GNOME/GTK+ Human Interface Guidelines Updated

[justmy2cents]

We're of a mind on this, except I have hope that IF testing is done and comes back negative SOMETHING will be done, even if Fedora carries patches. Again, I hope.
The newer gnome releases have merged the top window border with the old menu (icon). Going one step further and having that merge with the header when maximized (a la maximus) would be great. Ideally, however, there would be slight layout changes depending on resolution and dpi (like you do with websites and mobile apps), but I'm not sure that's something gtk can handle.
One other change they absolutely have to make is to "merge" tweak tool. The tool, as it stands, isn't great, but it makes things like changing fonts much easier. Developers can be very picky about our fonts. Especially the monospaced ones.

that's awesome to know. though negative critics has been coming for appmenu now for 7 years and the only people with positive remarks are designers who did it. and instead of removing the most bashed feature, in 3.12 one can't even remove darn thing anymore.

[liam]

yea, forgetting it exists would be the worst probably. i disregarded some software and searched for other solutions by now god knows how many times

well, even if usability test happens, it will probably get disregarded. with amount of people complaints over appmenu and all the pointed out bugs with it, feature would be thrown out long ago if this wasn't done by someone with lot of pull and really high ego trip at the same time. its probably harder to admit that with time that passes since ignoring users

- completely unusable on large screen or multiscreen since it really makes you work to access something
- if you don't use those functions a lot, you forget they exist. which is bad usability
- problems with other DEs that don't support it
- >50% it only contains Quit, which it always will since other DE, toolkits don't provide support for appmenu
- visually... icon is so out of place, they removed them everywhere else, why not here too? i mean, if you remove appmenu from top bar, gnome is slick, with it its like looking some nice car with completely scratched doors
... way too many other flaws to go with each and every little one

personally, i'd feel ok with that gtk extra button in headerbar solution and hiding official appmenu, but in real world i'd prefer it would simply stack it self as top menu option under the name of software in gear menu. that way you'd be reminded there are software wide less used functions every time you enter menu

We're of a mind on this, except I have hope that IF testing is done and comes back negative SOMETHING will be done, even if Fedora carries patches. Again, I hope.
The newer gnome releases have merged the top window border with the old menu (icon). Going one step further and having that merge with the header when maximized (a la maximus) would be great. Ideally, however, there would be slight layout changes depending on resolution and dpi (like you do with websites and mobile apps), but I'm not sure that's something gtk can handle.
One other change they absolutely have to make is to "merge" tweak tool. The tool, as it stands, isn't great, but it makes things like changing fonts much easier. Developers can be very picky about our fonts. Especially the monospaced ones.

[justmy2cents]

I've been using GS as my daily for years (well before the first release...the code was really quite stable even then), but I always forget about appmeu. I so wish it would go away.
I'm waiting for the usability testing in fedora to verify this (I hope! **fingers crossed**), but who knows if even that testing will happen given the politics.
There are so many issues (maybe niggles is the better term) that the design team just won't budge on. Check out their closed/won't fix bugs, for instance. There was one in particular that stuck out to me that was from a person who was visually impaired, and who had complaints about the theme. That one really pissed me off.

yea, forgetting it exists would be the worst probably. i disregarded some software and searched for other solutions by now god knows how many times

well, even if usability test happens, it will probably get disregarded. with amount of people complaints over appmenu and all the pointed out bugs with it, feature would be thrown out long ago if this wasn't done by someone with lot of pull and really high ego trip at the same time. its probably harder to admit that with time that passes since ignoring users

- completely unusable on large screen or multiscreen since it really makes you work to access something
- if you don't use those functions a lot, you forget they exist. which is bad usability
- problems with other DEs that don't support it
- >50% it only contains Quit, which it always will since other DE, toolkits don't provide support for appmenu
- visually... icon is so out of place, they removed them everywhere else, why not here too? i mean, if you remove appmenu from top bar, gnome is slick, with it its like looking some nice car with completely scratched doors
... way too many other flaws to go with each and every little one

personally, i'd feel ok with that gtk extra button in headerbar solution and hiding official appmenu, but in real world i'd prefer it would simply stack it self as top menu option under the name of software in gear menu. that way you'd be reminded there are software wide less used functions every time you enter menu

[liam]

wouldn't agree on that and i'm no gnome lover. good gui guidelines will only point you in the direction of how to make clean and easy to follow interface and all these designs are just that. they are all nice and clean

now,... if only gnome realized appmenu breaks all of these, gnome would be perfect. not to mention it looks completely out of place with the design of gnome-shell. if they simply bolded application name instead of displaying icon, interface would at least look much better. still unusable feature that is done against any usability, but at least not spoiling visual appearance

personally, i'd be even happier if the new feature in gtk 3.10 for appmenu worked better as it does.
right now, some applications do as intended and add button to headerbar, some others like gedit add appmenu items to its menu and everything is cluttered while some apps don't use it at all. if they simply made that change to headerbar to display left appmenu button if option is set and appmenu on top only visible when that is not set, gnome would be really usable. well, i'd still miss system wide groups in shell menu, but that one is not so terrible

I've been using GS as my daily for years (well before the first release...the code was really quite stable even then), but I always forget about appmeu. I so wish it would go away.
I'm waiting for the usability testing in fedora to verify this (I hope! **fingers crossed**), but who knows if even that testing will happen given the politics.
There are so many issues (maybe niggles is the better term) that the design team just won't budge on. Check out their closed/won't fix bugs, for instance. There was one in particular that stuck out to me that was from a person who was visually impaired, and who had complaints about the theme. That one really pissed me off.

[justmy2cents]

The Gnome devs are not qualified to give any GUI guidelines. They're as "good" as the GNU coding guidelines, so what Linus said of them applies to Gnome's crappy UI vision as well:

wouldn't agree on that and i'm no gnome lover. good gui guidelines will only point you in the direction of how to make clean and easy to follow interface and all these designs are just that. they are all nice and clean

now,... if only gnome realized appmenu breaks all of these, gnome would be perfect. not to mention it looks completely out of place with the design of gnome-shell. if they simply bolded application name instead of displaying icon, interface would at least look much better. still unusable feature that is done against any usability, but at least not spoiling visual appearance

personally, i'd be even happier if the new feature in gtk 3.10 for appmenu worked better as it does.
right now, some applications do as intended and add button to headerbar, some others like gedit add appmenu items to its menu and everything is cluttered while some apps don't use it at all. if they simply made that change to headerbar to display left appmenu button if option is set and appmenu on top only visible when that is not set, gnome would be really usable. well, i'd still miss system wide groups in shell menu, but that one is not so terrible

[drspinderwalf]

I find Gnome to be really usable on the desktop/laptop. By default it's a little too clunky but with a few extensions it's way better than the time I had with gnome 2.X.

I suggest "AppKeys" because one can easily switch instantly to a app rather than cludge around with alt-tab, dash to dock, and then reduce the size of menubars in /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml. The header bars are really nice because there's a net increase in space savings while still providing useful and predictable actions for a program... but the regular menubars are way too huge on my poor 1366x768 laptop.

The workflow and design has really made me happy as a user, and I look forward for the more recent incarnations to hit debian stable (as 3.4 was still transitioning from the bad to the good).

Gnome gets a lot of flak (much of it legitimate) but I really think they're doing a great job with making a solid user experience.

[plonoma]

ARM has really shitty OS support... This is getting better with ACPI 5.1 and UEFI but until we get to the point where one OS image can be used across tons of different and varied tablets and phones, then there probably won't "Linux on ARM" for the average tinkerer except for projects like Rasbian (dedicated distros for ONE piece of hardware).

That, or wait for x86 tablets.

Rejoice, because ARM is working on a platform standard!

And have already announced the standard:
http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/ar...m-standard.php
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7721/a...tform-standard
http://arstechnica.com/information-t...e-server-room/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_...m_Architecture

[Akka]

Gnome gets better and better.

[mark45]

The Gnome devs are not qualified to give any GUI guidelines. They're as "good" as the GNU coding guidelines, so what Linus said of them applies to Gnome's crappy UI vision as well:

First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards,
and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture.

[curaga]

There's been x86 tablets for over a decade, and Linux support for many of them, but none have broken into wide use. Check out Fujitsu Stylistic for some history.