead of futzing with the things they do.
I wish they wouldn't be left to their own quite so much.
All they need is ONE actual UX person to lead their design and things would be SO much better...

[finalzone]

I really wish someone other than apple would implement zoom on select. Even with a mouse, precise selection is too fiddly. With touch, its absolutely frustrating.
My understanding is that apple only has a design patent on the particular zoom implementation of a magnifying glass. What gnome snould do, if they had any interest in REALLY improving experiences (you can tell they don't considering their absurd personas), is implement those kinds of changes instead of futzing with the things they do.
I wish they wouldn't be left to their own quite so much.
All they need is ONE actual UX person to lead their design and things would be SO much better...

Plugins and extension development tooks are available for anyone willing to input above ideas. When deemed effective, it can be ported into the core.

[finalzone]

This is Gnome. Of course they won't ask users if they want this, because Change is Good! and Features Are Confusing!

Yet it is easy to complain rather than writting a plugin or extension for those removed extra functions i.e. Nautilus-open-terminal with right-click.

[bwat47]

Sure, but most of the Gnome 2 UI code was ported to Gtk+3 along with the rest of it - the old fallback mode was basically the Gtk+3 version of the gnome-panel and metacity, albeit with a few changes to the layout and colour scheme. The MATE guys don't need to waste their time porting their fork of the Gtk+2 code, when the work has already been done and been used in the wild for a few years.

This is the big mistake the MATE guys made - rather than re-create the Gnome 2 UI on top of the Gnome 3 libraries, they took the Gtk+2 versions with all the cruft that the Gnome guys had since cleaned up, and now they're repeating the work that's already been done...

Yeah, I don't see why they didn't just start based on gnome-fallback. gnome-fallback was far from perfect and not nearly as polished as gnome 2, but it was already all ported to gtk3 and would have been a much easier starting point for MATE. Forking gnome 2 and then removing all the cruft *again* was just silly. I get the feeling forking gnome 2 was a purely emotional reaction from the founders of MATE, and then they soon realized how bad gnome 2 had become under the hood lol. One of the main reason gnome 3 was totally re-written was because the gnome 2 codebase had become an un-maintainable mess.

[Delgarde]

Yeah, I don't see why they didn't just start based on gnome-fallback. gnome-fallback was far from perfect and not nearly as polished as gnome 2, but it was already all ported to gtk3 and would have been a much easier starting point for MATE. Forking gnome 2 and then removing all the cruft *again* was just silly. I get the feeling forking gnome 2 was a purely emotional reaction from the founders of MATE, and then they soon realized how bad gnome 2 had become under the hood lol. One of the main reason gnome 3 was totally re-written was because the gnome 2 codebase had become an un-maintainable mess.

Yeah, I think they got hung up on the UI aspects of Gnome 2 vs 3, without appreciating that the visual differences actually make up a very small portion of the code...

[johnc]

Yet it is easy to complain rather than writting a plugin or extension for those removed extra functions i.e. Nautilus-open-terminal with right-click.

I kinda get weirded out by the idea that I have to go out and track down plugins and extensions to install just so I can have a usable desktop.

One of the main reason gnome 3 was totally re-written was because the gnome 2 codebase had become an un-maintainable mess.

That speaks volumes about GNOME developers.

[bwat47]

I kinda get weirded out by the idea that I have to go out and track down plugins and extensions to install just so I can have a usable desktop.

And with KDE I have to spend ages messing around in its cluttered settings to change its many poor defaults

That speaks volumes about GNOME developers.

KDE3 > KDE4 was a similar situation