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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.
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
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.
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 =)
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...
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.