GTK+ Gains Experimental Overlay Scrollbars

[magika]

Why is everyone bitching so hard about this? What's wrong with more OPTIONS for the user... some people actually like overlay scrollbars.

If you don't like overlay scrollbars, then don't use them. As long as this isn't the default behavior, just move on if you hate it so much.

This is GNOME we talking about. This will be turned on by default with no means switching back without reverting commits manually.

[enfocomp]

This is GNOME we talking about. This will be turned on by default with no means switching back without reverting commits manually.

Yes I'm aware this is GNOME, but where did you read it's going to become the default without an option to revert? So far it's just an experimental feature, how do we know it wont be a toggle in gnome-tweak-tool once it hits stable? If you have a url that explains this more please link it.

If overlay scroll bars replace the original & doesn't give an option to revert, THEN I'll join in the bitching :P

[magika]

Yes I'm aware this is GNOME, but where did you read it's going to become the default without an option to revert? So far it's just an experimental feature, how do we know it wont be a toggle in gnome-tweak-tool once it hits stable? If you have a url that explains this more please link it.

If overlay scroll bars replace the original & doesn't give an option to revert, THEN I'll join in the bitching :P

Scrollbars handling is done by GTK. Off the top of my head I cant recall any option in Tweak tool that actually modifies GTK behaviour instead of GNOME Shell. Tweak tool only lets you to change few dconf and .css settings, isnt it?
And we know what happens next: "we can't maintain feature that we dont use" or "this goes against GNOME design".

[froyo]

It is great to see overlay scrollbars in GTK/Gnome! I like they way they are implemented in unity. As many others seem to disagree, there should be an option to turn them on (or off).

[Luke]

When GNOME removes the option to enable/disable something, MATE stands ready

Scrollbars handling is done by GTK. Off the top of my head I cant recall any option in Tweak tool that actually modifies GTK behaviour instead of GNOME Shell. Tweak tool only lets you to change few dconf and .css settings, isnt it?
And we know what happens next: "we can't maintain feature that we dont use" or "this goes against GNOME design".

In Ubuntu you can remove overlay scrollbars and global menus by removing the "ubuntu-desktop" metapackage and the packages supporting the overlays and global menus. If at some point there is option in GNOME to enable or disable overlay scrollbars, there will always be the option of replacing GNOME apps with their MATE equivalents. Most of MATE can now be built for GTK2 or GTK3, the roadmap shows full GTK3 support coming. If GTK3 ever supports only overlay scrollbars, it may be possible to revert that with a theme change, If not, MATE has no plans to drop GTK2 support. BTW, with some help from the "pixmap" theme engine a lot of GTK3 themes can be ported to GTK2 with nearly identical looks. You'd also be amazed just how similarly you can set up metacity themes and GtkHeaderBar theming.

When "GNOME design" conflicts with your design, the nature of FOSS software is you really do have a choice. In fact, as MATE matures GNOME gets more freedom to explore alternatives. Example, right now I've got Ubuntu's gedit 3.10 and pluma both installed and so alike they are hard to tell apart except by the filechooser. That being so, the UI changes for gedit 3.14 are much less of an issue and add options rather than removing them, as Pluma can take care of legacy needs. So it may become with the rest of the GNOME apps. MATE packages are in ubuntu's repos, probably the same on many other distros. MATE and GNOME get along fine on the same OS, as no packages conflict and no files have the same names. You may pull in half of MATE, but there's usually plenty of space these days, except perhaps on some phone/tablet devices in which the desktop style UI is the least useful.

[magika]

In Ubuntu you can remove overlay scrollbars and global menus by removing the "ubuntu-desktop" metapackage and the packages supporting the overlays and global menus. If at some point there is option in GNOME to enable or disable overlay scrollbars, there will always be the option of replacing GNOME apps with their MATE equivalents. Most of MATE can now be built for GTK2 or GTK3, the roadmap shows full GTK3 support coming. If GTK3 ever supports only overlay scrollbars, it may be possible to revert that with a theme change, If not, MATE has no plans to drop GTK2 support. BTW, with some help from the "pixmap" theme engine a lot of GTK3 themes can be ported to GTK2 with nearly identical looks. You'd also be amazed just how similarly you can set up metacity themes and GtkHeaderBar theming.

When "GNOME design" conflicts with your design, the nature of FOSS software is you really do have a choice. In fact, as MATE matures GNOME gets more freedom to explore alternatives. Example, right now I've got Ubuntu's gedit 3.10 and pluma both installed and so alike they are hard to tell apart except by the filechooser. That being so, the UI changes for gedit 3.14 are much less of an issue and add options rather than removing them, as Pluma can take care of legacy needs. So it may become with the rest of the GNOME apps. MATE packages are in ubuntu's repos, probably the same on many other distros. MATE and GNOME get along fine on the same OS, as no packages conflict and no files have the same names. You may pull in half of MATE, but there's usually plenty of space these days, except perhaps on some phone/tablet devices in which the desktop style UI is the least useful.

I dont know how Unity works with their custom overpatched gtk+ and Qt, but Canonical and Red Hat sure has similar FOSS policy "you'all don't like it? well fuck you, because we here do". Difference is Canonical is Apple on linux desktops wannabe and does their naughty things (not)quietly alone, and Red Hat is Apple of linux enterprise; trampled whta everyone loved about GNOME2 and, well, lets not list again all design similarities with OS X.

Thing is: customizable stuff disappears faster from GNOME than new one appears. Why? Because GNOME devs dont use them, feel that they are useless, and when horde of confused users start spamming bug reports (we don't have GNOME forums or anything for community, lol) about why their feature was removed developers reply with a single "NO WONTFIX". It hurts alot, so here we go again:
-- compact view removed, impossible to work with 10 or more files on the screen now
-- dual pane removed, tabs and screen side sticking is so clunky its useless due to way GNOME Shell/Mutter operate
-- you can't use custom command to open file
-- terminal background picture/transparency got removed
-- you can't rename terminal tabs
As to why things turned out this way is "LESS CODE IS BETTER" or "I DIDNT LIKE IT".
And today I found out I can't disable Hot Corner animation anymore after update.

Your advice to use MATE apps sounded logical until one started to question why he still uses GNOME instead of MATE.
I admit I hop around different DE alot and when I use GNOME I do so solely because of Shell/Mutter and then I still use only KDE apps.

[Luke]

I don't use GNOME 3 but have it installed for testing GTK3 themes

I dont know how Unity works with their custom overpatched gtk+ and Qt, but Canonical and Red Hat sure has similar FOSS policy "you'all don't like it? well fuck you, because we here do". Difference is Canonical is Apple on linux desktops wannabe and does their naughty things (not)quietly alone, and Red Hat is Apple of linux enterprise; trampled whta everyone loved about GNOME2 and, well, lets not list again all design similarities with OS X.

Thing is: customizable stuff disappears faster from GNOME than new one appears. Why? Because GNOME devs dont use them, feel that they are useless, and when horde of confused users start spamming bug reports (we don't have GNOME forums or anything for community, lol) about why their feature was removed developers reply with a single "NO WONTFIX". It hurts alot, so here we go again:
-- compact view removed, impossible to work with 10 or more files on the screen now
-- dual pane removed, tabs and screen side sticking is so clunky its useless due to way GNOME Shell/Mutter operate
-- you can't use custom command to open file
-- terminal background picture/transparency got removed
-- you can't rename terminal tabs
As to why things turned out this way is "LESS CODE IS BETTER" or "I DIDNT LIKE IT".
And today I found out I can't disable Hot Corner animation anymore after update.

Your advice to use MATE apps sounded logical until one started to question why he still uses GNOME instead of MATE.
I admit I hop around different DE alot and when I use GNOME I do so solely because of Shell/Mutter and then I still use only KDE apps.

I do not use GNOME 3 for routine work at all, I use a mix of MATE and cairo-dock and used to use Cinnamon until I figured out a way to duplicate most of its pretty looks in better-performing compiz/MATE. I do have both GNOME 3 and Cinnamon installed, as I prefer to test my theme customizations in many environments and to be able to see what the upstream devs are doing for myself. A GNOME 3 test session is much more useful than learning about it only from comments.

[magika]

I do not use GNOME 3 for routine work at all, I use a mix of MATE and cairo-dock and used to use Cinnamon until I figured out a way to duplicate most of its pretty looks in better-performing compiz/MATE. I do have both GNOME 3 and Cinnamon installed, as I prefer to test my theme customizations in many environments and to be able to see what the upstream devs are doing for myself. A GNOME 3 test session is much more useful than learning about it only from comments.

Do we both agree that if you want to work on a PC (as opposed to light activities on a tablet) then GNOME is pretty much shit?

[Luke]

Can't say "it's shit" but can say "unsuited to my needs" about GNOME 3

Do we both agree that if you want to work on a PC (as opposed to light activities on a tablet) then GNOME is pretty much shit?

I would say totally unsuited to my needs. GNOME saw enough people agreeing with this that they had to import and slightly modify about half of the frippery extensions into their own "gnome-shell extensions" package, including both the window list (bottom panel) and the traditional menu. That in turn says "If you prefer a GNOME 2 interface, why not run GNOME 2 in the form of MATE? " Cinnamon quickly rose to prominance and is a truly excellent (though heavy) desktop, but now that MATE has a real roadmap to the future it may become dominant in the traditional desktop field.

The UI would be of use for a tablet-but GNOME 3 and all its derivatives are so heavy my netbook becomes poorly responding if I use them. GNOME 3 or Cinnamon, either is too heavy for a netbook, at least in 64 bit. I suspect the Atom has an issue with 64 bit performance, as early prerelease GNOME 3 (2.91 et all) did not ruin it's responsiveness in 32 bit, nor did Compiz, but even MATE/marco gets sluggish in 64 bit on it while IceWM is speedy. I suspect tablets and phones would be even worse about not having the power to run anything based on GNOME 3 and keep full responsiveness. Ubuntu used Google's custom built Surface Flinger display/touch server, not Xorg, for Ubuntu Phone!

I don't know why the GNOME 3 team chose to write a UI in any scripting language, maybe the available programming talent? Due to the weight of GNOME 3 they have ended up with a UI that looks like it is meant for touch devices but is too heavy to actually use on a phone or tablet, even if they get the rest of the touch features like touch-usable scrollbars to work right. A touch style UI on a keyboard and mouse machine means a lot of extra mouse movement, which slows users down and contributes to overuse injuries as well. If they want to run on tablets they need to stop waiting for Moore's Law to catch Page's Law and ditch the scripts and the Clutter toolkit. Trying to compromise between scripting and precompilation with just in time compiliation of UI elements like menus leads to long lags to open them on small machines like netbooks. This is blatently obvious with python elements like Mint's otherwise excellent GNOME 2/MATE menu applet, but an issue with JS as well if there is enough of it. GNOME needs to return to compiled code like used in MATE, compiz, and even cairo-dock if they want to slim down to fit into a tablet environment.

Otherwise they should grab the entire MATE codebase, port it to a stabilized GTK3 with all its features intact, reconfigure all child applets of the panel and the panel itself to look like the beautiful GNOME 3 shell theme by default, and call it GNOME 4.