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GNOME To Lose Minimize, Maximize Buttons
An anonymous reader writes "When GNOME 3 arrives in a month, users might be surprised to see old UI staples 'minimize' and 'maximize' buttons gone and replaced by... nothing, in the case of minimizing, and either drag-up or double-click-titlebar for maximizing. Says Allan Day, GNOME Marketing Contractor: 'Without minimize, the GNOME 3 desktop is a more focused UI, and it is a UI that has a consistent high level of quality. Yes, moving to a minimiseless world might take a little getting used to for some, but the change makes sense and has clear benefits.' Some users already welcome the change, while others are in an uproar, swearing to wait for GNOME 3.2, switch to KDE or even Windows. What do you think? A better, simpler interface for new times, or a case of making something simpler than it should be?" I like minimize and maximize buttons, but I'll admit to liking the look of GNOME 3 .
Maximizing a window is such an uncommon thing to do, that few will be annoyed by the much smaller target surface that a window border makes up?
With that out of the way -- why are they removing them?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The world becomes more and more like satire every day.
Deleted
Windows: focus groups, study users, never get it quite brilliant but basically give people what they want.
Apple: try to think about what will appeal to the user, deliver to maximise experience.
Gnome: WE DID COMP SCI IN COLLAGE AND HURD OF DON NORMAN THIS MAEKS US EXPURTS ON UI DESIGN. WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE OR TRACK RECORD BUT U WANT WAT WE WANT. WE WANT TO MAKE A NAME 4 OURSELVES PLS ACCEPT ONE OF OUR IDEAS PLS!!!
For ubuntu to drop Gnome for Unity.
Blender And Linux Fan
Running Ubuntu 10.10 with a gnome-shell build from the git repository, and I have to say, I love the change. The minimize and maximize functions themselves are not gone; as the summary says, you can still double click the title bar to maximize. If you want to minimize, you can right-click the titlebar, then click minimize, or using ALT+F9.
I think this is a great design change. In Gnome 2.0 and less, like windows, you would minimize windows to make room/less clutter for windows you're actually using at that top. Now, instead of minimizing, a better method is to move it down a screen (right-click, move to workspace down), or zoom out to activity view, drag the screen from one screen to another. I find when I have a lot going on -- multiple browser windows, terminals, ftp client -- I use this a lot. It comes in handy being able to separate each website you're working on, each server, into it's own workspace, free from intrusions and other unrelated stuff.
Good job Gnome devs!
Such that it can be used vertically?
Deleted
It seems like both the KDE and the GNOME folks have decided that they need to reinvent this whole desktop thing. KDE decided that icons are unnecessary, now GNOME deems maximize/minimize buttons unneeded.
Guess I'm lucky to use IceWM which still works the way it worked ten years ago - and I find that a good thing.
Real life is overrated.
I'll try it when it comes out, (No i havent tried the beta, nor do I want to), but if they completely screw the pooch on this one, ill stick with Gnome 2.x or if Unity is any better, ill try that. If KDE gets any better, ill use that, but until then, im sticking to my Gnome 2.x
when kde-4 came out i hated it, i still dont like it and i keep trying it hoping it will improve, it took me a long time to tolerate gnome-2.x after switching from gnome-1.4 (which i loved) anymore i prefer using xfce, icewm or openbox, with rox-filer drawing desktop icons & wallpaper, and i like keeping an eye on the lightweight window mangers anymore, the Gnome/KDE environments are just too busy and try to be too much for me to like anymore.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Dragging is more stress-inducing to the hand than simply clicking mouse. we do countless minimize-maximize actions over the course of a normal workday.
I cant risk more potential for RSI, just because a few people think that is better to do so.
Excuse me gnome, but you are losing me.
Read radical news here
I like clean interfaces, but seriously, what does this help? It doesn't save space, the title bar is still there. Ignoring those buttons costs nothing, and replacing a button with a non-graphical multiple-action like double clicking isn't making an interface simpler, it's making it more complex. I understand the confusion about a minimize button with no taskbar, but this doesn't seem like a particularly well thought out design change. We got rid of feature X, so action Y isn't the same anymore. Okay, just get rid of it.
"Until the become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious"
UI tasks enjoyable? What drug is this blogger on?
A UI's purpose isn't to be enjoyable, it's to let the user do what he wants/needs to do and otherwise stay out of the way.
Case in point: Clicking a button is going to be a lot quicker and require me to do less thinking than dragging a window around.
Having said that, I like snap and would like to see several of its features included, but not as the primary replacement for the maximize button.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I don't care so much about minimize or maximize buttons. I just need two things: a way to get the window as big as physically possible for when I'm working in one app and need the screen real estate, and a way to get windows that I need open but don't need to pay attention to at the moment out of the way. Example the first: I'm working in a graphics app, don't expect to be doing anything but drawing and working in it while I've got it open, and want as much of the screen for the image as I can get. Example the second: the documentation web site I'm referring to occasionally while I'm coding that I don't want cluttering things up when I'm not actively reading it, but I don't want to close it and lose my location or page history on it.
Somewhere a million Microsoft employees are smiling.
I come here for the love
...Ubuntu moved the minimize/maximize on the other side, but I have to say it hasn't been too much trouble. Looking forward to this one! Cheers!
I like being able to expand my windows for more acreage - and put them aside when I need to focus on other things. Just how does that complicate the UI? Two little buttons - is that too much to ask for?
When are we going to get an interface that is totally configurable to user preferences?
Someday, I'd love to sit down at a computer, point it to the URL where my interface preferences live, and presto - it instantly becomes the desktop I'm most familiar with.
Think of it as the GUI equivalent of setting your shell in .profile.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
That tears it. I guess I'm switching to KDE. Lots of interesting changes there too but mostly in a positive direction.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Was that minimize button really hurting anything?
The hope is that the developers will put more attention to the meat by fixing the numerous bugs that are lurking into the GNOME suite.
Otherwise they'll end up with a new KDE 4.0 fiasco.
Anyway, hiding buttons is not a real great advance in my humble opinion.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I use Windows 7 and never, ever use that. In fact, it pisses me off that a good 10% of the time when you're just re-arranging windows, it wants to maximize something instead. I'd be interested in knowing why you like the click and drag over clicking a min/max button, which means taking a good 300% more time to maximize a window.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I didn't read the article, but clicked on the link to the Gnome 3 page. Seems like an incredibly massive overhaul with loads of changes. Is this really the best article that could be come up with to start a discussion on slashdot about Gnome 3?
Personally, I like the sound of it, but the website is extremely ambiguous. I can't tell what's going on in any of the screenshots. Some screencast videos or something would be helpful. The text descriptions don't really help, either. I might have to try it out - kudos to them for providing a live CD just to test Gnome 3.
It seems heavily inspired by OS X, including some stuff we won't see until OS X 10.7. Not a bad thing at all, as I primarily use OS X these days and really like the interface and am looking forward to the improvements in 10.7. I don't see the need to rip on UI designers for copying good ideas from elsewhere, everyone does it, and it eventually makes every OS UI better (KDE 4 is still pretty shocking, though).
The old Mac "Zoom" button was actually the best. It would resize the window to fit the content, then toggle between that and the size of the window before zooming. It is probably difficult to understand how useful it is unless you have used it for a while. Some developers also incorporated an option-click to maximize.
Not even Apple does it right with any consistency anymore, as they drift more and more toward Windows conventions or try to jam a touch interface onto their desktop OS.
I haven't used Gnome 3 so I don't know if I like this change. But I have one request for the devs: ***PLEASE*** make it *easily* possible to retain the Gnome 2 look and feel if a user prefers that. TFA wasn't clear about whether this would be possible.
You become comfortable working in a particular way. Then you upgrade ---all your reflexes are wrong and you have to waste time relearning the interface. If I'm productive, let me stick with what I know. For a developer to alter the UI without a downgrade path (as MS did with the Office ribbon) is the height of solipsistic arrogance.
I love Linux, but it's like everyone mutually agreed to abandon desktop sanity. KDE never met an option they didn't like, and Gnome never met one they did. I've used both extensively and recently but both make me spend more time cussing at the screen than I want to. I've held on to Linux (and FreeBSD) desktops for over a decade but I give up. It's not going to happen. I'm still going to work on a Unix all day, but I'm switching to the pretty one.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This is such a drastic step of changing a UI paradign that's existed for the past 25+ years, and the only justifications I see for it are completely theoretical ones. Where's the usability testing by actual users to see if the theories hold any water?
Both sides can argue about what THEY think the user will prefer. The arguments can sound extrodinarily convincing, but what actually matters is how it performs in the real world with actual users. The solution to this problem seems to be "just put it in the next release and see if people revolt enough" rather than conducting actual controlled tests. IMO this is an extrodinarily flawed approach. A controlled test gives you non-biased opinions rather than political ones. This approach only seems to create a rift between the two opposing sides rather than finding out what's the best UI experience for the user.
AccountKiller
Indeed you deserve what you're signing up for: a familiar and usable UI. The Desktop has always been a contentious point between Windows and *unix. Windows likely wouldn't survive if it made flagrant UI changes because desktop users would be confused. At least there are alternatives. In this case alternatives to Gnome for those who do not wish to use it any longer. On a side note it reminds me of the damned ribbon bar introduced my Microsoft into Office products and no way to change back - people still have a hard time finding what they need, but then again they still use it, so that works against my previous point.
Apparently they might lose the buttons as well for Windows 8 if the rumor mill about a bubble interface is true.
http://www.ispyce.com/2011/02/microsoft-shows-off-radical-new-ui.html
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
RTFA. It's not a default, the buttons are removed for good and you can't put them back.
Though to be fair, they are not removing the functionality... they are just making it harder for the users to actually use it. As in, you can minimize with a keyboard shortcut, but not with a button anymore. Harder to use functionality = better design?
... always worked as an alternative for maximize/restore on MS Windows. Just like double clicking the top-left corner closes a windows since Windows 3 at least.
Just use Sawfish. I can maximize/unmaximize horizontally and vertically either independently or together, roll up windowshade style, and of course minimize or close, each with a single click. More options in a menu, which I could move to buttons if I used them often enough.
The first thing I do when I upgrade Ubuntu is start seeing what it's going to take to make Sawfish work.
Sawfish was GNOME's original WM. They've spent years replacing good functional WMs for less functional ones. Sounds like they've just about finished the race to the bottom.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm thinking, for example, about Firefox 4. It's bar is very customizable and you can set it up to fit whatever needs you might have (ultimately resembling FF3 look, if you so please) but people still keep complaining before, during and after.
I'm not sure if GNOME is customizable or to what degree and think that this should probably be the case, BUT, what's wrong with us as users/commenters of this software/websites that we manage to make 90 % of all the feedback sound like cynical blabbering?
Disclaimer: Statistics in this post are made up to represent the poster's view.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Might this be a move to adapt GNOME to mobile devices? Or to give users an experience similar to mobile platforms? Not having a Min/Max button on my phone has certainly simplified things for me.
I'm not discouraging discussion and critique. I'm just expressing my wish that said critic focused more on the necessary changes and an attempt to be constructive instead of insulting, demeaning or outright trolling the creators of the GUI or other people who wish to incur in a sane debate.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
This can't possibly be the least bit confusing to Mac users who've been double-clicking in the title bar to minimize for fifteen years. /sarcasm
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
There is a bug in GNOME which screws up the window manager if you double click the title bar.
Noted here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436537
"clicking in upper right corner closes window in background - very unexpected"
Very frustrating and GNOME is doing the wrong thing.
I suppose it will be good to remove the other buttons so that more people experience this, and hence a fix can be found.
liqbase
I disagree, I feel that the time it takes me to center my mouse over a tiny little button and click it is about the same amount of time as it takes me to quickly swipe the pointer up the screen dragging the titlebar to the top. In addition, if you use multiple monitors, this feature rocks - you can drag a maximized window from one monitor to another and keep it maximized. This may sound trivial, however if you used multiple monitors in XP you would know how annoying it is to have to minimize or restore a window, then drag, then maximize. In addition, I rarely actually use the mouse for these functions (indeed I rarely use these functions), I use meta+up for maximize, meta+left/right for side-snap, and meta+down for minimize. I guarantee that's quicker than doing anything with a mouse.
I also never, ever minimize, I just keep everything maximized and alt-tab. I can't stand using an application that's not taking up the whole screen. If I really need to look at two things at once I use the Win7 side-snap. That's what the Gnome designers are saying, as well: just don't minimize, ever, because what's the real point? And with maximize - are you really claiming that double-clicking anywhere in the titlebar is 3x slower than getting your pointer into the maximize button? In the end It still does just come down to personal preference, though; if you have two programmers watch each other use a computer for 30 minutes, I guarantee each of them will walk away thinking that the other wastes time in navigation.
I think the Gnome developers need to check their calendars. It's the wrong month for one of these pranks.
Seems to be a lot of it on the top portion of the window. I've noticed this same thing in Ubuntu - i.e. Rhythmbox. Seems like better use could be made of the title and menu bar space. IMHO.
-Peter
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Well, I guess there are 2 types of GUI's: ones everyone complain about and ones nobody uses.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
So, more like Windows then.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
So they took a button on the screen you could click and turned into a keyboard shortcut, and one of the benefits listed in the article is that it is more touch-friendly.
It is nice that they took them out and used that space for nothing. I'm not sure how replacing useful buttons with more pixels that do nothing and convey no information helps.
Another argument given is that there's no dock or windows list to minimize to, but if you want to switch to a different window, you go to the overview, which is exactly like a windows list or dock, but less convenient.
Reading Owens explanation was painful. He starts with revealing that he never minimizes anything and then speculates randomly on why people would use it (missing nearly all of the reasons I use it), then bases everything on 2 peoples opinions who he had work without minimize buttons for a while.
The reasons for getting rid of the maximize button is they though it emphasized the title bar as a way to resize the window (WTF?) and that the new way is more enjoyable (WTFFF?)
I haven't found a single reason that wasn't based on incredibly minor aesthetics or really screwed up views of "emphasis" or "mental models."
Can anyone give an actual reason for doing this?
This sentence no verb.
... from the very beginning.
I lost track of all the "cool" but horrible ideas which made it into gnome.
- CORBA after it had long died
- XML
- GConf (the horrors of the windows registry re-implemented by monkeys)
- C# and Mono - embracing Microsoft technology!
- Umpteen window manager changes, none good enough
The sad part is that the other DE's are not in a good shape either. KDE 4 has come out of the woods recently. Enlightenment is still not out. XFCE does not have that traction. GNUstep is like HURD, barely alive.
May be writing a good GUI is beyond something that can be accomplished by a mainly volunteer community...
Nothing. It's just the latest from the Department of Stuff Nobody Asked For.
Who exactly is supposed to be the target audience for these inanities? On the one hand, you have people who have already being been using computers for a long time. They already know how to work a standard Win/Lin interface. What's the need to present a "baby" interface?
For children? 5-year olds can (and do) run current versions of GNOME without a problem.
Meanwhile, how many mod points do you want to bet that Gnome still will not have fixed 5 or 10 year old basic usability bugs in the file chooser, etc., as opposed to creating whole new ones with shiny, fancy stuff?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
ROTFL.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
>>you deserve what you're signing up for.
Linux -free
Windows - free
So what exactly am I losing again? It isn't money. Oh that's right. TIME. I'm losing precious time having to relearn a system because Gnome and/or Ubuntu changes its interface every six months!
If I wanted that much change in my life, I'd divorce my wife and hire a mistress.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Openbox with Bpanel2 FTW.
Also, double-click the title bar to maximize? WTF? Isn't that supposed to be 'shade'? Am I the only one who still uses that?
When was the last time you minimsed a window? I usually alt+tab when i want a window to gain focus. The only time when I ever use minimise is when I'm trying to share the screen between two windows or so, and even that is rather rare.
As for maximise, after using Windows/KDE for a while I just 'bump' it to the top. No biggy.
Truth be told, I'm just happy that the GNOME team is bold enough to experiment and try other methods of interaction. Without some bold moves then they risk being uninspiring and dull. There is an obvious risk with bravery, but it has to be worth it.
As a usability and interaction designer I will play with Gnome 3 as soon as I have the time.
As long as alt-spacebar-n continues to work, I'm OK with this.
And why is constant change better *inherently* than stable interfaces?
Consider: round steering wheel, left to go left, right to go right. Brake, accelerator on pedals.
Is there a need for a car company to replace that with, say, a touchpad plus software stop/go buttons just for the sake of "Mini-Steve Jobs" points?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Almost every Linux user has a Windows instance somewhere. Whether it's dual-boot, in a VM, on a laptop or a separate machine. All that happens is (unless the individual in question is pursuing their own holy war) that people use whichever one gets them to their goal fastest and with minimum hassle. It will be interesting to see whether this change in the UI causes much of a shift in either direction, or away from Gnome to a more traditional UI.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
In KDE you still have the minimize and maximize buttons. "If you want to minimize, you can right-click the titlebar, then click minimize, or using ALT+F9"??? WTF, I have been using computers since 1975 and find that difficult, how about n00bs?
In KDE, if you are a "power user", you can middle-click the maximize button to maximize the window vertically while maintaining the horizontal size, or right-click it to maximize the window only horizontally. Nice, easy, simple, and keeps working what has always been working.
In other words, you can always improve something, but ***IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT***
I paid for the [1920px wide] real estate, why would I want to waste most of it?
There's a reason that newspapers have several columns of text, and this reason is that text becomes harder to read once lines become longer than 80 characters (roughly 40em in CSS). With long lines, too much of the effort is spent on finding the next line of text and making sure you don't repeat or skip a line. So put one browser window in half the screen and the other browser window in the other half.
On a day to day basis I rarely use any of the titlebar buttons. I double-click the titlebar to maximize/restore
Now might not be the best time to upgrade to Chrome...
There's no place like
Sounds like you want KDE.
In KDE whether or not you want minimise or maximize buttons is a simple click in the control panel.
It does NOT make the UI easier to use. Cleaner looking, yes, but NOT easier. A button sits there, visible, inviting you to click it. You see that the option is exists and if you care to find out what it does you can click it and see what happens if you're adventurous or you can RTFM if you're not. Either way, you know the option exists. Double-clicking the title bar, however, is completely non-discoverable except by accident. Look at the screenshot at the top of the screen. The title bar has the title, a close button, and... NOTHING ELSE. Just a bunch of wasted space. Gnome devs are doing their users--present and future--a great disservice by removing these buttons.
I think they're trying to copy the super-clean look of iOS, but iOS looks super clean because it works differently, not because it is clean for cleanliness' sake. There is no close button because you press the home button to leave the app. There is no minimize/restore because that's not how iOS apps work. There are no scroll bars because you scroll by dragging anywhere. Steve didn't just say "I'm going to throw away all these controls," he said "I'm going to change the UI" and as a result of THAT those controls were no longer needed. Gnome has not changed its underpinnings--it just threw away all those controls.
Double-clicking the title bar to change the window is a great shortcut for power users who know it's there because it's a nice big target and sometimes it's easier to double-click a part of the screen close to where the mouse is, rather than going after a button. But that shouldn't be the ONLY way.
Decades ago, as a kid, I absolutely HATED the original Mario games on the NES because there was all this totally undiscoverable crap where you had to jump in just the right spot to mash your head into an invisible block to get points. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world--how could you possibly know to do that? I didn't think it was a good way to make a game back then and I'm positive that it's not a good way to make a UI now. Gnome devs are ON CRACK if they think this is a good idea.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Too good I already started my transition to KDE and I have to admit it feels good.
I can do without a maximise, double clicking the title bar has been around long enough on windows that I sometimes do it by accident on Linux only for it to do something completely other than what I want. I do use minimise enough that not having it is going to be a pain in the ass... I assume there will still be a keyboard shortcut that does the same thing.
This happens to me all the time in KDE4 and I wish I could slap someone for it. I've wondered if someone was trying to condition my behavior to never want a window a the top of my screen.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Do you have a tiny monitor? I could see maximizing on a laptop with a smallish resolution, but on a 1920x1280 desktop screen the concept is ridiculous.
Not ridiculous at all. I run spreadsheets every day that use every inch of screen real estate I have and I could use more. My monitor is a 24" with 1920x1280 resolution. On my home rig where I have multiple monitors I normally keep one application maximized on each monitor. I use lots of applications that maximizing is beneficial for the way I work.
I wish Fluxbox was still being actively developed.
This should not be a default feature, those who are interested in it should be able to turn this on, but for the rest, this is going to be a huge put off, especially for people who don't care whether they are on Windows, GNU/Anything, some other Unix or whatever, they just use the computer to access the web, send pictures, who knows, but this is going to be confusing.
But the WORST thing about it is not the fact that the buttons are gone, but the feeling that the GNU/Linux desktop is completely unstable and is LOSING features while gaining bloat version to version.
Yes, excuse me for saying, but in the eyes of MOST people this will look like something is missing, like it's an incomplete desktop and as such - broken.
--
Here is a sensible approach to this: add this ability to the distro, advertise it and how it can be turned on but do not turn it on by default.
An actually useful feature can be moving the normal main window menu ('file'/'edit'/'view'/....../'help') to the title bar, but with this too, it shouldn't be a default feature.
You can't handle the truth.
You only use ONE application at a time?
Regularly. Despite what many believe about themselves, most people are shitty multi-taskers. I merely acknowledge that fact with regard to myself - I simply don't do more than one thing at a time effectively. While I may have several applications open, I normally only am working directly with one at a time unless I am transcribing data from one to another. I do have multiple monitors because it makes the occasions when I am working with multiple apps much easier but most of the time I could turn off the second monitor and never notice it missing.
I acknowledge that some applications benefit from more horizontal real estate in a single window. I was merely pointing out that word processors and web browsers usually aren't among them.
Sure people like you could change the way you work, but why make you change the way you work? What benefit do the rest of us get?
precisely.
design should be for enabling users. not enforcing what one things that is 'right'.
Read radical news here
The Gnome developers are just removing the buttons from the windows borders. You can still maximize and minimize windows with keystroke. But, as they say, with their new desktop paradigm it doesn't really make sense.
... in future versions.
nuff' said.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
As a developer running dual monitors on a Windows 7 x64 box I keep a number of apps running and minmized. It's easy to switch between apps using the task bar but I would not use any app that forces me to use a maximized view. I'm sure there are those who will do this but forcing choices like this on the user is a bad idea in my view. If it was an option it might be a better idea. Personally I love IE9.
The endless march toward what the GNOME devs think the "average user" wants continues unabated.
I should be shocked, but somehow I no longer can.
The side note in TFA about dconf made me cry a little, but only a little. Alas for the GNOME of old.
XP was the last version of Windows I used regularly, so I'm commenting on this looking in from the outside, but it does not appear to me that the shift from XP to Vista, then Vista to 7 had anything that you could call a familiar and usable UI from version to version. Those were major UI changes for the desktop user. I often hear the argument that you can't switch a company or your grandma to linux because they would have to relearn the whole UI (even if that were true, I have never seen that as a major disruption), but it is just a given that they would move to the next Windows version seamlessly. I regularly hear complaints about the Office suite still, and it revamped its UI a couple of years ago or so.
I originally chose Gnome because it was an interface I liked and felt at home in. I've felt all along that gnome-shell was kinda like the Gnome team giving me the finger, saying that what I liked in Gnome 2.xx was wrong and I shouldn't like it because I'm an idiot and shouldn't be allowed to think for myself.
For me this is a case of change for the sake of change. It's not about improving design/usability. It's about changing stuff that wasn't broken and - in my case - ruin the user experience.
I think they should leave Gnome as it is and focus on making THAT interface smoother, and the whole gnome-shell crap could be called something else... like crap-sprinkled-with-glitter-wm. CSWGWM for short... now isn't that catchy?
I moused through school and for the first three or four months of work, with my wrist pissing and moaning at me all the while, raising to a shrieking crescendo of near disability a couple of days before a major deadline.
Desperate for any improvement, and fortunately working as a kiosk designer (thus having access to several different types of input devices, including touchscreens), I tried a WACOM tablet, then I pulled a trackball from the "spares" pile. My wrist stopped screaming immediately - the throbbing subsided to a twinge, then left altogether.
I've been using a trackball exclusively for the past twelve years. The closest I've gotten to RSI since the switch is a grumpy index finger from marathon work sessions, and a brief trial period of a new keyboard - the board was maybe 1/4 inch lower than its intended replacement, and that much of a drop at my work desk made both of my wrists shriek at me with a homicidal rage.
If the hardware interface is making you hurt, seriously consider changing your ergonomics (level of input devices, type of input devices, etc). The window manager isn't to blame,
Double-click the titlebar to toggle between maximize/restore, and click the taskbar button for the active window to minimize or restore it.
I agree that we should have a choice though, maybe a simple option in the "Appearance" settings window that lets you toggle between "Minimalist" and "Standard" settings. The minimalist setting will have the reduced clutter, and the standard setting will retain all of the normal functionality we expect. There could even be more granular settings in an "Advanced" tab.
The more I thought about this change though, I realized I personally never use the minimize/maximize/restore buttons myself, I do tend to just double-click the titlebar, and there is really no reason to minimize a window.
Twinstiq, game news
they think that computers ARE for designing the UI and showing it off... and little else. Any UI is merely a bootstrapping tool to help design the next UI. Other kinds of work... Wait, there are other kinds of work?
KDE and GNOME have both gone off the rails.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
This change will dumbfound the average user. They don't know that double-clicking the titlebar will maximize/restore, and when the button to do so disappears, they will switch to dragging the corner of the window in order to expand it. This is tedious and frustrating for novice users who don't recognize the context switching mouse icon when it rolls over a draggable window edge. They often miss the thin window border and end up dragging some other area and wondering why the mouse won't work, or they think they hit the wrong mouse button.
This leads me to wonder, are expandable window borders next on the chopping block?
Twinstiq, game news
to the dock on your Mac by clicking, you guessed it, the minimize button.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The reason they took minimize/maximise out is that they can't fix their implementation of it. They must be remembering the Open File dialog debacle that plauged them for years. Why do they code themselves into these corners?
If FOSS is all about providing choice to the user, GNOME has long ago chosen to focus on restricting and removing choice from the user. I have nothing against a consistent UI, but GNOME goes too far. I recall that a lot of GNOME devs work for RedHat who, corporately, wanted a minimalistic, easly locked-down desktop for corporate use, Instead of allowing an admin to lock or remove features, they just gutted them from the GNOME desktop (and from KDE as well) and justified it as some glorious quest for 'simplicity'.
If I want complicated and highly configurable , I'll use KDE, If I want simple but flexible, it's IceWM. If I want simple with a little glitz, it's LXDE.
But never GNOME.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Since we already have two gestures that fill the same function as maximize, it can go. But if I understand TFA, there needs to be some way to temporarily iconify or otherwise eliminate windows that you're not currently using but you don't yet want to dismiss. If they don't want to provide a dock, fine. But there needs to be a different paradigm.
One of the reasons I have a powerful machine is so that I can do one heck of a lot of things in parallel. Taking away the tools I use to manage that is not a good idea.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
you still have a minimize button, a dock, and launchers, and you don't have to deal with GConf. When GNOME does it, you get GConf for your preferences and windows you can't conveniently maximize or minimize.
The method may be similar, but the results are very different.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There was a bunch of stuff in early Nintendo games that made absolutely no sense. In Zelda you had to burn some random bush to find the entrance of a dungeon, try burning every bush on the map and see how long it takes. Sometimes these frustrations were due to translation errors which gave obtuse or outright botched instructions. Most of the time, these secrets were there so that when you got to the playground, some kid would tell you something that sounded crazy, but you would get home and try it and it would actually work. Perhaps these secrets were introduced to sell Nintendo Power magazines, which mapped out every easter egg, but for a lot of kids it added to the social aspect of gaming. If you happened to jump in that one spot, the next day you'd be talking to your friends about what you found. In any case, you were never required to find that 1up mushroom or hidden vine in Super Mario Bros, it was just a bonus, and you could finish the game without it.
As for GUIs, I have to agree, there needs to be some sort of indicator for the functionality. GNOME is not primarily a touch-based UI, users won't be tapping and dragging to "find" the functionality they're looking for.
Twinstiq, game news
Get rid of the right and middle clicks next. After all, Linux users are sufficiently unsophisticated to be confused by the extra buttons.
I've added buttons for:
When I get around to it I might add a button to move the window and the cursor to the other/next monitor. I also have complete control over the right-click titlebar menu which I've heavily modified.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
All it took was seeing in the comments of TFA that GNOME shell is headed up by the man who brought us gnome-screensaver. I'll be moving along, thanks.
I'm in the target audience for these 'inanities', I guess. I have a lot of work to do and I just don't want to toy around with a gazillion desktop settings anymore. That used to be fun, but I've grown up, I've got bills to pay and work to get done.
For several reasons I can't use Windows (several of my killer-apps aren't available for it, how's that for a change), so I use Linux. I've used KDE in the past, but I just don't get it to conform to my workflow. Gnome gets that part exactly right.
Seriously, if I had to spec a desktop manager (or whatever the hell it is), it would be identical to Gnome. That is Gnome 2, and I've yet to get hands-on with Gnome 3, but what I've seen of it, I'm sure I'll love it. Not because I can tinker with it, but because it gets my work done, fast and without hassle. That's all I ask of my computer.
When are we going to get an interface that is totally configurable to user preferences?
Never.
Multiple configurations are a nightmare to support.
Half your clerical support may be volunteers or temps who must be prepared to take any desk and be productive.
Working outside the default configuration wastes their time and yours.
somebody's not as big a "geek" as they think they are. Way to reveal your Windows roots.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
And Apple, not paying dividends, has a stock value based purely on market speculation. Therefore it's pretty much BS. I'm not sure if Microsoft pays dividends or not, but if they don't at all, then again, pretty much BS. Then again, in general, the stock market is pretty much all BS these days. In no way does the market cap of a company reflect how well they do UI research, or development, or anything really besides how well they "market themselves" to traders, investment bankers, and to an extent, sheeple.
>CORBA
I'll give you this one
>XML
Not the greatest, but tolerable if used correctly
>GConf
You have to have some kind of config system, and gconf isn't bad
Dconf is looking really good now.
>C# and Mono
Gnome does not use them.
Many C#/Mono use GTK and/or Gnome, but not the other way around
>Umpteen window manager changes, none good enough
Sawfish -> MetaCity -> Mutter (part of a radical interface change)
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
One of the things I love about Linux and Unix software is that it is customizable. If you can disable them by default I would like the option to turn the buttons back on. As long as we can turn them back on I do not care. One of the points of using Linux over Windows is I can make the gui, development tool chain, and even the kernel exactly as I want it. It is open and it feels more like mine than Apple's or Microsoft's.
Gnome developers reading this comment should remember what happened to KDE and amorak? They tried the minimalist approach and many hardcore KDE users including myself and even Linus Torvalds eventually switched to Gnome. Take your time please and do not rush it and make sure it is stable after all the features are ironed out. You should not be making decisions like changing the GUI only a month before release! I can only imagine the bugs.
I hope Ubuntu and Fedora have the option to still install gnome 2.32 for those who wish to wait.
http://saveie6.com/
Ask yourself if you use a Dvorak keyboard. Then make that comment again.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I was just confused by "most applications". At home and at work, I spend a lot of my time either in a text editor writing code or in a web browser testing it.
Oh wait, KDE has this since 1.0 already, so and since Gnome is everything KDE isn't, it has no option but to enforce a setting many people won't like.
I have nothing against using a Dvorak keyboard and the reason I'm not using one right now has more to do with a lack of time and devotion than not believing it's worth using.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Sorry, you missed one, probably just a simple mistake on your behalf...
Red Hat market cap: $7.90 billion dollars
Oh riiight, I forgot, it is bad form to remember that a large amount of the FOSS comes from companies, even the Kernel.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Dragging UI elements used to suck back in the days when you had to use those touchpads to navigate around the screen. Those buttons that you only had to click once were a great kludge for that situation, but now that people finally have computers so big they fill up a desk, with a device that sits on the desk for clicking stuff, this will totally make ergonomic sense!
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Someone from outside (Ubuntu in this case) is applying pressure for us to change/move something to emulate Apple, so we'll remove most of that feature instead.
It's called taking your ball and going home. Ha! That'll teach em!
KDE would do the opposite: Make the feature user-relocatable and put little black arrows on each widget turning them into drop-down menus. They would also add a new section to the browsing tree in Konqueror allowing you to browse windows that are minimized/maximized and to save 'favorites' for the windows you minimize/maximize the most. This, in turn, would send people who try KDE because 'its more like Windows' running and screaming away from the environment days or weeks earlier than they had been before.
The KDE maximize vertical/horizontal using middle-click was something I got constant use out of. The rest of KDE however drove me away.
Whereas KDE policy is "If you disKover some empty spaKe, add an useless feature or somethinK very very irritatinK. The iKon must be shiny, rotatinK, and Kontain at least one K.", the GNOME policy is the opposite: "If you find a feature, it might confuse a user, so remove it."
The alpha 3.0 release, Project Topaz, will be the perfect GNOME's desktop, as it will have absolutely Gno features at all. It will simply use excessive amounts of system resources, and do Gnothing but sit there. This final version will contain only a single button. When the user pushes it, it pops up a beautifully anti-aliased text box on a white screen telling the user to use a pen and a piece of paper to do their work and to shut their computer off.
GNOME 2.30 will be renamed to 3.0 because it will require 3GB of RAM and a modern graphics card with OpenGL 3.0 support; the graphical debugger requires a 128-bit processor, which has Gnot yet been invented, and a 3GB video card with optional 5-D rendering capability.
GNOME's logo is a huge footprint, but it is Gnot clearly established whether it is a huge memory footprint or a huge disk footprint.
(from Uncyclopedia)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Your comment is exactly what I was talking about.
You talk about Firefox's stupid shit without specifying what and why. You say users are drawn into chrome but don't explain why either, why can't they keep using the same FF3 instead of trying out a beta they dislike or customizing it to their liking.
I don't think Chrome is gaining more users because of Firefox's mistakes but because it implemented a very good design from the get go and pushed an extremely aggressive advertising campaign. The fact that there's a lot of development of Chrome plugins (to resemble those available in FF) makes it able to compete with Firefox on that level as well.
On an interesting note, Internet Explorer 9 imitates Chrome's design.
Tl,Dr: AC just proved my point by insulting developers and stating things matter-of-factly without even trying to show one example of what he considers stupid shit. One has to wonder why does he even bothers to critique instead of just using whatever software he finds suitable?
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
I don't know about the rest of you geeks, but my basic use of desktop Unix/Linux for work hasn't altered all that much since I was a student sysadmin in 1990. I spend most of my work day opening up various terminal windows and ssh (ok, that has changed :) to network and SAN switches all day long. I'm frequently working with a heterogenous group of 30-40 different systems\switches and I damn sure DO NOT WANT to lose the ability to minimize, maximize, or arrange as many damn windows on my screen as I care for. The single, full-screen application model is just fine for my Android phone, but it sucks on a desktop box.
Ughhhh. I guess it will be back to fvwm if this happens.
- Necron69
Obviously some developers were bored and decided to do this instead of focusing on real bugs. Or there was a bug with it and they took the easy way out.
-]Phreak Out[-
RTFA. It's not a default, the buttons are removed for good and you can't put them back.
Really? 'Cause last I checked (which admittedly was a while ago), Gnome had a default window manager, not a required one. Has that actually changed?
I'm also not sure how you can call a keyboard shortcut "harder to use". Harder to learn, perhaps, but I would have expected someone on slashdot to understand the difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn", even if so many so-called "UI experts" can't. The concepts are orthogonal, but in this case, something that readily involves muscle-memory (like a keyboard shortcut) is invariably going to be easier to use--and almost as invariably harder to learn.
but because it mentions Apple, it gets modded down.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
As a linux user who long since gave up the GUI and switched to Mac OS X for those things, I have found that the minimize function is far less useful than the "hide application" function built into OS X. I rarely minimize anything, but I hide things frequently.
OS X features aside, I don't agree with taking away the option to minimize. Just because you have a bad ass hammer doesn't mean you'll never need a screwdriver.
Oh jesus effing Christ. I'm not a Linux hater but by god KDE, Gnome and Ubuntu seem to be having great fun in a spectacular race to the bottom.
Minimize - in GNOME 3 default shell is GNOME Shell, and in this shell there is nowhere to minimize to. You switch between windows using either Alt+Tab, or Expose, which can be reached just moving cursor to left top corner.
As a brother poster just put, what happens when you want a window hidden? I like this window existing, I don't want to see it - click, gone. Windows does this. Mac does this. Even bloody WindowMaker, blackbox and virtually every other WM in history do this. But GNOME want to differentiate themselves by removing a feature nobody wants removed. Good for them. They can suck somewhere else.
Maximize is more tricky, but more or less I always have wanted that confusing button gone. Nevermind that it toogles between maximize/restore functionality, double click on title of the window will do much better.
"Confusing"? Confused, by a maximise button? You click it, the window fills the screen. If it's filled the screen it shrinks it back. This is elementary. By all means complain about Apple's Zoom button (which is confusing to most users who don't understand what was going through Apple's head when they put it there, which is most of them) but a maximise button is probably the simplest thing there is. And by all means put Aero Snap functionality in - it's a feature of Win7 I simply cannot do without without going crazy now - but don't take a reasonable option away from me.
These changes are risky, but I would definitely not call them rushed or stupid or "just because authors want it that way". Keep in mind, that those are hired professionals which have brought us GNOME 2.x series.
They're risky because they're absolutely retarded. You would have to be absolutely insane to fuck around with something that is, to most people, an intrinsic part of using a computer. These changes are rushed, and whether their architects brought us GNOME 2 (which is hardly a case study in excellent UI idea, all things considered) is completely irrelevant. It's a silly idea.
Before criticizing understand that GNOME 3 and Unity (which also have got lot of "love" from Slashdot flamers) is created with future controls in mind - multitouch, gestures, etc.
Windows 7 does this right. I actually thought about this today - it looks like a desktop OS, it works like a desktop OS, but it would work equally well as a touchscreen OS, and neither gets disadvantaged by it. All of the controls and buttons are touch friendly without the user even realising it. To contrast however, GNOME's approach, from the looks of things (and Unity's) is "fuck you, we want it touchscreen friendly and desktop users can lump it". Bear in mind that touchscreens are still niche devices, especially on the desktop. It's stupid, stupid, stupid.
I write bullshit
Good point. I forgot there's only one company, and I said explicitly that "they're supposed to be competitive with companies that are worth a HUNDRED TIMES MORE". But hey, if you don't think they can, then we should just use Microsoft and Apple, because apparently they can't.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I don't understand why they wouldn't get rid of the X (close) button as well. Every windowed application I have ever come across in Linux, Mac, Windows, and Solaris has always had a way to close the application (usually through File-->Close or File-->Exit). So why put thought into getting rid of minimize and maximize (and changing the way people deal with windows) but keep the entirely redundant button?
Judging from the screen captures (linked with article) they still have a big ole X in the corner.
Meaning the minimize and maximize functions would live in otherwise wasted space.
Why bother?
If this was gaining a line of text in a web browser or word processor .... great ... I just don't get this.
Ouch
You whining little toad.
Here the nobles give you flowers, egg, water, sugar, cream, strawberries, butter and YOU still complaining you don't have anything.
Go to MS, get them to listen to your demands. Tell it to Apple, see if they listen.
When Apple changes how things are done, it is design and a brave new world. If FOSS working for free does not obey your every whim, they are dictators.
Maybe if Gnome charges a hundred bucks for every point upgrade and breaks backwards compatibility on a full release you would be satisfied?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm on a 37" 1920 X 1080 monitor and I tend to maximize about 80% of programs (I also sit a fair distance from the screen - about 4.5 feet - and have scaled up the font sizes significantly to compensate).
Off topic, but I think one of the things not being considered in attempts to include browsing etc on TVs is how web sites scale when default font size is increased by more than about 20%. Many sites simply do not handle this well, and I suggest about 15% of the time I need to disable minimum font size and zoom the screen because the text and/or graphics start getting superimposed upon each other or essential buttons disappear entirely.
someone mod this guy up ! i posted in this discussion ! quick !!
and yes, im serious.
Read radical news here
Not saying that I like the idea for Gnome Shell but they are moving away from the old desktop idea. Storing things on your desktop by the way has LONG been a BAD thing done only by the terminally disorganized.
For files, there are places like Documents, and program links should go in the menu. There shouldn't be anything on your desktop to look at.
I know, not how we are used to doing things, but change is not something to be feared.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I swear, with the crap that Gnome is doing with Gnome Shell and now this nonsense, I'm tempted to go back to Windows. I've been on Ubuntu as a full time user for nearly 2 years now, but it seems that just when Linux started getting polished up to a usable state, somewhere along the line idealists have taken over and are striving not to make things work, and work well, but rather, to do things "a new way". Doesn't matter if it's good, bad, or whatever - we just have to be "different" for the sake of doing so.
It sucks. Apple is building locked down stuff, Microsoft is building shoddy stuff with security holes, and Linux is making UI and design decisions that make me really question whether or not the batch of hypothetical monkeys at a bunch of typewriters are making design decisions.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That a GUI named after diminutive humanoids-- is removing the maximize button.
I read this, went to www.gnome3.org to see the screenshots, and just gave my LXDE system a big hug. I still use KDE3.5 (and will for as long as I can find packages; fortunately openSUSE 11.3 still has them), and just as often boot into Windowmaker or the console. But KDE4's Plasma desktop sucks (I like the apps, but not the desktop). And Gnome3 seems to be an effort to see just how far they can go without pissing me off. I look forward to avoiding both of them for as long as humanly possible.
Meanwhile, LXDE is fast, easy, intuitive, powerful, and STAYS THE @#$#@ OUT OF MY WAY as I work. It's lightweight, and isn't trying to herd me into a new paradigm of computing. It's just useful.
Suddenly I'm more grateful than ever it exists, but KDE and Gnome are both apparently on a one-way trip to sucky land.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Minimize - in GNOME 3 default shell is GNOME Shell, and in this shell there is nowhere to minimize to. You switch between windows using either Alt+Tab, or Expose, which can be reached just moving cursor to left top corner.
Well there's your problem! I did RTFA and tried to read the website to get some vague idea how the thing is supposed to work. I didn't get very far with that. Nearest I can tell they ripped out the taskbar because someone there has ADHD and gets distracted easily by a relatively static display item. It's a bit disingenuous to rip out the major functionality without comment and then proclaim that people shouldn't complain about ripping out the last bit because "it doesn't do anything anymore". Would it kill them to provide some sort of suitable equivalent of the taskbar? Another workspace isn't it, I already have those and use them as workspaces. There are things I want visual reminders of but want them out of the way for a moment. That's when I minimize.
I'm not paying them and they can do what they like, but at this rate they may be their only users.
In addition, if you use multiple monitors, this feature rocks - you can drag a maximized window from one monitor to another and keep it maximized. This may sound trivial, however if you used multiple monitors in XP you would know how annoying it is to have to minimize or restore a window, then drag, then maximize.
KDE has had that as one of the settings (Configure Desktop > Look and feel > Window behavior > Moving > Allow moving and resizing of maximized Windows) for ages. Another example of Microsoft "usability innovation" that's been around for years.
I've been running Ubuntu Netbook Remix for over a year, and until this story was posted, I had not realized the minimize and maximize buttons were gone. Everything is maximized by default (although I turned that off), and if I want to see the desktop, I click the Ubuntu icon in the upper-left. I'm freaked out by this, actually; the thought, "But where are the min/max buttons?!" had never crossed my mind until this point.
With an idea to screw up the user interface like that it makes you wonder if they've been taken over by Canonical.
Without minimize, the GNOME 3 desktop...
...will also not have me. I've used Gnome exclusively for years now, but KDE has made great strides recently. Some of us like the old familiarity of Gnome. If it ain't broke, fix it twice? Tinkering with what works WILL cause some of us to jump ship. No loyalty for broken products when there are alternatives - maintaining a desktop is not a hobby.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
...what they're doing.
If they did know, then they'd realize A) a GUI spec is pointless unless it forms part and parcel of a holistic OS platform, otherwise they might as well be trying to reinvent HTML; and B) being a *nix coding geek imparts a natural INferiority when it comes to GUI expertise, not the superiority that most of them obviously feel; and C) Personal Computing is a consumer culture with certain basic use cases and expectations that must be fulfilled, so you shouldn't be surprised that putting 'candy' on everything doesn't work when you expect people to operate their computers in some profoundly different ways.
What are those profound differences? Here's a few:
1) Leaving users to grope in the dark WRT hardware compatability, instead of marketing your software to hardware vendors by offering a simple test suite and standard, trademarked icon that shoppers can readily identify on the package. Leaving it to each distro to define hardware compatibility lists was wrong: They all sucked and were half-hearted at best. HCLs should be the Linux Foundation's job because hardware compatibility is the kernel's role.
2) Leaving budding programmers and power users without an SDK or standard IDE that allows anyone to get their feet wet and share their work with confidence (as in, it will actually run on another novice's machine instead of going down in a dependency flames). If you think this is stupid or off the mark, consider that Linux is doing really well on handhelds and both Google and the Linux Foundation have their own SDKs. No one will do a Desktop SDK because of the old-hacker politics involved and their loathing of vertical integration; LSB does not go far enough and doesn't even define a way to install software packages (all it has is the package format, but no procedures or interfaces are defined).
3) Leaving users to fight-it-out with their device settings. There are still some influential (old people) who behave like Linux video was good enough with VGA framebuffer support and /dev/dsp output for one audio app at a time. Yet others treat video and audio as simplistic and beneath their concern. This has lead, for example, to subsystems like X11 that could not support the use case of 'Change the display to these new parameters and if the user indicates they work, save those setiings'. Instead we got a situation where every distro had to write their own display settings code, and they all did it badly because the assumption that display settings were just too 'simple' for X11 itself to manage them just wasn't true.
Also, what most PC programmers and techs refer to as 'OS components' (libraries, services, etc) are astoundingly referred to as 'applications' in the Linux world. This distorts the way Linux techs relay help and tips to novice users to the point where the distinction between OS and application tends to disappear.
4) Relating to the "platform" primarily by its Kernel, a piece of software that is formless/invisible to most non-programmers. Suffice it to say that if Google were marketing a handheld "Linux" to phone users, their offering wouldn't be a tenth as successful as Android and there would be all kinds of negative politics involved that called for Gnome and KDE versions just for starters. The whole community is guilty of this misstep, which amounts to a sort of mass geek delusion. Note that Firefox didn't play this game and it succeeded because people knew how it looked and behaved by default, and any third parties changing the Firefox code were forced to change the name of their offering to something other than 'Firefox'. OTOH, "Linux" defines an almost formless sea of non-kernel alterations that we geeks expect users to become familiar with.
5) Inserting the OS people between the user and the app authors, ensuring that only the biggest enthusiasts and coder-types make an effort to interact directly with the authors. This is part of what I call 'distro culture' which itself has many ill effects. Contrast this with the App Store concept where authors upload their wares themselves, and get a communication channel to/from users.
And now I wouldn't go back. OS X is Unix for the desktop done right. The filesystem,
Huh? The filesystem? Care to explain?
the simplicity, the consistency... And I still have my command line, and emacs, and all of my old bash shell scripts still work.
I don't find OSX simple. I find linux simpler. It's kind of subjective.
1. Copy your .profile to the OS X /Users/youracct directory.
2. Install Xcode from your OS X Snow Leopard disk for development tools.
And enjoy ancient versions of GCC, messed up headers on newer versions (to make the newer versions *feel* ancient) and my favourite: frameworks.
3. Download and install the latest MacPorts.
Ayiyiyiyiyiyiyi. Firstly, I don't really enjoy source based distros due to the painful slownessof things like upgrades. I also find macports to be way less reliable than other rolling update systems (e.g. OpenBSD ports, Arch). I find that this is one of the major showstoppers with OSX. I like the way you can build alternative versions of packages, but it's not worth the price.
4. Download and install iTerm. /System/Library/CoreServices and start the 'Directory Utility' application.
5. Navigate to
6. In Directory Utility, select Edit -> Enable Root User to make root accessible via the 'su' command.
Never had much of a problem with sudo bash, myself. I don't really get the fuss over this one, personally.
7. No that you have root, MacPorts, and iTerm, start iTerm, su to root, and do "port install coreutils" to install GNU utilities.
8. Edit the PATH statement in your profile and add '/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/libexec/gnubin' to the front.
9. If you're an Emacs lover, also download Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/ and add
OK...
Now you have a more-or-less Linux-like command line environment complete with development tools, ports tree, and GNU utilities like the color 'ls' command and the enhanced 'tar' command. You can start Emacs via command line to open text files (keeping in mind that you need to use capital 'E' if you want the GUI version).
More or less, but I'd go for less rather than more. Things never seem to work as well. The ports always seem more brittle than Linux distros.
And you have a rock-solid, highly usable, very logical, concise, and efficient desktop environment
I'm not even sure what all of those adjectives mean with respect to a desktop environment (concise?), but I don't find OSX particularly usable. It's certainly not consistent if you throw macports in there, since the integration between X and OSX is only so-so. E.g. drag 'n' drop doesn't work between the two. I also, emperically find that OSX seems to be just a little bit more crashy than Linux.
without all of the silliness that increasingly mar the KDE and GNOME worlds.
Or you can install a different window manager and have a perfectly usable system without the hassle of changing operting system. I rather like fvwm, myself, but it's not to everyone's taste.
Not to mention that you also have native access to tons of accessories and applications without the need for emulation or virtual machines,
That's also the case on Linux. There are far more applications and accessories than I will ever use.
as well as some things that never worked in Linux even with emulation and/or virtual machines (i.e. desktop voice recognition,
I've used it and it's a fun gimmick, but frankly rather useless, for me at any rate.
a lot of specialized peripherals, and so on). ... well that one cuts both ways. On Linux, you have access to a far greater range of computers. There are also plenty of older peripherals which now ONLY work on Linux.
Try it. You probably won't go back.
I did. I actually use macs on a fairly regular basis for a variety of not especially interesting reasons. I have never found them terrible pleasant to work on.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Mad Hacker handed Alice a cup of custard-like substance and a spoon. "Here," he said, "what do you think of this?" "It looks lovely," said Alice, "very sweet." She tried a spoonful. "Yuck!" she cried. "It's awful. What is it?" "Oh just another graphic interface for UNIX," answered the Hacker.
The GNOME developers clearly don't surf for porn or they don't do it in an environment where they could get caught :)
It's like there's a unified anti-porn conspiracy. First Ubuntu makes me lose the ability to quickly cube rotate to another workspace, now GNOME prevents me from quickly minimizing. I hope they at least retain the ability to set the mouse scroll-wheel on the titlebar to shade windows! :)
I also never, ever minimize, I just keep everything maximized and alt-tab.
If you only have a few things, sure. However, once you get past say six programs, it starts taking way longer to alt-tab than it's worth. I'm not telling you what to do; just confused by why you prefer doing things the hard way.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
1. CORBA wasn't dead when GNOME 2 was created, t.i. in 2001. It died few years later, sure, but guess what, D-BUS was created and CORBA was deprecatated;
2. What's wrong with XML?
3. You really don't know what GConf is, do you? It is nothing like binary spagetti of Windows registry. In fact, it's the best thing GNOME has delivered and afaik dconf - next generation of XML registry - will be adapted by KDE too. Now you can start running and screaming;
4. C# and Mono - and while you refuse to embrase it, huge part of desktop apps are written in C#. Good luck being pure. Also I would like to note that Tomboy is only app written in Mono which is in official GNOME stack. The rest is C and Python;
5. Don't wanna clarify?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
so I'll reserve judgement on removing those two buttons until I've played with it.
One thing that strikes me is that a title bar is a lot of screen real estate to dedicate to just a close button.
Andrew
"There's a reason that newspapers have several columns of text, and this reason is that text becomes harder to read once lines become longer than 80 characters (roughly 40em in CSS)"
It's actually not the number of characters, but how far the eye has to track. If you get out of central vision (towards peripheral vision) comprehension drops measurably; the brain wants to move the eye and that's bad. So it's a combination of physical column width and how far you are from the text. (i.e., with bigger print you can sit further away.)
The reason terminal windows are 80 columns wide is because IBM punched cards had 80 columns.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Instead of messing around with ancient features, they should build something new that is simple. For example, in Mac OS Lion, the window close/minimize/zoom is the same, but there is a full screen mode apps can use that essentially gives an app its own virtual Desktop, and the user can flip through virtual Desktops with a simple gesture. So the window close/minimize/zoom ends up confined to just 1 of many virtual Desktops. You end up with say, 8 Desktops, 1 with windows, 1 with widgets, 6 with apps. There is way less window management. And yet, if the user wants to have windows on every Desktop, that is fine, too.
In other words, create a simpler new paradigm and move to that. Don't just remove features from the old paradigm.
I won't mind if the buttons are optional as they are now. Hopefully they won't force it on everybody using gnome or I might just really switch to KDE.
It's actually not the number of characters, but how far the eye has to track.
And at typical reading distances and font sizes, these are highly correlated. In fact, the seek time to the next line is also largely a function of column width divided by line height; long lines become much easier to read when double-spaced. It also appears to have something to do with paragraph length and shape; the three to four-line 'graphs and indentation in the interspersed replies common on Slashdot appear to give the eye enough texture to find the next line in the 'graph.
If you get out of central vision (towards peripheral vision) comprehension drops measurably; the brain wants to move the eye and that's bad.
I don't know about you, but when I read even 60-column English text, my eyes tend to saccade to keep a chunk of text about 30 columns wide in central vision.
The reason terminal windows are 80 columns wide is because IBM punched cards had 80 columns.
Which in turn goes back to 60-80 columns between margins on typewriters.
But not GUI-based XEmacs.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Functionality always harms when you remove something from the fingertips. Why not make it more light? It's a bloatware (KDE too...). Gnome gives less and less and less in the name of simplicity and usability. Back to Window Maker. Metacity still eats my cpus with gimp.
So now we have a title bar which is completely blank, a menu bar which is mostly blank, and a button bar which is also mostly blank. I'm going to need another monitor just to hold all the blank space.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
I don't know if I will be able to get used to the concept of no minimize/maximize buttons or not. Maybe I will but none the less, no one should just remove such a strong staple of the UI and say "Hey I hope you enjoy it and if not, oh well". If they feel that strongly about removing them by default then they should but leave a option to re-enable them. It would be stupid to take them out and hope the rest of the world just happens to understand your design concepts.
There's a lot of you, personally in there.
Here you go, fast:
Filesystem: /Applications, /Users, and /System vs. /bin /etc /home /sbin /usr etc. If you think the latter's more intuitive OR more easy to manage in terms of the way each tree is organized, you haven't been using Unix long enough.
MacPorts: Suit yourself. And tell all the Gentoo fanboys that you don't like source-based ports systems. Oh, and while you're at it, tell that "open source" crowd around here that keeps saying "You have the source, edit and compile yourself."
Concise: "Brief, yet expressing all important information." As in, how many directories in the / tree in OSX vs. traditional Unices, and/or how many distinct operational elements are present in the desktop GUI in OSX vs. traditional Unices. OSX does more with a lot less, and clarity is the very admirable result.
Applications: Nope, there are none on Linux. Well, there's GIMP and OpenOffice.org, but that's about it. Beyond that, of course, is all of the stuff narcissistic geeks don't care about. "Photoshop? iMovie? WriteRoom? Evernote? iTunes? Who uses that stuff?! Nobody I know..." (No doubt.)
Gimmick: That's right. Desktop voice recognition = gimmick. Just like the totally inflexible Time Machine, the absolutely worthless Creative Suite, and the silly and gadgety sheet-feed straight-to-PDF scanners and digital pens out there. REAL USERS just need a command line (oh, and a bunch of X11 applications, apparently...)
X11 integration: Any newer or 'drag and drop capable' X11 applications are put to shame by Mac OS X native equivalents. Any older and/or specialized X11 applications for research/industry/development/etc. don't support drag and drop in the first place, ergo, you're not losing anything. The only way this matters to you is if you want to run GNOME on OSX or similar... which was the point of my post in the first place. A lot of people don't want to run GNOME or KDE at all these days. Look around you.
'nuff said.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
For all of those complaining about this change and how in their case, maximize or minimize buttons improve their workflow, you can put the minimize and maximize buttons back on the titlebar by adding "minimize,maximize" to the appropriate gconf key (I forget the exact location). So, if you want this added functionality, you just have to make one simple change. For the rest of us, we will enjoy the simplified desktop experience.
How about leaving well enough alone and not forcing gratuitous change on users?
Fine. Go off the cliff if you must but don't go out of your way to destroy the project for legacy users in the process.
Removing window controls that people are used to and are similar to what people use on other systems is just retarded. Not only does this make Linux more difficult to deal with for actual Linux users, it also makes it harder to deal with for anyone else.
This is the flip side of being "too original".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
1. Wait a minute - so it is wrong to try different just because your subconscious reacts angrily to changes that will require to retrain your motor skills? :) To be more serious, well, it's their decision. I'm fine with this decision and will try GNOME 3 out when it will be finally released. No one forces you to migrate or use it. I don't need minimize so frequently, and I can try to live without it. If you can't - fine, but don't call me idiot just because I and GNOME 3 devs want to try new paradigm;
2. You haven't done proper user support, have you? Then you would know that it is very hard to understand when pressing button will maximize and when restore it to "normal" version. this concept has been always broken, I just don't fully agree with GNOME 3 devs that removing it would solve a problem. But it should be changed;
3. Again, please, don't call me or them idiots or retarded just because you don't agree with us. It is very simple thing to ask, no?
4. It works like Windows, looks like Windows, but it is not definite desktop OS per se. Because no one is. And please, tell me it's a joke that Windows 7 can be used as touchscreen OS. Because it simply can't.
I would also like to remind you that similar anger outbursts where registered here, on Slashdot just after Canonical moved buttons from left to right. I won't dive into details why such angry flame wars shows up after such decisions, but something can be said - my truth is mine, and your truth is yours.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I just started a contract at a large chip manufacturer (thousands of engineers). Windows laptops everywhere but the real engineering design happens in X VNC sessions running fvwm2 (grotty fonts but the window management just works).
You don't need a config system. You need configurations, and people keep them at text files since forever. Gconf is bad, as are Dconf and Nepomuk. You shouldn't need transactions at your configurations, you also shouldn't need so many configurations that keeping them at memory is a problem, so you shouldn't need a database at all. Transactions alone could be a nice thing to have if you don't lose anything for gaining them, but transparency and simplicity are way more important.
Rethinking email
* Corba
Well, that was maybe not such a good decision. The intention of using Corba was to get a programming language agnostic communication framework for the desktop, and at the time the first experiments with Gnome were made (we're talking about the late '90), Corba was hyped for exactly that purpose. In hindsight Corba was just to complicated and unwieldy to use. Yet the Gnome team learned from their mistake. The shortcomings of Corba in plain view, the need for a more simple and extensible framework led to the creation of D-Bus. And D-Bus is nowadays even empowering KDE, creating a first class bridge between the two frameworks.
* XML
I fail to see how the Gnome devs can be made responsible for the creation of XML. Gnome was started about thee years after the first release of the first XML specification. Also, XML was created by Tim Bray et al., non of which have anything to to with the inception of Gnome.
* GConf
The horrors of the Windows registration lye in its binary format, its inaccessibility, its cryptic structure and keys as well as the fact that it tries to do multiple jobs at once. The only way in which GConf could be compared to the Windows registry is in that they both store configuration settings and that they both work with hierarchical namespaces. But GConf and the Windows registry differ in very important ways; GConf's configuration files are human readable and can be manipulated by the unix command line tool tools. GConf even comes with nice command line tools itself, so scripting is easily achieved. Try to do that with the Windows registry.
* C# and Mono
C# is a Microsoft product, so I fail to see how Gnome ought to be at fault here. Mono also was not created by an active Gnome dev (although Miguel de Icaza is a founding member of Gnome), nor was is a Gnome foundation decision to create Mono. That said, although I tend to avoid Mono applications, it offers a very slick programming environment.
* Umpteen window manager changes, none good enough
Gnome changed window managers from Enlightenment to Sawfish, from Sawfish to Metacity. The next planned step, Mutter, is just a branch of Metacity relying upon the Clutter library. There were very sound reasons for those changes; Enlightenment was its own desktop project and used a different toolkit. Sawfish was written in Scheme, which non of the developers was willing to maintain anymore. As for 'none good enough', that is oppinion.
You fail to see the reasons for dropping those buttons; the Gnome developers are willing to innovate and go beyond the desktop paradigms of the last 25 years. Most of the GUI interaction concepts used today stem from those early years and even many of them provide adequate, some are just plain wrong and even hurtful. We may be using them everyday and thus they seem to be working, but many times we're just working around them. I could name many problems but they mosty center around the theme 'force me to manage my applications instead of letting my do my actual work'. Do you're research and you'll find many topics.
The current drive in the OpenSource community to innovate in desktop paradigms (KDE 4, Unity, gnome-shell) shows that this is a real hurt and I hope that the most obvious flaws of the current GUI metaphors will be addressed soon.
Try to be open and accept that the ways we've been doing things in the last 25 years may not be the final answers to graphical computer interaction. We've gathered a lot of experience, maybe it's a good time to try out some new things.
This is probably a troll, but you will find on Windows that you cannot use ctrl+c/v to cut and paste in the terminal. You use ctrl+shift+c/v. Amazingly enough, this is the EXACT SAME keys you use in most terminal emulators on Linux (the ones you seem to think require the context menu, without realizing that Windows has the exact same context menu in it's terminal!)
I also find it hilarious that you say "In windows ctrl-v or shift-ins is the universal way to copy/paste" and then later say "Linux paste is schizophrenic: ctrl-v, shift-ins". You then try to make Linux sound more confusing by adding "shift-ctrl-ins" (which exists on Windows) and the context menu paste (which exists on Windows in the same terminal emulator programs). You could at least have mentioned Emacs which uses different keys (but of course you can run Emacs on Windows and it has the SAME keys).
Gconf actually not a bad thing. It has gconftool-2, which is a CLI interface. So, I can write a simple script to configure all the deskstop settings the way I like them.
And settings take effect instantly. This is a major win compared to KDE - I love configuration files, but scriptably editing all the complex ones is a pain.
I've been using IceWM for about 10 years now. And I maximize and minimize a lot and, guess what? I've been doing it with the keyboard for years too. People who watches me managing my windows can't follow my speed of action and are frequently amazed.
The trick is simple: alt+space activates the context menu of the current window (just as if you clicked right button on the title bar). The, you have the three most common options just a centimeter from your finger: X to maximize, N to minimize, C to close. Both X and C can be typed with the same hand that has pressed alt+space, so it's quicker than, say, alt+F4. By the way, this three options work exactly the same under Windows, so it's a pretty good habit.
If I need to move a window around, I will never click on the title bar: I will type alt+space+m in 20 miliseconds and then I can move the window just moving the mouse from where it is, without the need to go to the title bar. This also works on Windows.
If I want to send a window to another virtual desktop, it's pretty easy: alt+space+t (for move To), and then the number of the desktop. Want to make a window on top of all the others? alt+window+y (for laYer) and then A (for Above dock) or N for Norma, or maybe B for Below... and all that just with one hand at the speed of light.
Long live to IceWM!
... from the very beginning.
I lost track of all the "cool" but horrible ideas which made it into gnome.
/---/ /---/
- GConf (the horrors of the windows registry re-implemented by monkeys)
- C# and Mono - embracing Microsoft technology!
GConf have only superficial similarities with the MS Windows Registry. It is more similar to Mac OS X plists (they both use xml-files and deamons that report changes in them, the most important difference is that GConf actually works) and good old fashion unix configuration files. Actually, it is good old fashion unix configuration files, but in xml-format and with a deamon that alert associated application when one of them change. GConf also has an editor to make changes in those files (superficially resembling the Windows registry editor that is used to edit the the MS Windows registry database (one very large file)) and a set of command line tools, if you don't like those tools you can use any text editor you want to change your settings (look in the ~/.gconf directory, it is ... gasp!... full of plain text files).
The Windows registry is a really, really bad idea that has gone far to long. A big and fragile blob of a database that crashes everything once corrupted. To liken gconf with the Windows registry is not fair at all, if you like to compare it with anything, compare it with Mac OS X:s plists, both systems consists of many small separate xml configuration files (only plists are ususally larger and sometimes clash with other configuration files in unexpected ways, it also has (undocumented) deamons that take values from the plists and transfer them to parts of the system that use "classic" unix configuration files, but those parts of OS X become less with time, there used to be many of them but the only one I can think of that is left in 10.6 is CUPS, the time space between a change in a plist and in the other config file used to be a huge source of crashes in Mac OS X). I bet you will find the comparision favorable to GConf.
That said, XML is not very human friendly. They could have picked a simpler to edit/read file format in GConf.
Mono seem like a very bad idea. In my experience, the Mono platform encourage application makers to make really horrible user interfaces and when I have to run a Mono-application, even for the simplest of tasks, my otherwise cool and silent computer is transformed to a very noisy space heater. Most script languages produce applications that run faster and the crash frequency is just horrible.
"Is this Nautilus spatial mode Part II?"
GNOME is not losing anything.
:) And i work in normal gnome desktop, not gnome shell. So I think experiment is good to be done on more people. :)
This is only if you have Gnome Shell enabled, and it is actually only epxeriment. It will be probably more reverted back, as currently minimize button isn't really minimising, as there is no task bar in gnome shell. It is more a hide button. Also Maximize button is redundant. As you can easly use titlebar double-click. Also with minimize/maximize buttons missing, you can still access it's functionality in about 5 ways. Shortcut, Right-Click on title bar, click application icon/menu, Alt-RightClick. And you can also enable minimize/maximize buttons easly in gconf editor.
I disabled minimize and maximize button about 2 weeks ago, and noticed this fact only once during my normal work. They are useless to me.
In all fairness, if you're using GNOME, you are an idiot.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I guess I don't understand the lack of both a window bar and minimize combo as you work with stuff. It takes you say 5 clicks and maybe a login to get to each window you want to work with, what are you supposed to do with it when it's on hold?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
At that point I just start closing programs. I don't often encounter situations where I have more than six programs open at once and am actually using all of them.
I do not like XML, or C#, or GConf too much, but I think they are doing their job good, and I do not care too much. Gconf is actually pretty simple to use, and very clear. I do not like XML, but for most configuration files it is perfectly good solution: small, good strcture, self descripting, familiar syntax to everyone, easy to handle in all languages (as for configuration). As for datastoring I do not see it as best solution. C# is AFAIK pretty good technology, and Mono is now very good implementation. I not use it mainly becasue I just do not want to waste next 100MB of memory to just single application. But people with better machines will not care.
Only think that i think was big mistake is a CORBA, and as we know GNOME is getting out of this rubish technology. I guess they used Corba, becasue it was only reasonable open-standard technology available for multiple languages at the time GNOME was create. I think they should just invent something simple, but I guess it will still took some work to do, and time. Thanks it now changes.
I don't use either Gnome or KDE. I use Xmonad on FreeBSD (while on life support) and XP on all machines but my laptop which is Win 7. So I think I can speak to the lack of minimize though perhaps less so the maximize.
While using XP I rarely maximize an application - the only ones might be video/image editing or to watch pron..err youtube. Everything else is a variable size as I like to keep chat windows and other apps visible, at least in part while browsing or using spreadsheet or similar. I use minimize often to declutter (I dont like title bars floating about) and I rarely, if ever, use virtual screens eventhough I have them available.
While using Xmonad I rarely float windows - the only exception that comes to mind is the music player controls. On the otherhand, I make great use of virtual screens. Typically I have one or two browsers maxed on their own screen. Possibly also an open office document or Eclipse. Other things tend to get tiled on a screen. Chats on one, mail and shells windows on another, etc. There really is not any concept of minimize in Xmonad though I do at times find myself wishing for this. Instead I tend to just shift the application in question to another virtual screen.
Neither approach is perfect, there are times I prefer one over the other but I can live with either.
>Nepomuk
Nepomuk is good, and regardless of its good/bad status, it has nothing at all to do with configuration systems
And gconf and dconf are text files, and not databases except maybe under a definition loose enough to include any classic *nix text config file.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I'd be curious to know if they've tested this out on anyone who's unfamiliar with computers. My gut feeling that icons like:
even in ASCII, would be discovered quicker than double-clicking on the title bar. That trick has been around in Windows for as long as I remember, but it took me a good few years before I noticed it.
You know, when they announced GConf, I thought like you, because I had bad experiences with the registry and back then I was an arrogant 20 year old programmer who didn't like any framework for anything, especially not tasks like configuration. However, I have warmed to it as Gnome 2.0 slowly became an OK system. Configuration should not be something that needs to be re-designed and re-implemented in every application. Things like policies, handling multiple instances of the one program, external configuration tools, etc. should work on a layer below the app. When I am writing an application, I want to be able to say, "OK, I have these options, make sure they are stored somewhere and tell me when the user wants to change them" and it works really well. It's no harder to use than libconfig or libxml2 but it has the addition that it notifies the application when a variable changes. It is a shitload easier than writing a custom parser by hand or with bison.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I gave up on Linux years ago. It's like the Linux devs work in a little closed box that they can't see out of, and don't seem to see the bigger picture or just have a general understanding beyond the small group with whom they share that box. These days I still with Windows at work, and OS X at home. They both work out of the box, and don't overly annoy me.
I recently had to work on a project with Samsung, that required me to install Red Hat. I spent more time fiddling with the installation than actually doing productive work. I was reminded why I ditched Linux.
The last time I used anything GNOME based were some ports to Windows of things like GIMP and Ethereal (now Wireshark).... again the GNOME implementation was clueless using it's own totally unusable open/save dialog for instance. They could have at least copied Windows or OS X functionally, but no, they had to come up with some new twisted bastardisation. It beats me why they wouldn't have just delegated that kind of functionality to the OS (Win32 API) and used the existing common (standard) dialog.
I don't know what planet those GNOME guys are on, but thankfully I can just ignore them.
our new non legacy window overlords!
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Last time they did something this stupid, it was forcing spatial Nautilus on everyone (yes, you could change the behaviour but it was buried in gnomeconf, and when I tried, it screwed up the shared KDE settings on Fedora). I quit using Gnome at that point. Now it's gotten to the point where I actually like it and use it, and they decide to fuck it up again.
Hang on that is like a hard on that won't go down. ;) GAWD what a stupid idea.
My two cents! I've been using KDE4's lovely netbook interface fairly extensively for a couple of months now, and I've grown to love it. Although minimize and maximize both still exists, at least, their importance is greatly diminished. All windows are maximized by default, and minimization is accomplished with smart hiding. I.e., if I click the activity with which I launch applications in the activity switcher in the panel, all windows get hidden.
This is only annoying (and easily remedied at that) once in a blue moon, when I'm trying to drag and drop between applications. Otherwise, it makes sense and is exactly what I want. One application has all of my focus at a time, which is exactly what I do on other desktop environments anyway. Everything else is just an alt+tab away.
I believe this is a tentative step in the right direction, but Gnome is going about it all wrong. Features in flux shouldn't be removed for removal's sake (which is what seems to have happened,) but de-emphasized by other smart design chioces.
Microsoft stock pays about a 2.5% yield. Compared with Apple or Google, Microsoft actually seems like a relatively low risk investment.
"Next up we're removing the top border completely, you don't get to move your windows around the desktop, we will decide where your windows are going to be. You might not like it at first, but trust us, this will allow for a consistent level of quality as to how the windows are positioned and take up less space! Damn we're brilliant. What's that? Year of the Linux? Maybe next century when our potential users no longer need monitors or a keyboard and mouse. Then we can decide what gets downloaded into their brains!"
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
and your point is?
gp says that windows' and osx's uis are better than gnome 3 because they have lotsa money, and gnome guys work essentially on their own time. so why do you wanna drag in a pointless debate on the way we measure the size of a company?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
As a GNOME 2 user who grew up with WindowMaker, I like to open 10 workspaces with hotkeys to switch between them, and each workspace hosts a kind of application. Minimization is thus never useful to me; the number of windows on each workspace is usually small enough that Alt+Tab works acceptably. (Although last week I did end up having 30 xpdf and oowriter windows in one workspace plus a terminal window running screen with 26 sub-windows...)
I don't know how well GNOME 3 will support this habit; I once tried Compiz, but did not find an easy way to set all the necessary hotkeys, so I switched back to Metacity.
And where do these turkeys get off, telling me how to work? They should be making it easy for me to work *my* way -- it's called customizability -- and not coming up with some stupid touchy design for somebody else's box and telling me to wear it on mine.
Although I did not really click the max/min button anyway, 'Cause I find that the keyboard shortcut is more friendly. But I still hope that there are enough customize methods left for the users. Everybody is difference , that is why free software and open source make sense.
The first type also has the option of becoming the second type when nobody listens.
...either don't upgrade or create a gnome fork that retains maximize/minimize buttons. alternatively you could band together and kep bitching till the maintainers can't take it anymore and include them as an option just to shut you up. there will no doubt be this options still anyway... accessible through gconf or some other obscure method.
Seriously, reading Slashdot on this article is like reading Facebook after a major UI change. it's just post after post of whining and crying about how things are changing, and the old way was better, and how come they had to go change stuff. Wah, wah, wah.
Sure, it was heavy-handed, and sure, it was unilateral. But you know what? Maybe it'll turn out to be good. And if it isn't, no one's making you use Gnome 3. Go to KDE or Enlightenment or any of the other MANY MANY MANY desktop environments. Isn't this sort of gamble exactly what the Bazaar is meant for?
I did the same. KDE/Gnome and the whole Linux on the desktop was just a constant downward spiral where I was less and less productive.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
One of the problems with the Weird Innovation Syndrome afflicting GNOME and Ubuntu, and the reason for the intensive reaction from the community, is that there hardly ever a coherent reason for the changes.
Take the dropping of min/max buttons: Who is this for? For advanced users? Were they hobbled by existence of the buttons?
Or is it for newbs? Well, how is a noob supposed to know (and have memorized) the keyboard combinations? It used to be that the keyboard combos were nicely listed in the window control menu accessible by a button on the left top corner, but, conveniently, they're dropping that too.
What happened to discoverability, and allowing users to have simple, easy, direct methods of operation instead of forcing them to become power users from the outset and fiddling with mouse gestures?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
and in a startling turn of events i'll be buying an apple. gnome is my interface of choice, but if the future of the ui is braindead i'm going to aqua.
C'mon guys, we are on an open OS, if it sucks, we can switch to XFCE or LXDE :) Not KDE because thats where is imho the new GNOME 3 heading towards... and we know we don't want that :)
Sorry, but I can't put it in another way. Here's why:
Option1: LEFT Click a button.
Option2: Right-click on title bar, then LEFT click option in context menu
Option3: Press ALT-F9
Which one is easier, option1, with 1 left click, or option 2 which forces you to fiddle with a menu and right-clicking? You say: option 2. Sorry... what?
Oh, of course, minimizing isn't used, right, you should move the window to another workspace by using... right-click, and then left click option in context menu. One LEFT click is easy, it's deterministic and it's well known.
In windows I use 2 monitors and ultramon. It adds (!) 2 buttons to every window bar: one for moving the window to the other monitor and one for maximizing the window across two monitors. No offense to you, but they are very very easy and add usability to using window objects on a desktop.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Do you remember when they took away the ability to have a fucking URL bar? You couldn't browse your own fucking disk.
Now this. Why the FUCK would I not want to minimize? What I need to generate like 16 fucking desktops every time I want a blank one?
The real question is, why? And the answer is, as usual, that they are full of themselves. As per normal, there won't be some actual fucking GUI to fix the GUI, you'll have to at MINIMUM edit an oddly named text file, but much more likely you'll have to set some bizarro-world setting. Just one more fucking thing to undo about your new Linux distroes.
Piece of shit devs.
There's a lot of you, personally in there.
Just one, I'm afraid :(
Filesystem: /Applications, /Users, and /System vs. /bin /etc /home /sbin /usr etc. If you think the latter's more intuitive OR more easy to manage in terms of the way each tree is organized, you haven't been using Unix long enough.
That explains it. I thought you were talking about the relative merits of Hfs+ and ext4. The unix one isn't always that well organised, but the mac one isn't flawless. I'll not address the point about "intuitive" since it's more or less impossible to separate intuitive from fmailiar.
MacPorts: Suit yourself. And tell all the Gentoo fanboys that you don't like source-based ports systems. Oh, and while you're at it, tell that "open source" crowd around here that keeps saying "You have the source, edit and compile yourself."
Sure. Hey Gentoo fans: I don't particularly like source based distros! And then you start simply making stuff up. I know of no binary distro which doesn't let you easily recompile things from source should you need to. My /usr/local tree is well populated, and I even have hacked programs installed as packages.
But I still don't want to wait for firefox and gimp to recompile (again).
Concise: "Brief, yet expressing all important information." As in, how many directories in the / tree in OSX vs. traditional Unices,
Well, you have /, /usr and /usr/local. Each has a bin, lib, include, etc and share tree. Quite straightforward. There's also some X11 in there somewhere. In OSX, well it's different but more of the same, especially when you start considering all the GCC frameworks, one directory per application and macports and so on. It's not a point I see any particular difference on other than superficialities.
and/or how many distinct operational elements are present in the desktop GUI in OSX vs. traditional Unices.
Given that one could argue that "traditional" unix came with twm for a while, you might want to rethink your stance on few GUI elements being better. OSX is certainly busier than twm.
OSX does more with a lot less, and clarity is the very admirable result.
I completely disagree. My desktop is far more spartan than any apple machine I've ever used, and I find my setup far more usable. In fact, if I have to use a mac for an extended period, I tend to run X fullscreen and bring my desktop setup over.
Not everyone like Macs. They are not simply universally better than all other systems. GUIs are a matter of taste, and I happen to prefer FVWM to OSX. That makes FVWM better for me. And, compared to a binary system, the ports system is slow and also brittle compared to the other source based and/or rolling update systems I have used.
Applications: Nope, there are none on Linux.
I guess my day job must be a figment of my imagination, then. There are plenty of dev tools, and CAD programs.
Well, there's GIMP and OpenOffice.org, but that's about it. Beyond that, of course, is all of the stuff narcissistic geeks don't care about. "Photoshop? iMovie? WriteRoom? Evernote? iTunes? Who uses that stuff?! Nobody I know..." (No doubt.)
What on earth has narcissism got to do with photoshop? Are professional photographers the only people who aren't narcissistic? I don't actually know anyone who has photoshop because I don't know any pro photographers. Likewise, I don't do any video editing and neither do any of my linux- mac- or windows-using friends. iTunes? I gather there are other music stores one can use. And you've also picked on a couple of random, obscure apps.
Gimmick: That's right. Desktop voice recognition = gimmick.
Yes. It is a gimmick. Also, it was the one you suggested...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Having switched to OS X a few months back, I have to say that one of the great advantages of using Ubuntu was the GNOME minimise and maximise functionality: it was so simple, and keeping a desktop tidy was easy.
I've found with OS X that the screen is quickly cluttered. Minimising a window sends it to a rather strange "minimised windows" area on the right-hand side of the dock, where a window preview rather than the actual application icon is displayed - making it difficult to relocate and quickly filling the dock.
It seems that the simplicity of Gnome's minimise functionality is being lost here. Which is a shame, as it's a clear win over OS X for me. I always appreciate how simple everything is on my Gnome desktop at work.
Perhaps they're thinking of a more "modal" interface like iOS (and to a lesser extent, OS X with its window management style), but I'm fairly sure the modal versus multitasking debate has been had before, and multitasking won.
RS.
i always preferred shade instead of minimize, but it is still kinda the same. i also had utter repulsive reaction after trying shell in fedora 14 (old one). even more, i was upset about min/max removal. then i actually tried damn thing and i love it. the only thing that didn't bother me was removing desktop icons. 3 years now, i'm doing that my self as i hate unorganized clutter which desktop files bring.
with dynamic workspaces.. it somehow really works without minimizing and smart maximizing with mouse works much better than maximize ever did. i'd suggest you try it, there is a live cd on gnome3 and see.
btw. you can still minimize with keyboard shortcut or right title menu
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I windows ... Not so in linux
Quite. In today's lesson number 1, you learn that Linux isw not windows.
or simply highlighting
I'm afraid this innovation has only been relatively recently introduced (1987 or so). The world of computers does move fast, but do try to keep up.
Linux wants to compete with windows
If you want windows, I suggest you start here: http://www.microsoft.com/
Oops. IHBT. Never mind. Can you now complain abot CMYK in the GIMP?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
lol, your comment just shows you never used linux. working out of the box? windows? LOOOOOOOL, one word... drivers. i won't say that about mac as it comes with dedicated drivers for its hardware, but there is still software which can't be easily installed in one move. but still, my linux installation finishes 1 minute after dvd is ejected. including all software i need for my work, i actually spent 10 minutes to make one rpm which specifies dependencies (aka. all software i need). install that and everything installs.
why not delegating? good luck using two different toolkits in your software. ever tried that before?
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If the auto industry were adopt this then every 10 years or so we would have our driving controls changed.
"That steering wheel clutters the drivers space too much We decided to replace it with a much smaller joystick. Gets rid of the gas pedal too. Want to speed up or slow down. All this can be done with the joystick. Just push forward to accelerate and pull back to slow down. Brakes? now a trigger on the stick. Just think you feet won't have to do anything now!"
In the real world these things don't change because what we have works. A totally unnecessary change if you ask me. I don't mind making the UI more artful if you don't compromise it's functionality doing it, which this clearly does. Minimize and Maximize are so common a task in any windowing system that they deserve a one click solution, which the three buttons provide. Making the user do more work (mouse movements, more clicks) is a very bad idea.
First, half the features in Gnome 1.x go in Gnome 2. Then the steady removal of options and features. Now they're *)!@#( with the window features that are standard on all windowing systems in the major OS's?!?
I'm glad I already moved onto KDE. I couldn't hack Gnome Option/feature Removal Syndrome (GOFRS).
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Dude, I was downloading kernel updates to floppy to take home every other day at the university and updating my slackware install on my DX4-100 longer ago than I wish to admit. I had enough of that shit after a decade. If it's still turning tricks for you, then great, I'm glad you're having fun.
...but I might become a KDE fan now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
BTW, I just wiped the original XP install on my old work laptop and installed Windows 7, a Dell M60 from 2004. The only issue I had was a finding an inf hack to allow newer nVidia drivers to enable Aero. Don't talk to me about how much of my live I've wasted on X11.
i'm a gnome user (in that i use the gnome panel[1] and most of the GUI apps i use are gnome) but i switched to the openbox window manager several years ago because the "standard" gnome window managers metacity and mutter absolutely suck. even worse than the software is the attitude ("design philosophy" if you want to be fancy) behind them - that taking away features is a Good Thing because users are too stupid to understand them and easily confused by choices.
this latest idiocy is just an extension of the initial practical reason i started using openbox - middle-click and right-click on the maximise button for vertical-only and horizontal-only maximise of a window. IIRC, after some argument a few years ago, the metacity devs agreed to add (or keep, i can't remember) the vert-max and horiz-max features, but refused to enable them via middle- or right- click on the max button....the ONLY way to access them is to manually configure the keyboard bindings to assign a key to them.
the gnome terminal, actually vte, also has an annoying broken-by-design bug of sending eight up/down arrow keys to the application running in the terminal when the scroll wheel is moved. the devs flat out refuse to acknowledge that this causes problems for programs like mutt and vi, and refuse to fix, and messes up middle-button pasting (because the scroll wheel is usually also the middle button, and it's almost impossible to click it without scrolling it a little at first) - even though several patches have been submitted over the years that the bug has been in the gnome bugzilla. because of this, i use mrxvt rather than gnome terminal - which, of course, has its own bugs but at least the dev doesn't suffer from the Gnome Developer Attitude Problem.
gnome has a lot of good software, but it also has a lot of rage-inducing idiocy like the above.
[1] the gnome panel annoys me too - buggy bloated crap. i've looked around for something to replace it with but haven't found one yet.
really? can't put them back?
gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout ":minimize,maximize,close"
you shouldn't listen to your self too much... after RTFA ... do also a little RTFM
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ALT+SPACE, X
Yes, but once you learn it you're going to be faced with the simple reality that your keyboard is not the only one in the world. This has two major consequences: you'll have trouble using others' keyboards, and your keyboard will be a pain for everyone else. Further, like it or not, you will lose productivity during the time you take to learn. Getting used to a new method of doing things is precisely everyone's problem with what GNOME's doing—you're just not being told that your favourite OS/distro/WM combination is now Dvorak-only.
And to make matters worse, Dvorak hasn't been proven to be an improvement in studies, either, much like this change.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I really can't help but wonder how much of this insanity is being driven by the display manufacturers who keep squashing vertical space right on out of computer displays.
Forcing a confusing and unexpected MAJOR user interface change on all of your users is not the right way to do things. You should make it optional for a very long time and let people opt in/out of becoming accustomed to it, even if you think you're sure that it's better to not have the min/max buttons.
What's going to happen if you suddenly force it on people, is that a very large portion of the people who are installing Linux for the first time (and who are already in alien territory) are going to be suddenly presented with an interface where they can't even figure out how to minimize and maximize a window. They don't need more confusion. They need to have the transition from Windows to Linux be as smooth as possible, not cool and different. They need to be able to use their computers.
What is the benefit of doing this? People that actually care about the min/max buttons can choose to remove them, and people that don't even think about them can continue not even thinking about them, and be able to just use their computer to watch their Sock'em boppers Videos on Youtube without a hassle.
The default configuration for the most widely used Linux desktop system is not the right place to be pushing a cool new form of user interface.
By all means change the GNOME UI - drop whatever you want - but please give it as much configurability as possble (even if these are hidden as "advanced options"). Firefox 4 makes the blunder of removing the status bar (which is fine if they want that as a default) but has no way of configuring it back without an extension (bad move). It sounds like GNOME 3 are going the same way - removing stuff and not letting users configure it back.
Also, make configurability obvious - one late-in-the-day GNOME 2 change was to make GNOME Terminal flash its cursor by default (which I hate because it's very distracting) and then remove the "flashing cursor" option from the preferences of GNOME Terminal! GNOME devs claim it was because they intro'ed a global config option for flashing carets/cursors so where is that config? It's in the *Keyboard* config tool would you believe it - nutty beyond belief.
BTW, drag to top of screen to maximise is an *appalling* UI decision 'borrowed" from Windows (whenever I'm in Windows, I keep accidentally maximising dragged windows because of this brain-dead default action). Next we'll see the "jump to top or bottom of document if you drift left or right when dragging a vertical scrollbar button" (another disastrous UI feature of Windows that I always get hit by when in Windows).
Whether this change will be good or bad will be for history to judge. What I don't get is when they make changes like this, why is there no provision to still support the old feature as a "classic" or optional feature? Is it really so hard to include that? I use minimize constantly to get a window out of the way when working on stuff. Without it, there's going to be nothing be extreme clutter on my desktop. That means I'll have to switch to a different window manager all because some developer(s) were too lazy to include the option to still have minimize. That's just sad.
If a desktop is such an important thing that people might sometimes want to move stuff out of its way, then people ought to be able to select the desktop window like any other window, and have it come to the front.
There is no reason for desktop to be a special case. You either want to look at that particular directory in your file manager, or you don't. If you don't want to look at it, close it. If you do want to look at it, open it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
..maximize / minimize / etc are still there.
If anyone would want to convert away from Linux for something trivial like removing a minimize button, maybe Linux isn't for them. I don't even use the button, just the keyboard shortcut. Anyone using this? No. No. Yes. Okay, only a few, let's get rid of it. We're about efficiency here not catering to the least common denominator.
I could see this being useful if the change was to dynamically unhide the window bar, since we're all being forced into widescreen displays, but as is, it comes of as a "solution in search of a problem"...
Looks good, but then again I've always needed the max and min buttons. It will come down how quick you can adapt.
Hopefully users have the ability to enable the buttons again. I know we want to innovate and come up with new features, but PLEASE please please don't take away something permanently. Give users the choice! Let's not make the same mistakes of Microsoft!!!!!!!
...the mouse pointer.
Nobody asked for your opinion troll
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Putting this forth as a real consideration, to anyone reading: Who uses those widgets anyway?
Okay, fair enough, I'm sure many do - from years of habit, muscle memory, and the visual gravitation towards those widgets. Why are these widgets still necessary, though?
Fitt's law proves that a widget is easier to click, proportional to it's surface area. Given their small size, it explains why I find them cumbersome. I am more likely to:
- use keyboard shortcuts
- Alt + Space / Alt + rmb to access the context menu
- rmb the window drag-bar to access the ctm
Alt + Space is the most universal, and a great choice when jumping between different OS's and DM's.
Hey, I don't care if they keep the buttons, I just don't think I'll notice even if they do remove them.
+1 for speaking your mind not as AC :-D