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Gnome 2.10 Sneak Peek
spectre_be writes "Davyd Madeley wrote a Sneak Peek at Gnome 2.10, scheduled for release on the March 9, 2005. Looks like the new release-policy is starting to pay of, as several existing utilities get enhancements and a couple of new ones are added. Also (finally) a mozilla-stylee type-ahead find has been implemented in Gnome's Open/Save dialog. Together with OpenOffice.org 2.0's scheduled release and Novell's Mono coming up to speed, will 2005 prove to be the year of Gnome?" Update: 01/18 01:40 GMT by T : Oops - the "2-point" got chopped off in the headline; still a while until GNOME 10.
Why would a release of OpenOffice make it the year of Gnome? Isn't OpenOffice independent of Gnome (I run it fine in KDE)?
Also, the header is soo misleading (I thought I had done timejump or something)
Je ne parle pas francais.
One of the things I keep hoping GNOME will get better at is file handling. Konqueror is a great tool for splitting windows, drag'n'drop between ftp sites/websites/etc, and the FILE DIALOG in KDE is pretty decent too...
Why can't the GNOME one get better? The 2.4 and pre series was a JOKE and this new one, even with all it's vaunted HIG stuff, is still horrible imho. Why can't I see thumbs? Previews? A decent file tree? Bleh.
The mime sniffing is still a pain. I have to drag and drop to open certain types of files, even occasionally plain text files like .cpp which on rare occasion it mistakes for a file I never heard of. Just double clicking the files or right clicking and selecting "open with" gives a security warning and it refuses to open, even when both both the sniffed filetype and the filetype matching the extension open with the same application. A fix for the problem involves changing about 4 lines of code in 1 function.
I'm all about the HIG-enabled stuff. I dig it a lot...In most cases. I think the HIG-powered windows are great when you're going through your ~/, but I think it stinks when you're going across to other parts of the FS, like /usr/lib/gettext.
Plus, I think it'd be outstanding if I could simply get different desktop pics for my different workspaces. As it is now, you can't. Isn't part of the HIG to make it as intuitive as possible? However, we can't know what workspace we're looking at unless we look at the little applet on the taskbar. Having different images (like in *cough* KDE), would be fantastic.
but RMS founded gnu, and he pronounces it guh-noo. Are you going to tell someone who invented the name that he pronounces it wrong?
Oh, and the G in gnome stands for gnu, therefore is pronounced in the same way.
of course, i dont actually care either way, but you were on a high horse...mine is higher.
i wish i was but oh well
Also (finally) a mozilla-stylee type-ahead find has been implemented in Gnome's Open/Save dialog.
Here I was, thinking the problem with the gnome file selector was that it is unusable, but they've set me straight, what it really needs is to be left exactly the same except for an extra bloatware feature which compensates partially for something (a text box to type the name of the file, with tab completion) that every other file selector dialog has but which they inexplicably removed. When will they figure out that most GUI file selector dialogs look the same for a reason, and if they just make theirs look like that users will stop whining about it? (no, they don't need to go back to their old unusable design, and they don't need another "innovative out of the box" idea; they just need to look at Windows or KDE or Mozilla or any other successful GUI, copy that, and leave it that way)
I think the new file dialog is fabulous, and as I didn't know about the old features, I didn't benefit from them. Whereas I benefit from the new simplicity without having even to think about it.
So, umm, KDE is bad because it is more like Windows, and the solution to this is to...be more like the next version of Windows (Avalon)?
The really remarkable thing is that in spite of having only a fraction of the corporate support KDE is far more usable. Yes, a few things are clumsier than I would like, but they seem to have avoided the completely idiotic design decisions that GNOME has made (the spatial browser, the hideous file selector, eliminating user-visible preferences to an extreme).
Do you mean "|" ?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Isn't this what themes are for though? I know you're probably talking about the default theme, but that's the whole point - if you don't like it, change it. Isn't that what Linux is about now?
And who says Linux=KDE anyway, just don't use it if you don't like it.
Seriously. Yes, the interface is now cleaner but only because the layout of every screenshot bar the open/save dialogs looks like a complete and utter copy of Windows.
You mean like the main desktop menus on top, the different button naming and order, the spatial file manager or the background chooser?
Yeah, this post is a lot of whining about 2 products I don't even use (linux & windows)
That's what I thought...
The really pathetic thing is that GNOME and KDE today are pretty much duplicate efforts. This situation has become a terrible waste of community resources.
I'm certain these developers that volunteer their time are eagerly awaiting your consent as to what projects they may work on.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
I love Gnome/Ximian for Mono and GTK, for Evolution and Gimp, for AbiWord and Gnumeric, for Gaim and Rhythmbox.
Yet, somehow, I use them all on my KDE desktop.
No flamewar is necesary. I guess thats part of the beauty of linux. Maybe we can all get along after all.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Windowmaker for something a bit different?
a -menu window managers like fluxbox etc. Surely somebody in the open source community can come up with a clever, minimal solution to what we do with a desktop environment/window manager? I mean seriously, what do we do? Configure a few things, move some files around, launch applications? Even just some improvements on the second function would be welcome rather than that interminal right-mouse menu nonsense. That stuff works great for context-sensitive stuff in applications, but only with small menus. Huge, monolithic RMB menus are the tool of satan!
Different from what? The 957,000 other UNIX window managers that all have the perplexing misconception that right-click-and-you'll-get-a-big-nested-menu is good UI design? About the first thing I read about UI design was "BIG NESTED MENUS SUCK BALLS!" or words to that effect.
They do, too.
Seriously, I can't stand it. Why is it that on Linux we have to choose between slow, Windows or Mac-alike desktops (Gnome, KDE) and an incessant, constant stream of Just-click-the-right-mouse-button-and-you'll-get-
Keramik isn't KDE's default color/style/window decoration any more.
The default theme is now Plastic, and its really nice to use the Plastic style/window decorations with the Atlas Green color scheme.
Sure. Its not nearly as Apple-like as you would imagine. Whoops, I just moved my start bar to the top of the screen in XP. Hope apple doesn't sue. Seriously, though, the visual appearance of GNOME is very malleable. Hell, I don't think the basic theme does the group justice. But even with a very pretty theme, buttonset, icons and wallpaper, its still a far cry from the intricacies of Apple's GUI. You don't see 90% of the menus dissapear when you click on the background, and the applications themselves dont set the upper panel content. Its really more like the Windows setup with the start bar on top rather than bottom. Unfortunately, I haven't used gnome since like 2.4 or 2.6.
;).
Not to mention, Apple petitioning GNOME would be a really fast way to build ill will towards their beleaguered stance in the market. And lets not forget old Xerox
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Nor, for that matter, are graphic designers.
You probably meant to say that engineers and progammers aren't particularly good, on average, at generating nice looking interfaces, but that's not at all the same as what you actually said (although what you actually said, FWIW, is also true -- it's just that you implied that graphic designers might be good at UI design, which is demonstratably false).
GNOME's default theme is boring looking, but it is also extremely easy to use -- so far, I haven't met a single person, no matter how computer illeterate, that can't use my Debian laptop's gnome-enabled guest user (I personally don't use GNOME).
Similarly, the early MacOS (I'm talking pre system 7 here) was very easy to use, but not at all good looking, either -- it just seemed that way at the time because the alternative, for most of us, was DOS. But go back and take a look at it now.
MacOS X, on the other hand, is beautiful -- but nowhere near as consistant and easy to use as early MacOS was. In general, stuff like per-application skinning, the co-existance of multiple GUI widget sets with different stated priorities, etc, produce an unpredictable user experience. It may be a pretty one, but it is nonetheless unpredictable, as the user is forced to learn different visual cues and modes of operation to perform basic tasks.
This is the most evident on modern Linux desktops, which mix KDE, GNOME, Lesstif, Athena, and countless other "non-standard kits" (like the one used by OOo). But stuff like the "brushed metal" theme on Mac OS X is more of the same. Winamp, XMMS and the Beep Media Player, great apps all of them, are just more examples of what happens when you let a graphic designer do UI work. Hell, pretty much any media player (xine comes to mind, as well as most Windows DVD players) forgo the desktop widget set and instead waste their time drawing dvd player or stereo look alikes on the screen.
Now, you may like how this looks -- no accounting for taste -- but to take that a step further and take it to be good UI design is another thing. I use xterms, emacs and pwm for my daily hacking -- I wouldn't have it any other way, in fact. But I wouldn't suggest that any of these programs represent good or intuitive UI design. I'm just used to them.
GNOME is simple, straightforward, and customizable enough that you can make it look like pretty much whatever you want. But out of the box, it has a very intuitive, standard UI, and it's only getting better. I wouldn't use it, but my mom or girlfriend could.
Ctrl-L? Wow, that's... intuitive.. I'm sure everybody will figure that one out!
/var/www, for a start.
And why the hell would you want to hide a hierarchy from the user? I had thought that was the whole point of a "spatial" desktop, to help the user envision the structure of their filesystem visually? I can understand hierarchies just fine and *I* find the Gnome dialogue confusing because it has no sense of position inside the filesystem when it opens - I have no idea if I'm looking at ~/www or
And if you're suggesting that all users just want to save every file into "My documents" or the desktop, you're woefully mistaken. Even my mum knows better than that, and she rings me up in a fluster because the computer said a program had performed an illegal operation! It's certainly a bad habit to teach, as it acts to suggest to the user that they make a total mess of their home directory. Way to go...
As for the "Click here for more folders" button saving me time.. that's bollocks. If it defaults to the folder it saved in last time and I just want to save it, that's no time saved on having the other folders displayed to start with. If it defaults to a folder I don't want, then it's a total waste of time.
Either way, no time saved, some time wasted. Useless.
And what's with the use of space in that file save request anyway? If I resize it up to about half the height of my screen on a 1280x1024 display it still only shows a tiny number of folders I can save into after I hit that toggle, the rest of the box is taken up by stupidly huge controls at the top and large empty spaces. Maybe 1/8th of the window is actually doing something useful.
As for the registry, I was talking more about the *user interface paradigm* than an architectural similarity. It's a crap idea for a UI, and not something anybody should be copying. One of the main reasons I like Linux is the absence of a goddamn registry, the last thing I want to see is a clone of the RegEdit GUI!
You've not got me convinced, sorry.
Really? I mean, really? Here's Davyd's screenshot of the Gnome help browser:
p -full.png
a ndsupport.jpg
n /images/hcp.jpg
http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-10/images/yel
Here's some XP help browser screenshots, courtesy of Google image search:
http://www.winona.edu/its/techsupport/images/help
http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/security/bulleti
Hmm, so they both have Back buttons. Oh, and scrollbars. And look, they both display formatted text! Those Gnome developers are just a bunch of copycats.
For the record, I blatently copied the OS X help browser, not the XP help browser.
Do you really need Bookmarks and Go in a help browser?Regarding Go: Do you know what's under that menu? It has Back and Forward, and it has Previous Section and Next Section. I really doubt the menu itself is used that often, but the actions in the menu are very commonly used, either by toolbar buttons or by keyboard shortcuts.
Regarding Bookmarks: For most simple application help, it really isn't necessary. You see some dialog, you think "What the heck is this option?", and you pull up the help. You don't want to spend time in the help browser. You want to get back to your work.
But then there are people who look up function references for Gnumeric. And systems administrators who have to refer to certain bits of system documentation often. There are people for whom bookmarks are incredibly useful. The interface is still very simple, and the addition of bookmarks doesn't really hurt those who don't need them.
I get the impression that you just wanted something, anything, to complain about.