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Gnome's Nice Little GUI Perks
asdren writes "
Steven Garrity has written a short
article highlighting some 'user interface niceties' found in Gnome
with regards to file renaming, screen captures, fonts and file zooming." Garrity points out that "... tiny details can have a significant impact on the user experience
on operating systems. Inconsistencies that seem insignificant when
considering individually, but together they degrade the overall polish and sense
of stability in the system," and points out a few places where Gnome manages to avoid such inconsistency.
Didn't think Gnome *was* an operating system.
So that's it huh? Years of development, we've come up with better screenshots. Not-so-annoying handling of renaming files. Media players with some nicer features and wait for it....wait for it....zooming!
Look out Microsoft, your days are numbered!
Although Steven some nice features, he missed to mention that Nautilus supports WebDAV as well. WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning".
However Nautilus needs to improve the WebDAV functionality. MacOS has the best implementation of a WebDAV client as far as I know.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
99% of my apps are GNOME compliant. With the exception fo XChat, they are also HIG compliant. That's better that the Windows desktop I used at work (before switching to Linux there as well).
i personally think the file dialog could use some improvements, (i know, this is gtk), maybe it could use a few more navigation buttons to speed things up, seems a little primitive atm ?!?!
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
A google cache link is available here.
*twitch*
I have been using Gnome for a while, so it's no surprise to me when it comes to the things discussed in this article. About the only new thing I learned is that you can drag and drop screenshots into another program.
I do think that Gnome developers have paid good attention to detail in the last two 2.x releases. Without KDE 3.2, I'd have to throw in some criticisms there, but KDE 3.2 just rocks. Very refined.
There are gnome developers working on KDE?
The author cites Gnome's file renaming feature as an asset. He's wrong, completely. In Gnome, there's no obvious way to rename a file at all. The only way to rename a file is through an invisible menu. How the heck is the user supposed to know that the menu is there, or how to get at it? It's awful.
If they wanted to relegate the renaming function to a menu item, they should have put it in a system-wide menu bar, or use an Action menu like the Panther Finder uses. You know, something to indicate to the user that there's a menu there.
Site seems to be down already, heres google to the rescue:
Google cache
Well, within the DE it is standardized, all new Gnome apps follow the same HIG.
But obviously they can't do a jack about other applications, and if you really think people are going to stop using their favorite widget set and go to one that will be set as a standard you need to stop smoking that crack.
I read the story title as being about Nice little parks for gnomes. What a wonderful idea!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Poor troll. Trying reading the trollers FAQ next time.
Who cares? If they wanted to get something out of their work, they should have done it for profit. Of course, that would require them to produce something that's worth money, so maybe it wouldn't have worked out after all.
That's really the bottom line with "open source" programmers. They give their work away because nobody would be willing to pay them for it.
My days seem to be numbered too. I just looked at my desk calendar and they stop at 29! Oh my god the world is going to end in 21 days!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Oh go troll somewhere else. That's not even a good troll.
;)
Sure KDE is great, but the same with Gnome. I take GTK apps over QT apps anyday, however that is a taste question from my side.
IMHO, KDE and Gnome are equally good. It's a taste issue. My taste is more Gnomeish, your taste might be more KDE'ish. It still doesn't mean that one of them is better than the other.
Especially since XFCE4 is best
Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.
Just checked on both Windows ME and XP, and confirmed my earlier memory of using the Right-click menu to rename files in Windows. As in Nautilus, the right click menu *does* contain the option to rename files...and I guess that's more often used than the delayed-double-click mechanism, which I think is an additional method to rename a file.
The article may have some valid comments, but when it starts off with an obviously overlooked point, it loses credibility to me. Kudos to the Gnome team though, for all it's good work.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
to get Windows a decently stable and complete Desktop? 10? 15? Let's not forget GNOME is a relative new-comer at 6 years old, and the fact that it has a fraction of the number of developers and resources Microsoft can devote to their desktop should tell you how quickly it is progressing. Yes it is far from perfect, but you simply have not been paying attention if you aren't astonished by the advances GNOME (and KDE) have made in the last 3 years.
It's not so much the functionality as the smoothed edges on how to do them that the author likes.
Okay, I've had like eleven Red Bulls, but... what? That sentence doesn't parse.
You can lose either way: either you clone another GUI and get called copycats or you can make it different and even better, but piss off people who are used to the other GUI.
You forgot the third choice: make it so much better that people who hated it before will love it now, and even people who loved it before will have to grudgingly admit that it's been improved. Of course, you'll always end up with a fringe group who continue to stubbornly insist that the old way was better. These people will be increasingly marginalized as time goes by, until the majority of your users realize that they're just idiots.
tiny details can have a significant impact on the user experience on operating ystems.
Okay, while I completely agree with that article, Ill share some of my 'user experiences' using Linux vs. Windows and how things in Linux coming from a Windows POV are still archaic at best.
For instance, yes like windows, you can hit the Print Screen button and get screen shots the same as windows, BUT it popups up a program asking you what to DO with the screenshot and how to save it - very nice.
However, From a user who used IE just for the convienance when on WIndows, I migrated to Linux beore the MyDOOM crap and heres what Ive found:
Mozilla still has a ways to go, and is still IMHO a superior browser to IE, mostly due to the fact it does not allow executable installations and popups enabled by default -- HOWEVER, installing Java as a plugin in the browser and making it a "symbolic link" in the plugins directory of the JavaVM is tricky at best. If i didnt have a clue about these things Id be trashing Linux right there. No one in windows land has no clue what a symbolic link is, or how to "create one" in a command line.
There are other things also, but ill stick to the most basic and most obvious problem that a linux newbie would encounter right off the bat after installing Linux after migrating from Windows.
Keep in mind, its the things that DON'T work that ultimately decides if a user is going to stick with a particular operating system/GUI/client or not -- unlike most of the slashdot crowd, the general public simply does not have the patience to try and troubleshoot a problem or PAY anyone, for that matter to get the same functionality that they had before.
You mean like in Winamp, Media Player and ICQ? ;-)
Ahh the same way Microsoft Office doesn't use the same widgets as Microsoft Windows? And they are from the same company.
It's about time to stop wasting resources both on Gnome, KDE and about a hundred various window managers and standardize everything to a one setup.
Just this weekend I was still getting used to this weird operating system known as MacOSX: "How the heck do I rename a file?" Found out that clicking on the file name works. Yet, I far prefer GNOME's renaming idea: Renaming file is in the context menu, Edit menu and key F2 - and not selecting the file name extension is nice.
I also like the idea of using SVG for icons - scalable icons rule, and have done so for years in operating systems no one uses. I just wish the SVG themers could come up with even a single aesthetically pleasing and extensive collection of file icons. The button themes are good already.
Oh, and Emblems. Nautilus had these years ago. These things rule. OSX 10.3 got colored names. Not sure if Windows has innovated this feature yet.
Now that I finally have some very infrequent access to a Mac - the supposed bastion of good UI design - I've started getting a little bit annoyed that GNOME stuff and WindowMaker are actually better at times. Both are lightyears ahead of Microsoft, though =)
Getting to Know Gnome
by steven [10:56 PM February 3, 2004]
For the last few months, I've been using Fedora, a Linux distribution, as my primary operating system along with the Gnome desktop environment. Linux as a desktop platform still has lots of weaknesses, but I'm generally pleased and am very much looking forward to the progress planned in the next year.
I've written plenty before about the tiny details that can have a significant impact on the user experience on operating systems. Windows XP is rife with little visual glitches and inconsistencies that seem insignificant when considering individually, but together they degrade the overall polish and sense of stability in the system. It's like seeing cracks, no matter how small, in a bridge you're walking on.
I've noticed a few little user interface niceties worth sharing:
Smart File Renaming
In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally.
Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.
Also, when you do rename a file, the file name, not including the file extension is selected by default. So, if I want to rename a file called Diary.doc to Journal.doc, I right-click the file, select "Rename...", and type the new name. The ".doc" file extension isn't select by default, so it goes unaffected. In the rare case that I do want to rename a file, including the extension, I can easily manually select the extension as well. To do the same task in Windows, you must re-select the first part of the file name, manually excluding the file extension (which takes a fair amount of manual dexterity with a mouse) to avoid removing the file extension (Mac OS gets extra points here for avoiding file extensions where it can).
Smart Screenshots
In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDF is an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured by windows, as it often is, then there is little feedback of where your screenshot has gone (though, to their credit, the camera-shutter sound is the best audio feedback of a screenshot on any platform). In Windows, the screenshot is sent to the clipboard, and then must be pasted into an application for use. Again, there is no feedback as to where your screenshot has gone.
In Gnome, when you take a screenshot, you are greeted by a window with a preview of your screenshot with options to save it. You can also drag the preview from this window directly into an application (an image editing application, or into an email for an attachment). Nice.
Don't Tie My Hands
Using Windows Media Player, it is quite difficult to get a screenshot of a playing DVD. If you take a screenshot while a DVD is playing, you'll see a big empty black box where the movie should be. In order to overcome this issues, Totem, the movie player I'm using on Linux (which is a great, simple, media player - something that doesn't seem to exist on Windows) there is a tool built in to take screenshots of a playing movie. Under the "Edit" menu, select "Take Screenshot", and you'll be presented with a window much like
Who said anything about Microsoft?
That and weird little things like not being able to use wildcards in the file open dialog boxes. Personally, I think they should work on stuff like that, which affect basically all applications, before they work on the file manager/browser.
Can't something be flamebait and insightful?
The article does show why linux is more user-friendly than windows, but not in the way that the author intends.
He claims that file-renaming is better in nautilus because the only way to do it is through a context menu, and furthermore, the filename without extension is highlighted by default. Personally, I find both of those "features" terribly annoying. Quite often, all I want to do is change the extension on a file. Nautilus' behavior makes this much harder than it is in windows.
But the great thing is that there are plenty of file managers for linux, and even plenty built specifically for gnome. So I just use a different one that I like better. Choice is what makes linux better than windows, not the default behavior of one app.
1. [right-click] -> Rename
and the filename is highlighted and focused and you type the new filename and hit enter. Done. It's the same exact way in Windows.
If the thing was designed properly, integration wouldn't be much of an issue.
Most of a 'desktop environment' important details are underneath, not the pretty GUI. ( though the importance of having a CONSISTANT GUI shouldn't be dismissed. )
They should have had mechanisms in place from DAY ONE for shared information and intercommunications.. not something that was seemingly tacked-on later.. Integration of the desktop must be done on the fonctionnality level, not on the software level.
KDE is MUCH closer to this, as they planned ahead, and didn't just wing-it since it was 'pretty'. See here for example.
The problem with GNOME is that they use GTK+ object-oriented style, but don't borrow the most important aspect of (early, anyhow) GTK... cleanliness and simplicity! Without that, the GTK-inspired GNOME macro, er object, system is COMPLETELY INCOHERENT and to put it completely blunt: SHIT.
Not to mention the fact that the numerous API libraries do not work well together and stability will _never_ be achieved since one package will _always_ depend on something that is considered beta or unstable.
Don't even get me started on the various ad-hoc configuration mechanisms and the nightmare that is CORBA and Bonobo.
Sorry to sound harsh, but it was a complaint of mine from day one of GNOME, it just wasn't professional.. They worried more about a smelly foot in the menu then making it solid and consistent.. Now they are finding out the price to be paid if they want to stick around and be more then a cute plaything...
But I'm not really sure what to think of it, honestly. That they'd have to involve money to have things that SHOULD be simple get done.
Exactly what I'm talking about, standardize the GUI, geez.
Uhh...where did the parent mention KDE?
What glaring inconsistencies have you found in recent GTK+? From what I've read of the abstract (the article is unavailable as I write this), the article seems to disagree with your view.
In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally. Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.
Wait, so just because the guy is clearly incompetent at using any form of pointer input device, the GUI is to blame?!? I use Mac OS X every day and I think it is far more efficient at renaming files, which I have to do regularly when downloading journal articles from the likes of Jstor.
In OS X, if you click on the filename then the rename option becomes available. If you click on the icon, then you select the file. Predictable behaviour in my opinion, and allows you move and select files just as quickly, but rename even quicker.
This guy is clearly looking for reasons to justify GNOME's eccentricities and poor design, and seems to be ignoring the immense research that Microsoft and Apple put into interface design.
Heard of freedesktop.org?
Actually the extension idea makes a lot of sense. And it has already been submitted as a wish to bugs.kde.org:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58749
Please cast your vote!
There is a big difference between a desktop environment, a window manager and a widget set. A window manager and to a lesser extentent a desktop environment should be widget set agnostic. Afterstep is not tide to any set of widgets. I should still be able to choose my own WM/Desktop environment. While you probably like the KDE or Gnome win32 look-alikes, act-alikes, hog-memory-likes, crash-alikes; I much prefer a *Step environment. The user environment should be the users choice and it should not effect the applications.
The widget set on the other hand is not something that a user usually change trivially. Few applications come with the code to use more than one. Gvim is the only one that I can think of that provides more then two options at compile time. If I use an application that uses GTK then I have to load them into memory. If I then decide to run one using Athena then I have to load that concurrently. Yet another for Motif. By the time that I run a Qt application I have four different sets of libraries running concurrently, using memory, all doing the same thing! Even more annouying is that they all look and act different.
Unfortunatly, I do not think that developers will ever begin to use the same widget set. It has become somewhat of a religious war alongside vi + emacs. The next best thing is to get them to work together using some kind of standard.
Using Windows Media Player, it is quite difficult to get a screenshot of a playing DVD. If you take a screenshot while a DVD is playing, you'll see a big empty black box where the movie should be.
I'm no fan of WMP (I use BS Player or Windows Media Player Classic) but it's easy enough to get a screenshot from it, just turn down hardware acceleration.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
When the filename is selected, click shift+right and write .ext to change it.
Isn't that faster than selecting the extension part with the mouse?
I use Gnome every day at work and while there is much about the environment to love, there are also some really anoying glitches that I don't understand why they haven't been addressed allready. A few examples:
1. You can easily create or install themes by clicking your way through or drag-n-drop, but there is no apparent way of REMOVING a theme.
2. You can't change the location a launcher or shortcut points to once you have created it. That's irritating if you just needed to move the file or rename one folder in a long path and don't want to go through the hassle of creating a new launcher, name it and select icon from a long list again.
3. You can drag-n-drop emblems onto icons from the sidebar, but you can't remove them in the same easy way. To do that you need to right-click the icon and go into a totally different dialogue.
4. View files as a list in Nautilus and there is no way you can right-click on the background to get the context menu in order to for example add a folder. You then have to do it through the top-of-window menu instead.
5. Listview in Nautilus again: you can't drag-n-drop a file from another window without dropping it onto an entry.
6. There is no way you can change the permissions or emblems of multiple selected files in one go from Nautilus. You have to address them one by one.
Just like Gnome's small features really adds to the experience, these small glitches really destroys it too when you run into them. Gnome is my prefered environment though, here's to hoping that some of these gets fixed in the next release...
I'm using stock Redhat 9
I do not understand why cut and paste cannot be corrected. If a program is closed, what was just copied from it disappears from the buffer. Some programs can only do middle mouse button and others it's only via keyboard, some only from the menu some will do it from the right mouse.
Some of this is the application programmers fault and some is the window manager.
Other problems, why are programmers allowed to restrict what window functions I am allowed. If I want it to be minimized I want it minimized. I've seen this done on Gaim's away screen and it's very annoying. I would like to disable an application programmers access to these things either permanently or via user settable controls.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
To which I retort: BS Player. And his points about screenshots could easily be combined, I'm not seeing much content in the article to be honest.
Certainly. You've just described 99% of the articles posted on /.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
For instance, he said:
Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu.
This is not intuitive at all. While most of us would try the right-click eventually, there is no reason to go looking Rename there, except out of habit. If anything Rename deserves its own spot in the Edit menu. He also neglects Mac OS X Panther's 'gear' button, which is a nice approach - click file, then the gear to perform any kind of file manipulation. That is consistent. Right-click is for shortcuts but should never be the sole way of getting to a function. I do also agree with having only the filename before the suffic highlighted - I've noticed some apps do this for you and others don't, on the Mac anyways.
In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDF is an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured by windows, as it often is, then there is little feedback of where your screenshot has gone...
This is true, although a slight modification of that same keyboard shortcut will capture to the clipboard, and gives you the same deal (and you can re-assign it). The GNOME minipreview thing sounds cool though. Windows would beat everything here if they would finally just rename PrtScrn to 'Screen Capture Button', and added a feedback sound.
The DVD capture thing is interesting, I haven't tried it yet. Would it not be different depending on video hardware? (I remember Mac ATI cards would do the solid-colour-overlay thing while nVidia cards could capture DVD frames just fine.)
While browsing font files (TrueType, OpenType, etc.) in Nautilus, the file icons are replaced with a small preview of the font. Very handy when you're browsing for a particular font
A neat trick, but not even remotely handy. This is no way to browse fonts, looking at just an upper and lower-case A, in a 32x32 (or whatever) size. OS X has this one hands-down. Double-click a font and you get the whole repertoire, with a button that says 'Install Font' below it. It even asks you if you want to install for just this user, or all users.
Now when I'm browing files, especially image files, on either Windows XP or Mac OS X, I find myself looking for the zoom controls - a good sign that Nautilus does it right.
Not to be coy but this is only a good sign that you are used to GNOME. :)
I do think that GNOME is pretty much in WinXP territory as far as usability, and you can take that as you will. Its a good thing, really... if they're starting to focus on things like font support and workflow, they may start to eclipse Redmond.
Really I want GNOME to take a page from the design of Apple's Safari browser. Make it clean, elegant, simple, powerful. Do not load it with features. Don't copy features, invent better ones. This is how GNOME will find more diverse users. I worry that with all the propellerhead demand for things like (ugh) themes, the simple and elegant approach will often get lost.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Can I copy and paste between apps now?
sulli
RTFJ.
FUCKING SHIT ... halfassed ... faggots ... spank their tiny cocks
Did you have to bring the groin into this?
If the GTK toolkit people would spend less time trying to make their [subpar] toolkit skinnable and more time making it streamlined then perhaps the self-righteous GNU desktop [zealots] would have a better point.
What suggestions would you make for making it more "streamlined"?
"INTEGRATED! INTEGRATED! INTEGRATED! INTEGRATED!"
Text below is to satisfy the lameness filter:
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
It's curious that Gnome and KDE based their GUI design template on Windows and not the Mac. Clearly, they're basing their design decisions on bringing a Free Windows to the masses, not a Free MacOS. This may very well be because the developers were more familiar with Windows as opposed to MacOS, but was it the better decision? Or, is it possible that the distinction between Windows and Mac are no longer as apparent as they were only a few years ago, and the Mac no longer has the lead as a better GUI?
= 9J =
here's a copy of this evolving troll^W post.
Inconsistencies that seem insignificant when considering individually, but together they degrade the overall polish and sense of stability in the system," and points out a few places where Gnome manages to avoid such inconsistency.
It's nice to know that there are a few places where GNOME manages to avoid inconsistency, and also where to look for them. Very useful!
Okok, I don't want to start a flamewar here, but I have come to love Gnome lately and I wouldn't trade it with KDE or, beware, Windows.I am using Dropline Gnome for Slackware Linux and I must say that it not only rocks in daily works but still gives me cheers from people that see it the first time when passing my desktop. It just looks cool a-n-d useable. Gnome is very clear and not overloaded with features. What's more, now that gtk+ 2.2 is stable and had all it's debugcode removed it became much faster. The lazy responsetimes I had expierenced a few months ago are now all gone. The whole Desktop feels very snappy and responsive. Partly due to Kernel 2.6 but still, Gnome really has matured. I only hope they fix the last remaining issues:
- a dialup tool comparable to Kppp
- a decent CD-Burner (there are some in development, I know...)
- a powerful file-dialog (it got fixbroken lately but I hope for a complete overhaul)
cu,
Lispy
how often do you open files, and how often do you rename files? "Click to rename" was decided against because it's too easy to accidentally click the filename of an icon putting you into rename mode when you meant to open the file.
So? Every time someone critisizes Microsoft, the MS zealots troll about Linux even though Linux wasn't even mentioned.
"In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDFis an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured"
As a open source developer who develops Cocoa apps on OSX, i regularly take screenshots of my apps and put them on sourceforge. Im not sure what OS this guy is using, i definetly take my screenshots as TIFF of Jpeg
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
[Vanilla RedHat 9 installation]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Andy co-founded Eazel, and wrote much of Nautlius; all the UI touches mentioned feel like his handiwork.
Taste aside, technically KDE is a modern , well-designed system while GTK is basically C pushed to its limits resulting with hack upon hack - all of that to get what C++ gets for free.
It was about....
...here.
"There are gnome developers working on KDE?"
^^^^
See? There. Around there. My alphabet isn't what it used to be but it seems like the.. thing.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Right-click to rename is the lessser of two evils as far as I'm concerened. Double-clicking the name to rename a file (like Windows and classic MacOS) is a bit more intuitive, but the annoyance of triggering a rename instead of a file open because your mouse was 3 pixels off more than offsets the benefit.
"Right-click is for shortcuts but should never be the sole way of getting to a function."
Too many years using a one-button mouse....
"OS X has this one hands-down. Double-click a font and you get the whole repertoire, with a button that says 'Install Font' below it. It even asks you if you want to install for just this user, or all users."
Have you even tried Gnome, or are you just flaming based on the screenshots? Double-clicking a font file shows a full preview as well.
As for the browser, your hopes are too late. It's already been done. Epiphany is a simple interface with the useful features (like tabs) and none of the crap (like sidebars and themes) built on Mozilla's html renderer. It's quite nice. Of course, if your knowledge of the subject ran any deeper than looking at a few screenshots and posting a defensive rant about the superiority of MacOS, you would know that already.
0 1 - just my two bits
You've obvioulsy been to an office and had people say "i didn't know you could do that" when you right-click. and then go back a month later and have the same people say "i didn't know you could do that". Most people simply do not remember things like right-click menus because they have more important things to think about (like getting their jobs done and going home) - which is why a right-click menu should NEVER be the only way of accessing functionality.
After I have seen that this got modded up I realized that I forgot one issue:
;-) There is no reason why one can't use the contextmenu in listview and why it is impossible to select files with a lasso. All of this is working in Iconview, so why not in listview? Most people I know use that view and are forced to use the menubar instead the rightclick-menu that everyones used to.
While you're at it, please, please, fix Nautilus' listview.
just my expierence from working with gnome on a daily basis,
Lispy
Eat what? You didn't mention *anything* that KDE doesn't have.
KDE checklist:
Cool nods? check.
Usability? check.
Responsive? check.
Dialup tool? check.
CD burner? check.
Powerful file manager? check.
Personally, I find KDE to be very clear and the features are usually well thought out (and hidden away from newbs in a control panel).
"Double-clicking a font file shows a full preview as well."
I think it may require a third-party package called Fontilus.
In appearance yes. Of course Windows is playing catch up with Mac by appearance.
KDE has many features that windows just doesn't have, or has but doesn't get right. (I don't use GNOME, but I assume it is in a similar situation)
Just in the main browser interface, IE doesn't have pop up blocking, nor is their spell check of web forms. Virtual desktops are still not shiped with windows (despite being a feature of X11 window mangers since I first saw it back in 1993...), and handy to have. Nor is my favorite: focus follows mouse available. Sure you might not like some of them, but they handy to others, and features windows still doesn't have, in some cases more than 10 years after X11 had it.
KDE/GNOME is playing catch up in some areas true, but in other areas they have gone far beyond windows, and windows isn't even trying to catch up as far as I can tell.
You can edit any .desktop file (or launcher) with a text editor.
.desktop file's Exec line should look like this;
Just change the "Exec=" line. For example if you want to launch epiphany installed in usr/local/bin, the
Exec=/usr/local/epiphany
Hope this helps.
...the first 10 times it was posted here. Why is it now?
It wasn't particularly insightful any of the times it's been posted to OSNews, either.
0 1 - just my two bits
Here's another neat thing in Nautilus that I've never seen anywhere else (Perhaps OS X has it, I've not use it much). When you mouseover an audio file, after a few seconds it will start to play. A bit like an image preview for audio files.
... and you would know that if you had spent the slightest amount of time following development discussion on UI topics in the GNOME bug database or on their mailing lists. One of the first thing anyone asks when encountering UI issues in GNOME is: how does Apple do it? GNOME's HIG was heavily inspired by The Aqua Interface Guidelines.
They really annoy me and so far I havn't found a 'control center-ish' widget to disable them.
I *know* what the buttons do and the text takes up space.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
God you're an idiot. why don't you click parent instead of reading in nested mode, and find out for yourself. Ultimate tool = you.
all i see is people talking about the single click rename in osx. but no one has mentioned if you right click any file and click "Get Info" (very inituitive) not only can you rename the file & ext, you can also add comments, lock the file/folder and access permissions, from a single access point. OSX +1, gnome -1, win -1
I heard about this on IRC and it worked! Go into Nautilus and load a directory in the list view. I think you hit Control F, however I don't remember the keybinding exactly. A small input box will appear at the bottom right of the window. Start typing and it will act as the autosearch in emacs/Mozilla. This works in any ListView in GNOME.
GNOME 2004 = Macintosh 1984.
sulli
RTFJ.
Yes, but not in this case. It takes blinkered bias to believe Open Source developers aren't as capable as their proprietary peers, and ignorance not to know they're often one and the same.
I don't like KDE much, but I do envy KDE users for having Konqueror. It's a great file manager.
You can't install global (as opposed to profile) extensions in Mozilla Firebird, as /usr/lib/mozilla-firebird and /var/lib/mozilla-firebird modification requires root access. You can change the owner on the directories and files, but that's hardly the right way. Firebird extensions tend to install themselves into the system directory, not the profile.
Each of your other points are really subjective. Your use of words like "non-retarded", "not designed by a GIMP", "I waste my time looking for 'skins' that were designed by adults" and "having to dick around with font settings" confirms that.
Maybe if you'd stick to technical reasons (not to mention the appropriate environment - Gnome, not KDE - we'd be more inclined to take you seriously.
Ironically or not, but I am using Gnome for about 5 years, and all that time I am using bash in CLI as well as (X)Emacs dired mode for all file relate operations I need. I need Gnome only for it's pannels with menus, launchers and applets. What Nautilus? Why is it important? I don't know ... I don't use Nautilus and I don't know why should I use it.
Less is more !
So you want to talk about the little details, eh? All right, here are some of the not-so-nice details about Gnome that bug me the most (these are all in 2.4, so please forgive me if these issues have been fixed in 2.5 -- I don't like running unstable versions of software as fundamental as a window manager):
1) No immediate feedback when double-clicking an icon. This is important for the user to be able to determine whether he has actually double-clicked or simply single-clicked twice on an icon, especially for apps with long load times. Both Windows and Mac do this with zooming rectangles or similar animation effects.
2) Placement of windows vis a vis virtual desktops. When I open an application or document in one virtual desktop, I would like it to stay in that virtual desktop, even if I switch to another while it is still loading. I like to open my browser in one desktop, switch to another and open my email client while the browser loads, then switch back; but in Gnome this just ends up placing the windows in whatever desktop I happen to be viewing at the moment, which I find inconsistent and annoying.
3) The "notification area" does not work. At all. It would be great to be able to see when I have new messages in Thunderbird or Gaim visually when I am on another virtual desktop, which is ostensibly the very purpose for the so-called notification area's existence; but I have yet to see it display anthing but blank space.
4) The buttons in the taskbar that represent running applications are extremely inconsistent with respect to size -- for example, when I have a single Firebird window open, it takes up more than two thirds of the bottom of my screen, but when I have two terminal windows open they take up less than a tenth that combined!
These are only a few of the things I've noticed, and only those that are "no-brainers," things that any decent window manager should take care of as a matter of course. There are other things that I'd like, such as a Mac-style menu bar -- if they must choose a single method of the two, I would have them choose a method based solely on its merits, not on its prevalence in other software or on its technical difficulty, both of which have been cited as reasons for Gnome's current choice. (I am not about to argue the point of which method is better, but note that Apple did experiment with both methods originally and ended up choosing the global menu bar because of extensive end-user testing.)
Mike
I tried xplore on my fluxbox, but it was too clunky for me and didn't allow the ease of use konq does. XFTree is also nice, but there is no tree sidepanel as far as I can tell.
The fealing on the GTK list seems to be that there's a need for an entire new widget GtkFileChooser, and programs will eventually convert to this new API. IMHO, this is a very bad idea, as the oldstyle will never really go away any more than the win3.1 style has in the windows world. I think we ought to just add the new features and protect future APIs with preprocessor flags. Code for that might look like:
But that's for later. For now, the code that's up there works, and it might make your GTK-related life a lot more pleasantSig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Simple, because the Office Dev Group is actually the ones designing the new GUI API's.
You will see this over and over again, first they appear in Office then later in Windows, same with most other Windows components; this is very smart, get people to test and give feedback on what works and what doesn't.
This is very good stuff actually, and it isn't as wierd as it sounds, because Office is what makes Microsoft money, even though it's indirectly.
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
No viral bunnies - there be penguins here.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
For the last year, I've mainly used fluxbox but just recently I installed GNOME2 and I am quite pleased with it. My most major gripe is that you have to restart the whole thing in order for menu changes to be updated. I don't remember this being an issue in GNOME1, and I find it quite tedious to have to close everything and restart GNOME to see if the menu changes I made worked like I wanted them to.
http://astutehosting.com/
Ever tried to use a Gnome app over an SSH tunnel? I have tried running PAN and Gaim from school by SSH'ing in to my home computer, and it's unbearably slow. It can take up to a minute to redraw the headers pane in PAN, because for some reason it slowly draws each header bit by bit.. you can actually see them refreshing slowly.
As an experiment, I tried running some KDE apps over the same connection, and KNode refreshes its whole window nearly as fast as when I use it on my local machine.
Now, I'm not writing this to rag on Gnome or its apps, because quite frankly I think PAN is the better news reader, and Gaim is my IM client of choice, it's just that for whatever reason they really suck over the network.
I hope the Gnome developers don't forget that some people still like to run apps over a remote X connection.
Even Mozilla.org has said that Mozilla is really not the preferred browser to use. They suggest Firebird. If you're using GNOME, I'd suggest Galeon. It still has the same plugin installation issues, I'm sure, but in general I find it to be a much better browser.
As long as a button acts like a button, a menu acts like a menu and the scrollbar scrolls, and they are all identifiable, what is the problem?
I always thought that Tk/Motif apps were the most stable. The uglier the UI, the more stable the app IMO. That said, Gnome2 looks fine to me. I couldn't think of anything I'd want improved (well, how about not doing 20 round-trips to open a menu. That would be nice.)
IMO, Gnome2 is much nicer than Windows any day, and mostly better than MacOS X (because Debian is about $300 less expensive than MacOS).
My other car is first.
-Don
The Nongraphical GUI
X was designed to run three programs: xterm, xload, and xclock. (The idea of a window manager was added as an afterthought, and it shows.) For the first few years of its development at MIT, these were, in fact, the only programs that ran under the window system. Notice that none of these program have any semblance of a graphical user interface (except xclock), only one of these programs implements anything in the way of cut-and-paste (and then, only a single data type is supported), and none of them requires a particularly sophisticated approach to color management. Is it any wonder, then, that these are all areas in which modern X falls down?
Ten years later, most computers running X run just four programs: xterm, xload, xclock, and a window manager. And most xterm windows run Emacs! X has to be the most expensive way ever of popping up an Emacs window. It sure would have been much cheaper and easier to put terminal handling in the kernel where it belongs, rather than forcing people to purchase expensive bitmapped terminals to run character-based applications. On the other hand, then users wouldn't get all of those ugly fonts. It's a trade-off.
[...]
Ice Cube: The Lethal Weapon
One of the fundamental design goals of X was to separate the window manager from the window server. "Mechanism, not policy" was the mantra. That is, the X server provided a mechanism for drawing on the screen and managing windows, but did not implement a particular policy for human-computer interaction. While this might have seemed like a good idea at the time (especially if you are in a research community, experimenting with different approaches for solving the human-computer interaction problem), it can create a veritable user interface Tower of Babel.
If you sit down at a friend's Macintosh, with its single mouse button, you can use it with no problems. If you sit down at a friend's Windows box, with two buttons, you can use it, again with no problems. But just try making sense of a friend's X terminal: three buttons, each one programmed a different way to perform a different function on each different day of the week -- and that's before you consider combinations like control-left-button, shift-right-button, control-shift-meta-middle-button, and so on. Things are not much better from the programmer's point of view.
As a result, one of the most amazing pieces of literature to come out of the X Consortium is the "Inter Client Communication Conventions Manual," more fondly known as the "ICCCM", "Ice Cubed," or "I39L" (short for "I, 39 letters, L"). It describes protocols that X clients must use to communicate with each other via the X server, including diverse topics like window management, selections, keyboard and colormap focus, and session management. In short, it tries to cover everything the X designers forgot and tries to fix everything they got wrong. But it was too late -- by the time ICCCM was published, people were already writing window managers and toolkits, so each new version of the ICCCM was forced to bend over backwards to be backward compatible with the mistakes of the past.
The ICCCM is unbelievably dense, it must be followed to the last letter, and it still doesn't work. ICCCM compliance is one of the most complex ordeals of implementing X toolkits, window managers, and even simple applications. It's so difficult, that many of the benefits just aren't worth the hassle of compliance. And when one program doesn't comply, it screws up other programs. This is the reason cu
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The guy mentioned it in his article, and linked to another article which showed the inconsistency between Windows applications, specifically normal Windows apps and Office.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
And, of course, if you're skittish about the whole click-pause-click thing, you can click and hit enter and it'll edit the name, enter again to exit this mode. If you're really skittish about rename in place, either cmd-I and edit the name in the get info panel, or cmd-opt-I will keep the get info panel up as a floating menu and it'll reflect the current selection. Handy if you've got pixels to burn.
This article just highlights that nothing really has changed in the Nautilus/Gnome world.
Development on how to take 31337 screenshots is given a priority, when screenshots are taken often, if at all. (I think I've taken 1 in the past three years, and that was done with xv's "grab window".) Screenshots simply aren't something worth spending time on.
Nautilus still sucks. Yea! It defaults to selecting everything before the extention! It STILL FOUR DAMN YEARS LATER doesn't support icon arranging. You either have them all messed up, or flush left in alphabetical order. What the hell? It still seems slow, and doesn't have decent plugins. I'm not a KDE guy, but Konqueror is heads and shoulders above Nautilus.
Nautilus sucks and needs to be replaced. Hopefully Velocity or Endeavour2 will mature enough to actually replace that dog.
I think this method is insane. Haven't any of you had to rename 50 or even 500 files? Mac OS X 1-click rename is the only way I'd want to do it. My carpal tunnel is acting up just thinking about all that right clicking. I think the author of the article has some serious mouse control problems. I almost never mistakenly click a file and rename it by accident.
Right clicking by its nature is stupid. There is almost always an easy way of making the UI work the way you want it to without needing a complicated hidden menu.
How about standardizing my fist into your stomach?
..and the way that when you've got a db open in Access, clicking the big X button to close the application only closes the document, the app continues running.
Bah. it's one of the few apps that does it, and it's not in agreement with microsoft's own ui standard guidelines.
Shoddy that they even coded it this way, and double-shoddy that this was then obviously ok'ed in qa.
File renaming is one of the things I hate the most about iTunes, because it works just like the Windows behavior you describe. Click, wait, click again, maybe it will select the text for renaming, maybe, oops, I started playing this track. Dang.
Too bad Apple misses some consistency in places. I really prefer file renaming in the Finder to Windows: <return> -> rename the file. <cmd-o> -> open the file/app.
For an OpenOffice file, from the command line: /g' | wc
unzip -p MyOpenOfficeFile.sxw content.xml | perl -spe 's//
Betcha it's faster than word's, too.
Oh, and it's ironic that you mentioned page numbering, as Word 97 and 2000 (and probably XP, I really can't be bothered wasting my time looking) have showstopper bugs with the page numbering field and things like section breaks. That MS won't ever fix for those versions.
Nice one.
Take a look here:o ts.html . html
http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/screensh
and here:
http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/problems
Cheers,
That's not going to happen. Ever.
So you may as well stop bitching about it, if you want one setup, use one setup and let other people use whatever they wish.
This makes sense. No, wait, what's hardware acceleration? I just want to take a picture from this DVD I'm playing on my computer!
... Grandma?"
Do you have any idea what kind of people use computers? Everyone! Not just people who know what hardware acceleration is, or even know where to start to find that particular slider in a control panel. It's a fucking joke that you'd be modded up for saying that, too, since having a menu entry for it is proper UI design -- because then you have the possibility of explaining it over the phone to your grandma.
"That's right, Grandma, just right click the desktop, then choose advanced, then go to the hardware tab, then you want to move that slider over and
Compared to:
"Go to the top and choose Edit, then pick Screenshot."
Your comment is a joke to people who aren't computer nerds.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Good post, and I would have agreed with you until several days ago, when I tried out KDE 3.2. It's a LOT faster, isn't ugly like KDE 3.1 was (the new plastik skin is great!!), and is extremely polished. I've been extremely impressed by it.
:-)
I'm not going back to GNOME 2.4 anytime soon, but I might have a go at installing GNOME 2.5, mostly because I can live with GNOME breakage now.
this post lacks any real content to support the bold statements!
* cleanliness and simplicity
creating a desktop environment is non-trivial, which immediately rules out simplicity. most programs contain "hacks" while undergoing development (read: practically all the time), simply to get something to work.
* Not to mention the fact that the numerous API libraries do not work well together and stability will _never_ be achieved since one package will _always_ depend on something that is considered beta or unstable.
this generally true for all (larger) software projects
* the GTK-inspired GNOME macro, er object, system is...
I agree that compile-time macros make it harder to read source, but last time I checked (which was during 2.x beta) KDE still used them extensively; though this is probably a legacy from the earlier days of less powerfull compilers and should be gone some time. (Parts of) Gnome do use modern features.
* various ad-hoc configuration mechanisms and the nightmare that is CORBA and Bonobo
a central configuration repository seems to be needed; imo a registry-like thing is undesirable because it's hard to edit from the outside; though I do understand that a tree of flat files wouldn't be a good idea [has anyone ever tried an sql-db for this purpose?]. Corba is certainly hard to grasp for someone new to programming, but it is well defined and did amazing things long before c# was born. KDE used it too, before replacing it with a custom framework for inter-object communication (for speed reasons, if I remember correctly). Corba might be overkill for the KDE/Gnome needs, but it is already there and actively developed/maintained, so why recreate it?
* define "unprofessional". The graphics were certainly made by someone skilled in his/her craft; thus most probably not a coder *g*. I have seen more people switch from KDE to Gnome in the past 6 month than the other way around; though this seems to be an everlasting cycle.
* That they'd have to involve money...
Gnome was (once) developed by Ximian, I guess they spend quite some money on it.
* please don't YELL
Almost everything that Microsoft implemented in the Windows 9x shell was copied either from the MacOS or from OS/2's WorkPlace Shell.
Win95's interface wasn't bad. Too bad it was only a subset of UI's existing on other platforms, and that Microsoft didn't live up to their promises regarding the supposedly advanced architecture that was living underneath Chicago's new shell.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Microsoft ignored the existing practice in TWO existing PC-based GUIs when it decided to continue to use the left mouse button for drag-and-drop operations.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
What's with the change in panels for GNOME 2.4, for instance?
I used to have a floating panel that was set to only take up as much space as the applet (the workspace switcher) within it took up. I upgraded to GNOME 2.4 and lost floating panels. It's not even like with other GNOME feature removals, where they kept it in the form of a hidden GConf setting that no one really knows a damn thing about (since there's precisely zero documentation as to what keys do what, save for examining the source).
It's still better than KDE, but some of this crap is really annoying.
And triple-shoddy that you don't realize that it can be disabled and use MDI with a simple checkbox in the Options menu.....
Maybe flamebait and inciteful?
I've yet to see an office button that doesn't act like a normal Windows button. Or a scrollbar that doesn't act like a perfectly normal Windows scrollbar.
E.g., click on a button, but don't release. Now drag the cursor off the button. _Now_ release. See, it didn't count as clicking the button. Even WinAmp's self-painted funny buttons obey that.
Or scrollbars. Click and drag on the scrollbar on the right of this page. Now move the mouse off it. See how it jumps back to its original position? Annoying, if you ask me, but it acts like that in all programs that use the standard Windows widgets. You can learn to use it once, and then you're good to go in all programs you'll ever use.
Well, that's the kind of consistency that makes Windows easy to use, and Linux a bloody nightmare for Joe Average. Between KDE whose scrollbars do jump back like in Windows, Motif whose scrollbars don't, half a dozen other widget sets, and a thousand programs which paint their own (presumably because standard widget sets fall under the "not invented here" category), you never know what even something as simple as a scrollbar or button or menu will really do.
It's putting Joe Average through an extra learning curve for each program. And Joe is _not_ a nerd. He doesn't enjoy discovering how obscure undocumented features work. He just wants to get something done, preferrably right now and without learning any new skills.
Again: it's about how it works, not about looks. So please don't suggest downloading a desktop theme.
That's the kind of consistency that Linux GUIs will have to finally aggree on. Hopefully soon.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Its applications (with one, and possibly two, exceptions) are barely functional flashy user-interfaces with no substance.
Lets see. KMail, Konqueror...wait, that's it, you're right.
Which developer with the blunt head trumua decided that including KPaint was a good idea anyway?
It is too bad you get confused. There really was no choice there.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
As a starting point, let me say that I've been running Linux for a very short while, and I am generally happy with it (not to mention utterly impressed at what hordes of individuals can achieve, go team!).
I like the "look and feel" of KDE better than GNome, but because Gnome boasts a commitment to usability, that has become my DE of coice. Now, there is one thing in particular that really disappoints me, and this goes for all Linux DE's I've tried: properly managing the "infinite pixels"!
"Infinite pixels" (my term) are the five pixels that are the easiest to target at any time -- namely the four corners of the display, and the pixel right under the cursor. Secondary, the four edges of the screen are also easily targettable.
Now, the fifth pixel is okay, since that's where the contect menu is. But the others, oh boy. Who in GUI's name decided that a the top-right pixel of a window (when maximised) should NOT be equivalent to the [x] button to close it? People trained by/in/with Windows miss this one point immensely! Equally, why do application buttons on the panels not extend to the edge of the display?
The reason: An object that "ends" 1px before the display edge is whatever given size it seems to be, whereas one that reaches the edge (at least logically, if not visually) suddently becomes of *infinite* size (basically because you can just whack your cursor over there, and still hit the target as the motion is stopped at the edge of the display).
Please oh please, get this one point right. THEN, you can boast about the grand human-friendly GUI. I'll be waiting patiently, and appreciate it when it arrives.
"Good news, everyone!"
What really bugs people like me (I am a gnome developer but I can't speak for other gnome devs) is when a dumb post such as that one is modded to +5 therefore proving that the world is full of arseholes.
However what is even more shocking regarding the general appreciation of that comment is that the general population's standard of humor is so low that tv stations are right to keep bombarding us with the same shitty sitcoms they have for the last fifteen years.
I keep getting this - why are you so threatened? I'm just discussing - and take this in carefully - specific interface features. You know, the ones the article was about.
It IS in the Edit menu too (and you can use the F2 key too), so the rest of that rant of yours about how unintuitive file renaming is in nautilus is worthless.
I responded to this point earlier. I never said Nautilus was 'worthless'. Do you see how your zealotry blinds you to rational discourse? You think I'm attacking Gnome; I was doing nothing of the kind. Put down the stick.
The GNOME minipreview thing sounds cool though...
"Sounds cool"? You talk about gnome like if you use it daily and you didn't see such a basic feature?
Alright I'm done with you. Fucking Slashdot drones. Can't have a rational discussion. Can't even find the balls to display a username, in fact. Next.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
"Right-click is for shortcuts but should never be the sole way of getting to a function."
Too many years using a one-button mouse....
Yeah, long live the elitist "there shall only be one way to do things" paradigm. Oooh, I feel so restrained by only one mouse button, because it keeps me from doing things only one way like g0D intended it.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I've yet to see an office button that doesn't act like a normal Windows button. Or a scrollbar that doesn't act like a perfectly normal Windows scrollbar.
To every degree noticible to me all my widgets respond the same way. Even QT act like GTK ones. (though I like to only use GTK apps and stick to an all GTK desktop which is what the gnome desktop, which is what the article is all about, is all about)
E.g., click on a button, but don't release. Now drag the cursor off the button. _Now_ release. See, it didn't count as clicking the button. Even WinAmp's self-painted funny buttons obey that.
Same response in Galeon and Gaim and Konqueror and Evolution and rhythmbox and abiword and every single app that I can think of.
Or scrollbars. Click and drag on the scrollbar on the right of this page. Now move the mouse off it. See how it jumps back to its original position? Annoying, if you ask me, but it acts like that in all programs that use the standard Windows widgets. You can learn to use it once, and then you're good to go in all programs you'll ever use.
Umm no I don't see how it jumps back. And it doesn't jump back in Evolution or Konqueror or gaim or straw or rhythmbox.
Well, that's the kind of consistency that makes Windows easy to use, and Linux a bloody nightmare for Joe Average. Between KDE whose scrollbars do jump back like in Windows, Motif whose scrollbars don't, half a dozen other widget sets, and a thousand programs which paint their own (presumably because standard widget sets fall under the "not invented here" category), you never know what even something as simple as a scrollbar or button or menu will really do.
I have Knoqueror open right now and The scroll bars definately don't jump back, Any more false accusations? Furthermore that functionality seems so arcane and secondary anyway, I've never needed to try that until today.
I have no clue what the thousands of programs you speak of that paint there own widgets, I've only ever used two X apps that painted their own widgets, xmms (And that was only to the same degree that winamp does) and RealPlayer. But I don't even use those any more in fact I've only ever used three other X apps that didn't use GTK+ or QT widgets (xpdf and Mathematica) and I don't even need the former anymore. As far as
It's putting Joe Average through an extra learning curve for each program. And Joe is _not_ a nerd. He doesn't enjoy discovering how obscure undocumented features work. He just wants to get something done, preferrably right now and without learning any new skills.
I don't see how one needs to learn new skills you have yet to point out one behavoiral inconsistancy. As far is more advaced apps which still use the same widgets that respond in the same way, I don't think anyone cares if Joe average can Grok the Gimp anymore than Adobe cares if Joe Average can Grok Photoshop.
Again: it's about how it works, not about looks. So please don't suggest downloading a desktop theme.
So nothing new here just the same bullshit you've been spouting the entire time.
That's the kind of consistency that Linux GUIs will have to finally aggree on. Hopefully soon.
It already has that consistancy.
I'll be like you and start another paragraph adding nothing new here to make my response longer.
Again:
Ooooohh
even
more
text
wow
I
have
a
lot
to
say.
That Linux desktop must work really well!!
So inconclusion come back when you have real issues.
Whoops everything after "Hopefully soon" shouldn't be italic. My bad.