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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Could we please get rid of this "wait for it, wait for it" meme?
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's more important than you'd think... It seems that everyone loves OSX, which is notable for having an incredible display manager and style standards. People notice the little perks like the camera-shutter sound more than they notice the bigger architectural changes.
At my job, I run a network of mainly Windows XP computers, and a small lab of linux servers with KDE 3.2 installed as the default desktop environment for whoever wants to use it. Invariably the first user comments are on the bouncing icons, translucent menus, or the fact that GAIM shows buddy icons in the main list. People generally don't care what the operating system is, but they do notice changes in the UI.
Linux has matured as a server OS, but being fast and pretty will bring it to the masses.
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.
Why, it's been working for Microsoft for ages? Anyone remember the time around OS/2 and Windows 95 being launched, with MS constantly saying that 95 was delayed but it was going to be so damn good so you'd better just wait a bit longer and not go with that other silly IBM os.
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.
...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
I think that's his point - in Linux you just take the screenshot from a menu, but in Windows you have to go into the settings and reduce hardware acceleration, which doesn't tell you anywhere that it'll help you take screenshots. It's not really intuitive at all.
Joe Sixpack is sitting at his computer, watching a DVD. He thinks to himself, "hey, this scene is really cool. I'd love to have a screenshot of that as my desktop wallpaper." He pauses the movie and presses the printscreen button.
... wait a minute! Where's the movie? It's just a black box! Maybe I have to use Media Player to do it. Let's see, not in the File menu... not in View... not in Play... not in Tools... not in Help... What the ^%#!@?! Why can't I take a screenshot?!"
If he's using Gnome: "Hey, this is cool. I'll select the part of the image I want to keep and save it to a file."
If he's using Windows: "Hmm. Nothing happened. Maybe it's on the clipboard. I'll just open up MS Paint here, and type Ctrl+V
Remember, Joe Sixpack does not want or need a configurable machine. If it doesn't work out of the box for him, it doesn't work.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
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 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.
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.
While the guy has some good points, he has others that I wouldn't necessarily agree with. Taken as a whole I'd say that GNOME had improved in comparison to itself, but its still a mixed bag, like all the other OSes.
:)
It's clear from your post that you don't use Gnome enough to give such an opinion. You lack knowledge of pretty basic things. Keep reading.
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.
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.
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?
The DVD capture thing is interesting, I haven't tried it yet. Would it not be different depending on video hardware?
No, it isn't different depending on video hardware. It's implemented such that it gets the image before it's sent to the video hardware for showing.
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.
It works. Perhaps not better than Apple's method, but far away from being "not even remotely handy".
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 am not used to Mac OS X. But after playing with it for 2 hours I found myself looking for the dock in a windows desktop. So I think you're being coy, even if you try to deny it.
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.
What you think about Gnome respect to XP is sure to be totally irrelevant. Keep reading.
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.
If you knew more about Gnome, you'd know it's their motto since gnome 2.0. That's like since 3 years ago.
You know, trying to learn Windows from a UNIX POV, I've found some Windows things that are still archaic as well. This creates a significant impact on the user experience.
There are dozens that I could mention, but the biggest is the window manager. Whatever the name is for the Windows window manager, it does not have snapto or window shading. This is a major annoyance when you have multiple windows up on the screen. Neither does it have easily controlled z-ordering. It is not an easy to use window manager. The look may have improved, but the behavior has not changed from Windows 3.0.
The only reason the public has stuck with Windows as long as it has is simply because they are familiar with it. No other reason.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
Big heavy sigh... Gnome is trying to bring Gnome to the masses, and KDE is trying to bring KDE to the masses. Neither is much interested in a free version of the Windows or Mac desktops.
There is one reason, though, why both KDE and Gnome resemble Windows in behavior and feel: users want them to. I just noticed this recently after the KDE 3.2 release, and the flurry of new "bug" reports. KDE and Gnome users want their desktops to look like Windows. So they file bug reports that saying that some minor thing should be more like Windows. They don't say it explicitly in those words, but they do say it. And the developers listen. Both desktops are evolving towards what the majority of users are most comfortable with, and since the majority of users are currently newly reformed Windows users, the direction is towards a Windows feel.
But we're getting a lot of things that aren't even on Microsoft's horizon. Like tabbed pages on every browser in the world except Internet Explorer. Before Mozilla introduced this, no one requested it. No one. But suddenly a new idea came forth and everyone had to have it. In a similar way, no one out there is lobbying to get rid of window shading in favor of the Microsoft way. They've tried it, liked it, and want to keep it. Or look at either Kicker or the Gnome panel. Both are light years ahead of the Windows taskbar, and no one is asking to go back.
This is the evolution of the desktop in action. For a while we're going to have to endure the Windows default feel. But once we get more intermediate and advanced users than newbies, this will change. We already have the changes waiting in the wings, so to speak, ready for user demand to call them forth.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
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.
That's because Nautilus is simultaneously GNOME's file browser, and desktop manager.
It probably also gave you a swack of desktop icons, right?
The solution is to launch nautilus as 'nautilus --no-desktop' when you're not using GNOME. Then it'll just open the file manager and it won't try to take over your desktop.