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Gnome 2.8 RC1 Released
FlipmodePlaya writes "Linux Today reports the first release candidate for Gnome 2.8 has been released. A look at the new stuff can be found here. Notably, the possible inclusion of Evolution, and some networking goodies. My opinion: the GUI changes look too much like Windows/Internet Explorer for my tastes; I guess it's not just KDE."
why copy the copy cat? I'd rather they copy apple, who's known for quality interfaces. luckily though, gnome has taken a page or two from them rather than microsoft. i'd say it's kde who's mimicing windows (konqueror is a file browser + web browser. in gnome these are different. gnome strives for simplicity. kde strives for features, etc).
- tristan
Honestly I'm getting a bit tired of this march towards boring copied GUIs that only half-work. I mean, KDE is becoming almost unusable with all the crap in the menu and little parts and whatnot. I mean, I suppose it's nice for new users but I really don't like it.
That's why I went with the little mouse.
No disrespect to the GNOME and KDE hackers, but it's good to have choices. The big desktops are becoming more difficult and time consuming to customize "just right*.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I can see Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all in that UI. I don't know why the poster chose to mention Windows only except to troll.
GNOME 2.4 used to be slower than KDE 3.1... atleast on my configuration... but GNOME 2.8 seems to have improved hell-a-lot in terms of speed.. looks like am back to GNOME again..
It is also very interesting to see how Gnome is developing Human Interface Guidelines. I wish programmers would stick to them.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
Personally I have always found Apple's interfaces limiting. They put the most common options right out in front (as they should), but seem to totally forget the more advanced options. And the lack of an (accessable) context menu is also very weird to me.
http://brandonbloom.name
Well, first of all, (as the article submitter) I went out of my way to make it clear I was expressing an opinion. In hindsight, I probably should have just posted that in a comment, but I don't think it was rediculous to have an opinion to discuss put in a news article. Secondly, I maintain that it was warranted. It certainly wasn't flaming. Look at dialogues such as this and tell me it doesn't look as if they went out of their way to make it look like the Explorer copy/download one. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it helps converts. I think they could have made it a little better, however. Maybe have this in the status bar, or show a directory tree, or something.
I haven't looked at GNOME since the very early versions. I've always been a waimea/blackbox fan. The look and feel is very impressive--and nothing like MS Windows in my opinion. It looks crisp and business-like. This is attractive enough to get me to try it out. I wonder how long it would take to build on my P3 FreeBSD box...
Evolution should not be part of Gnome - it should be added by the people who build the distro's.
Evolution is included because every single library in the entire Gnome install (about 784,197 of them at last count) has a hard dependency on some obscure 2K feature widget (usually the HTML library).
Gnome is the undisputed galactic champion of dependencies. Last time I tried to install Evolution from an RPM, I thought I was following a treasure map through the Saskatchewan tundra.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Let's look at things from a Windows user's point of view :
:
:)
1) Things work.
2) They look good.
3) Few options available, but most are hidden in the registry. Those few options seem more than sufficient for the teeming masses.
Now take someone from that environment and put them on Gnome. What does he/she experience?
1) Stuff works.
2) It looks good.
3) Few options available, but most are hidden in the registry. Those few options seem more than sufficient for the teeming masses.
Now, let's take a windows power user
1) Things work, but always looking for ways to make them work faster.
2) It looks good, but always looking for ways to customize it.
3) Few options available, so the user always has some program Xteq XSetup Pro to tweak hidden settings all over the place.
Take THAT user and put him/her on KDE:
1) Things work and work fast. User is quite happy.
2) It may or may not look good, but hey, it's VERY customizable, so it WILL look good after a week.
3) Tons of options available all over the place - the former windows power user is in heaven.
So to sum it up, KDE and Gnome in my opinion, both serve a VERY good purpose - they cater to the needs to both ends of the spectrum of Windows users - and they're both getting better/faster with each new version.
Now since we're celebrating Gnome 2.8 RC1 here, kudos go out to the Gome devs out there for capturing the essence of Windows' ease of use and porting it to Linux. You guys are doing a great job.
It would be nice to have a unified Desktop one day, but hey, I'm not complaining right now, even tho I'm a KDE fan - GREAT WORK GNOME! - I'm seriously thinking of setting up Gnome 2.8 as my mum's default Linux account and see how she likes it - she currently uses KDE 3.3
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
No one's making you use a one-button mouse.
I just checked the Apple store to see if I'm still correct. In their store, I tried ordering a Mac. A couple different models actually to be certain. The only option was a one button mouse. The two button mice are in another section of their store, and must be bought seperately. So if you want a two button mouse, you essentially have to buy 2 mice, the one button mouse that came with it (which you'll either burn for heat or use to decorate your christmas tree), and the two button mouse you'll actually use with the Mac. And of course they only resell two button mice. They don't have their own. Same goes for the tiny vs full keyboards. If it's a teeny tiny keyboard or one button mouse, it's made by Apple, if it's a 2+ button mouse or full sized keyboard, it's it's not.
But it's not the mouse and keyboard that bothers me, it's that I can't find the reason for it.
The funny thing is, it was probably done for a variety of reasons including making the explorer shell to be more web like (ignoring the previous problem with people double clicking hyperlinks; or should I say, they fixed it by ignoring double clicks most the time in IE) as well as a realization that most non-techies never do anything *but* activate (or possible context-menu click) icons. My point is that most web browsers behave differently than file managers because it's a different paradigm (one's about moving to data, the other to manipulating it & moving to it & all sorts of other things), yet no one bothered to teach people this and instead MS went the other way and just *assumed* people would figure out how web browsers work and tried to convert everyone to it. Of course, that mostly failed (active desktop being a failure and the whole one-click option is still off).. So, no one has fixed the whole consistency issue with a mouse which fundamentally is a problem with being a very finitely inputtable device*.
* Don't mistake this to mean I like the idea of sticking a whole slew of buttons on the mouse. I'm merely pointing out that the consistency issue with a mouse *could* be fixed with various function buttons. Seeing as how horrible an idea that really is, someone needs to come up with a better device than a mouse.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
There are several relevent points:
(i.)Knowing how to design good GUI software and interfaces (both physical and graphical) means knowing what to leave out.
Software ought not to require users to use context sensitive menus to perfom an operation - if it does so then it is badly implimented because most users will simply not figure this out (and if and when they do, it won't be until after a significant of time wasted searching for the way to do it).
Context sensitive menus should assist 'power users' in accessing things or performing operations more quickly, but should never be the only way to perform a given operation. I would further say that developers ought to be striving as much as possible to remove the need for right clicking from their interfaces.
These tennets hold true even when an application is targeted at what are preceived as 'advanced' users. Sooner or later someone not as advanced as you think is going to end up using the software (or alternatively someone just having a bad day) and they are going to run in to problems because they can't find the way to perform the operation because they didn't realise they had to (or even could) right click to perform this operation.
(ii.)People who don't know that context menu's are avalible are the exact same people who are better off with a one button mouse in the first place.
The 'average joe' still replies to instructions of "click that icon" with "With what mouse button?" Most people are casual users of computers at best, and they are still daunted by having two butttons. The situation could be possibly be improved by having graphical (and possibly textual) representations of the behaviour on the mouse buttons themselves but that is not common.
When they are ready for added complexity it is there, just like the Unix command prompt is there for those who want it, but it's completely hidden from the majority of users.
(iii.) Dispite being a unix software developer I have come to prefer the design of Apple's own mouse over my 5 button scroll wheel mouse when using Mac OS X.
The primary reason being that I don't have to hold down a specific area of the mouse, just push down on it generally (the physical level of pressure required is adjustable). I have found this much better for my hand/wrist postioning (meaning I spend less time with my fingers crawled up in a ball).
I also find that on Mac OS (this applies to both classic too) software is generally designed in such as way as to be completely usable without the need to right click, largely thanks to things like more comprehensive drag and drop support.
It's not without sacrifices, I like scroll wheels for example, but when using OS X I don't find the lack of scroll wheel nearly as much of a problem as I do when using Gnome or Microsoft Windows, largely due to three factors relating to scrolling:
1). Window scrollbar indicators are always proportional (with a 'sensible' minimum size).
2). When I click on a scroll bar the visible area of the window jumps to exactly where I have clicked instantly (not just generally scrolls 'up' or 'down' a page).
3). Both Scoll Up AND Scoll Down arrows at the top AND bottom of each scollbar.
These of course are toggleable through the Preferences panel but I find with them I no longer miss having a scroll wheel enough to give up my 'no button' (push-to-click) Apple branded Bluetooth mouse when using OS X. Though it is something of a close call (mostly I miss having back/forward buttons and scroll wheels are still very useful with FPS games).
Good grief, this is good news. File associations and MIME stuff was always the least working part of GNOME for me. I have no idea what they've changed, but any change is probably good. I hope custom filetype icons and icon themes actually work from now on =)
And tons of SVG stuff? Yay.
Yeah, I was a bit confused by the Windows comment. Certainly the Linux desktop (and by that I mean Gnome and KDE which are reasonably similar in many ways) has taken many concepts from Windows. The default layout of window controls, the look of a panel / task bar, and many more things are Windows-like by default, but I can't think of a single one that's not customizable.
Windows is the dominant desktop paradigm right now, so it makes sense to emulate it for the defaults. You have a different idea, go right ahead and choose a different theme and/or write your own.
Is the author using X.org with that shadow hack or something? I noticed all his screenshots have shadows under the window edges. Anyone know how he's doing this?
The real reason you're so worked up about this is because you are only trying to justify your own person preference and wrote the whole article with nothing but that goal, and now you're upset because someone sees right through it.
Is having the menu bar in the window better because it's my personal preference? Yes, absolutely. It makes it better for me, and that is the only thing that matters on my computer. No other thing and no other person matters on my computer.
Now, the fact that the great majority of people using Linux seem to prefer to have the menu bar in the window (or they wouldn't put it there) would tend to indicate that it's better for them, too. Now, if it's better for most people, then we could reasonably conclude that it's just plain better. I even know a number of Mac users who use and like Macs not because the menu bar is at the top, but in spite of that fact. That one big mistake isn't enough to take them away from an otherwise excellent platform.
I did learn a few things from your post(s) and article though. I learned that I not only know more about what actually works well in the real world than you do, and that I am most certainly politer and more well-adjusted than you, who are nothing but a troll dressing himself up in expert's clothing and trotting out the same stale article often enough that I recognized it on sight.
*plonk*
(You've probably heard that sound a lot before, but if not, get someone to explain it to you.)