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Ask Slashdot: Unity/Gnome 3/Win8/iOS — Do We Really Hate All New GUIs?
Brad1138 writes "You see complaints about the 'next gen' GUI's all over the place, but do we really all hate them? Personally, I don't like them — I tried very hard to like Unity in Ubuntu 11.04/11.10 before giving up and switching to Mint (I am very happy there currently). But is it the vocal minority doing all the complaining, or is it the majority? Are we just too set in our ways?"
What answer do you expect on Slashdot?
uh pretty sure millions of people think iOS is great. are we referring to its influence on OS X e.g. Lion?
The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change.
Ask me before you make the changes. Don't make the changes then say `try it..try and get used to it...this is better`.
Unity is not better. It was fine before. There are other areas of Ubuntu which could be improved first, and you should have made Unity an option, not the only choice.
I'm now sort of happy with Xubuntu but there's no point in pissing off loyal fans this way. It adds nothing but resentment and confusion.
But yeah, I REALLY dislike the dumbing down of GUIs, hiding everything behind big buttons to make it "touch-screen friendly" and just not considering the power user. I was fine with Netbook Editions of linux distros(even though I never used any for more than testing) but this is ridiculous. We have more screen space and screen resolution than ever before, and now it's all nice boxes with rounded corners? Sheesh.
... KDE 4, Windows 7, Windows Vista... some people hate ALL GUIs.
Me? I like Windows 7. I find it nicer and faster than XP's interface, actually. I also like gnome better than KDE in general, but I preferred KDE 3x or 4x. I have not tried gnome3/unity yet, so can't comment there.
I sometimes wonder how long this debate has gone on. I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes). People probably tried to show how a monitor was a disadvantage from the teletype; afterall, with teletypes you had a permanent hard copy and didn't risk losing it! ... (I have no source for this, I'm just speculating ;) )
I do think there are some things that don't make sense though - such as touch-screen-GUIs used on non-touch-screens, or the other way around.
> But is it the vocal minority doing all the complaining, or is it the majority?
Brother, its *always* the vocal minority doing all the complaining. The majority (aka 'the great unwashed masses') will generally take whatever is being shoved down their throats.
-x
I started with Slackware 1 on floppy disks downloaded by modem. I like Unity - first time in my Linux life I didn't spend hours dicking around with the interface. I have installed Faenza icons, but that's it.
Windows 7 nailed it.
...because we're using desktops, not tablets.
Advice: on VPS providers
If there's one thing we should learn from these ordeals, it's that people claiming to be "UI designers" should be shunned. Every commercial and open source project needs to limit the involvement of these people. They can make icons, but that's where it should end.
GNOME, Firefox, and Windows all had far more usable UIs when actual software developers were in charge of making the decisions. This isn't surprising, though. Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well. "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively. Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.
I want my things to be loaded as quickly as possible. I don't care about flashy desktop effects that make things slower.
Asking for opinions on this on /. will certainly clear up the matter. This is the same place where people thought Linux was ready for the desktop 10 years ago, and where I've seen people defend X11's "mouse-over dictates window for text input" as model -- something should make any good UI designer's list of atrocities against users. Of the four listed, I've only dealt with iOS, and I think it handles touches pretty well (though I want to kidney punch everyone involved in applying for or approving Apple's patents on particular gestures).
I generally like kde 4 design though they need to work on reducing cpu usage / latency. In my opinion, it's the only one that does it right in that the interface for tablet/netbook and desktop are separated seamlessly and easy switched between the two. Programs do not need to be compiled to two different gui and users can pick which interface to use and don't have to bother with the other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjO5X1ADUrE is an example.
My main problem with "next gen" gui is that they are too forceful. They try to combine desktop and tablet/netbook into one gui and do so badly at it. Windows 8 that forces you to switch between the 2 different guis depending on the software you use is an example of bad design.
Mint all the way! The only easy-to-use distro that's really tuned in to user GUI likings.
I've been using KDE4 since the earlier versions, and I'm pleased with it. It even has options on how you want your workspace to be, if you want desktop icons, panels, widgets, etc. I haven't use Gnome 3 or Unity enough to comment on them, but KDE has been good to me and I have had no needs beyond it
I happen to like Mac OS X 10.7's changes. I enjoy using GNOME 3 on Fedora. I didn't like Unity because it looked and felt rushed. And I love my iPod's GUI. Haven't tried Windows 8, but I don't like Windows 7's window management, although it's much improved over XP or Vista.
Also, I like the new GMail and Google Reader. The internet seems to think I'm the devil incarnate. I should get checked.
Until the recent surge of change, the ui of all desktop environments was stagnant. Change is needed to keep things fresh, just because you have found a good setup doesnt mean its the best. The biggest problem is the lack/difficulty of customisation for these new UI's. For example, I live the new Gnome3 look, and from a general use perspective I find it very efficient to use. However it always is a pain when I want to customise something.http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/11/09/015211/ask-slashdot-unitygnome-3win8ios-do-we-really-hate-all-new-guis?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed#
Not to defend any of the new-ish UIs, but the conventional UI model has always sucked. Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.
If we can abandon the model where the user has to fiddle with a bunch of unnecessary crap just to use their computer, that would be a step forward.
Thing is, I'm not sure any of the new UIs are quite there; they made radical changes but only minor usability improvements.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Linux Mint is moving to Gnome 3 so even that distribution will be going down that road of bloat. But I just configured Lxde to look exactly like Gnome 2 on Fedora and I am happy enough with that.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
I also left Ubuntu due to Unity.
I now like PCLinuxOS.
1. All these guys want their OS distro on mobile/handheld devices.
2. In order to do that, you need a clumsy "finger paint" interface instead of the trusty precision of the paintbrush
3. all apps need to be changed so they behave like the clumsy finger paint interface
4. in order to do that, you need to force the clumsy finger pain interface on everyone
5. ???
6. Have most of the non-mobile/handheld users complaining about it, but don't listen.
Been using it for 10 years. Yes, they had issues with 4.0 and 4.1 and I stuck with 3.5 until 4.2 came out. But from 4.2 and on I'm liking it. It does everything I want it to and looks pretty too.
Some don't like that the entire workspace is composed of widgets, but I think it's a great concept. I can customize my desktop to suit my style, and just about everything is adjustable/customizable.
For many people, in my experience, expressing hate more quickly passes the 'urge to talk about' than love. Plus, if you're pissed then you want to be heard. But, if you're happy, who cares who's talking? (Side note: the more visible something is, the more attention any changes will see. "New Coke", for example.)
I think that's what's going on with the latest GUIs. Change always has it's subtractors, and GUIs see *tons* of use.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Give me one that doesn't suck and I won't hate it.
My current ire is directed toward Google for its new Gmail interface. What a joke.
The /. crowd generally is more knowledgeable about computers and their interfaces. UI teams are dumbing down their interfaces to cater to the lowest common denominator of user. The simplification has reached a point where even median level functionality is not just hidden, but removed. The targeted users don't know any better (and likely never will), but we do.
These new interfaces are just too simple for us.
This article makes about much sense as asking if you would change your telco carrier if they changed their logo? Really, who gives a ****? If the OS runs my software faster, better and more efficiently than the previous version, i couldn't care less about some GUI quirks.
Show me how these new UIs produce a benefit for the end user. That's it.
I'm a bitter KDE4 user. From everything I can tell, they did it to make the code "neater" and for window candy.
I still fail to see why anyone but Grandma would want a UI that even Grandma could run.
Windows 8 looks like a confusing jumbled mess from developer preview videos I've seen and I don't know about iOS, but I use both GNOME Shell and Unity on my machines and I much prefer them to GNOME 2.
A problem I think you'll run into here is that Slashdot is expressly for nerds, not the end-users these interfaces were intended for (i.e., the computer-illiterate masses). As such, you'll run into a lot of people who may feel too 1337 or masochistic to like these new interfaces. I knew someone from a college programming class who swore by using FreeBSD on his laptop with nothing but 4 terminals for his desktop, and vocally derided other people's ways of using their own machines. I guess it's people like these who either need to feel special because of what they use, or they use it because they are "special".
It's not that I necessarily hate the new GUIs... Ok yea it is. Everything is going to touch screen because they believe tablets are going to take over the desktop. I'm still a desktop user, and I still want a desktop GUI. No Unity or Windows 8 for me, I'll use Xfce and Windows 7
The problem is that the next "big market" are tablets, smartphones, etc and everyone wants they share of it. But instead of developing a new platform they put tablet interfaces in computer desktops. And that is not a good idea. For example unity, big buttons are good for tablets because you hit them with your finger, but on desktops they eat too much screen space and offer no benefit. Also multitasking on these 'new interfaces' is really painful and on desktops it is a needed feature that has to be good.
Everyone is just going with this trend without thinking much about it. You really can't notice that a tablet interface on a desktop is nosense? Do a "tablet mode" or something but instead they try to convince us that the new interface is better when everybody hates it.
The Devil you know is better than the angel you don't. You will always be faster and more efficient with a UI you know than one that you do not. I remember a friend looking at my Amiga back in 1985 and saying that DOS looked more "professional" than Workbench. Every time I move to a new system the first feeling I have is why doesn't it work the way I expect it too! I force myself to get over it and and move on.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I remember the move from the Program Manger to the Windows95 interface that so many people here seem to currently love. Back then people were bitching about how the new Windows95 interface sucked. Now we have some of us Linux geeks that are still clinging to that interface. I remember when Gnome 2 came out and all the bitching started again. "Where did all the customizations go" "This shit sux" bla blah. Then that settled down. Then came KDE 4.0 and the signal to noise ratio got all out of whack again. "Fuck this i'm moving to Gnome" was the mantra. Now we have Gnome3 and Unity....... Break out the popcorn.
I've actually become a convert to gnome 3 after forcing myself to work in it for a day. A few minutes with a new UI isn't enough, you really have to spend a day working with it to really get a feel for it. It's actually really fast, and I'm fast with it. You just flick the mouse to the upper left, and you can do anything. It's definitely still rough around the edges, and far from perfect. It mainly needs more accessible configuration options, instead of having to have an extension for everything, but it will get there. Dual monitor support could be better too, but I know it will improve with time. I was a total hater until I really gave it a fair shot. I've used Unity for months on my netbook, and it's only usable on a small screen, though it does shine there. Plus Dash is terrible. Show me the Apps, not just the frequently used ones. If it were frequently used, I'd have put it on the dock and wouldn't be drilling through a menu in the first place.
I'm running Gnome 3 right now, and there's a lot of things I really like about it. I kept the dock to the left of the screen on my last Mac, so somehow slamming my cursor into the top left seems almost natural.
I do miss desktop icons though....
This would probably be better as a poll.. but for what it's worth, I like Gnome 3.
I used fvwm for the past 10 years, always the same config file. I really disliked Gnome 2 (too much clutter, clunky). However, I was starting to have a few annoyances with fvwm and found myself wasting too much time on getting it to work right.
Gnome 3 (using Debian unstable/experimental packages) is great. I tweaked a few things, but even with the default conf I don't mind.. except maybe how alt-tab is broken, and sloppy mouse focus is not great, but I see they are working on it.
I don't hate them. I just don't want a GUI on my PC that looks like it's supposed to be for a tablet or a phone.
I think the truth is that the basics of the GUI, at least as far as consumer operating systems go, are now almost 20 years old. There's been an incredible amount of change in the capabilities of the average computer, not to mention the possible interface options, since the first Mac hit the streets and it's perfectly right to see a lot of bold changes as tablets and fancy phones inspire a much needed review of the basics.
Now many of these new, individual products will suck but that doesn't mean anyone should disdain the necessary process of inventing the next era. Even if you really hate the new systems, at least pay attention to and be vocal about the pieces of them you liked. Your input won't be useful if you never say something positive; who wants to make a business strategy out of pleasing the un-pleasable?
It's likely that the problem isn't with the UI but with the people who use it. The majority of people who have a personal/professional investment in the UI of a particular OS are not your average user. We're power users or developers or whatever you call people who make their Apples make noises and call it music. We tend to know how our computers work and can make them do things that outsiders look at as magical amazing feats. The designers of these new UIs had us as customers due to the tech under the UI and, in many cases, in spite of it.
With this new march of "progress," the target appears to be only the technically inexperienced. The UI is becoming the way you interact with your computer and not just something that makes the masses capable of doing their job while those of us who know how to use computers can work around them. When the UI becomes the only way to do things, then it's time for us to move on.
Win2k had my favorite Windows UI and I've made all future iterations work the same way.
I never liked Apple.
Xfce has all the interface I need to hold up a web browser, a chat client and a bunch of terminals.
I don't color. I don't take pictures. I don't play games. I write code. I read the interwebs. I conduct business. I am the 1%.
I have ran just about every GUI in existence since Windows 1.0, this includes Linux, Mac and SPARC. For me it boils down to the same thing regardless of the GUI... Can I work THE WAY I WANT TO?..... Those GUIs that allow me work the way I want, either out of the box or with some minor customizations, get to stay around for while. Those that don't get tossed. Simple as that. I think those that are changing GUIs today need to be mindful that users want to work the way they want to work and have little patience for jumping, what they perceive as hoops, just to get something done in manner they are accustomed.
That does not fit on a big screen / multi screen multi tasking system.
And being touch based does not help as very few desktops / laptops have touch screens.
Install compiz config settings manager
Fix the launcher strip thingy so that it's always visible
Make the icons as small as possible.
Happy chappy ever since
Talk about an article just asking for rants. I'll chip in my rant...
I think the challenge is the UI paradigm preceding this generation is just too mature and way too many UI developers really have a hard time justifying their continued work. The MATE and Trinity projects forked out of an apparent strong desire to keep things as they are and have some confidence it won't magically bit-rot away, but they are far from 'glamorous' and really don't have much of substance to actually *do*, the job is pretty much already complete.
Now a whole generation of UI designers are largely pretending that computers *didn't* catch on every where and that some mythical large mass of people cannot cope with the UIs that all evidence suggests are working just fine. For a time they were sated with the genuine issue of UI design not scaling down to ~4" screens, but they are seized with the silly notion that there must be *one* UI to rule all form factors. MS decides their Metro UI is the answer for phones/tablets/desktops (despite not even making sufficient headway in the handset arena to prove that out even in the most likely case). Nearly every review of use of the Metro-UI in Windows 8 suggests a degree of awkwardness in the laptop and desktop case. Apple decides the iOS experience should dominate the OSX world (Apple is a bit of a special case, they can pretty much do *anything* and their loyal userbase will lap it up, it's more like a fashion brand and they probably see minimal difference in business results between the times they truly deliver an enriching experience and when they make missteps). Gnome 3 pisses away tons of screen real estate on oversized default titlebars to accommodate inprecise touch interaction regardless of context whilst also hiding their 'dock' for fear of wasting real estate.
A large part of this is what I think is a bad assumption that tablets will just logically displace all laptops/desktops. iPad has seen commercial success (for reasons I think are more fanboy than a 'genuine' revolution) and now a ton of companies are wondering why they can't reproduce those results and get people off their laptops and assume something must be 'wrong' since tablets are *obviously* the way of the future.
Anyway, if you want the UI paradigm to continue as it has been, throw your weight behind MATE (or see if MGSE successfully decrapifies Gnome 3) or Trinity. Elect not to upgrade from Windows 7 if you prefer that (though you are at the mercy of MS in that scenario and you cannot force them to keep Windows 7 going). Alternatively prove me wrong by embracing KDE4, Gnome3, Metro, full-screen OSX apps as you get off my lawn.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm an old fart, and I think iOS is terrific, best phone GUI I've ever had much better than BBOS. I think Windows 8 for phone or tablet might be cool. Speaking of which I think Microsoft Office's new GUI is a definite improvement, took me a while to get used to it.
I haven't played with Gnome 3, but used 2 quite a bit with RHES. Honestly I pretty much like all the Linux GUIs at this point they are all pretty good at most stuff and intuitive.
So no I don't hate the new. Generally things are getting better. I'd hate to have to go back to running DESQview to multitask because windows 3.0/3.1 couldn't multitaks DOS apps very well.
The only reason someone would ask this question is to watch the comments devolve hilariously. You/we have all been trolled hard.
I think the only people saying that are those that either:-
a) Don't bother trying to think about what advantages a change may bring.
b) Don't bother seeking out or listening to explanations of changes.
c) Instantly dismiss any such explanations without much thought.
There are design documents that can be read, blog postings, discussions and so forth.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
So where is the confusion? Anyone remember NeXT? I'll stick with OS X, tried and true.
Are we just too set in our ways?
I can't speak for everyone, but after years using Gnome 2 I switched to dwm. So Gnome 3 and Unity really suck. For us, that is. For the average user, who loves shiny 3d windows, huge icons, etc, the new way is better - they do not care how long it takes them to do anything with it, what matters is how shiny it is.
In a way I'm happy with what they did to Gnome 3 as it made me discover the superiority of tiling window managers.
On the one hand, the interface that one finds intuitive is the interface that one has already been trained to use. Once experienced with one interface, any new interface takes effort to learn and, on that level, is less intuitive.
That said, some interfaces just feel more natural for most people. There are some interfaces that I've tried over the years that, even before I was experienced with them, just felt natural. Examples include OS/2's Workplace Shell, the Window Maker window manager, and iOS (on the iPad).
I have only really used KDE 4 full time to this point and it really isn't that bad except for the millions of bugs. I wouldn't consider anything less than 4.6 to even be usable as a full time desktop. Lets think about that for a second. KDE 4.0 was released on January 11, 2008 and was of such poor quality it was unusable until slightly more than 3 years later January 26, 2011. It took 3 years to fix bugs that do things like corrupt the configuration files and even now, 4 almost years later, other serious issues still loom in the rendering of widgets and panels. For example, If you set a panel's min width to 50% of the screens width and the maximum width to 75% of the screens width you will notice that it does not grow correctly if something like additional system tray icons are added. Not to mention that icons get cut off all the time and the task manager ignores row and column settings periodically. I guess its better than the panel items reordering them selfs randomly on boot or corrupt KDE config files every other day but seriously, how the fuck do you get through 4 years of development and not fix some of these simple UI related issues (SHIFT + Ins in Dolphins terminal Anyone)? Why is it that every time one issues gets resolved 2 more are created to take its place? I am seriously considering moving to something like Enlightenment just have a working desktop environment, not because I am reluctant to adapt.
I just want to keep 9 terminal sessions open, a web browser shaded and focus follows mouse without the window raising in the process. Doesn't really matter what window system I do that on, although I hear the new windows doesn't do focus follows mouse as well as XP does. I don't view them as excessive requirements, just how I like to work.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In almost every case, the problem has been a lack of flexibility in the new GUIs.
It's perfectly fine for Unity or Gnome3 to design a GUI that better fits tablet usage. But it's not ok to force desktop users into a GUI design that works well only on a tablet.
Reducing or eliminating configurability is the hot new design trend. There is a new idea now that configurability is, per se, something that necessarily degrades the user experience. This trend, I believe, is almost entirely responsible for the problems that we're encountering with these new GUIs.
A small example: It's perfectly fine to use a global application menu on a tiny tablet screen. But on my setup (two 30 inch monitors), I need to drag the mouse up to 5000 pixels to go back and forth between the global menu and my furthest application. What works well on one form factor can be a total disaster on another. The new GUIs seem to be strangely blind to this fact.
So where the fuck are these so-called "good UI designers"? Where is the software that they've created?
They sure as fuck aren't working on open source software. GNOME 3, Firefox, and Unity are perfect proof of this.
They sure as fuck aren't working on commercial software. This is evident through Chrome, post-Ribbon MS Office, Windows 8 and iOS.
They sure as fuck aren't working on enterprise software, either. Much of this software makes GNOME 3 pleasant to use.
So where the fuck are they? What projects or products have these "good UI designers" worked on?
That's ubiquitous computing coming into action : there is way more "average end-users" than shell nerds. Unfortunately the efforts will go in the direction of the masses, and progressively we'll lose the very notion of GUI because it won't even make sense to "use a computer".
I have spent years using Solaris, Redhat, Gentoo, Windows 2.0 through the present, etc. I've been at a computer pretty much 11-16 hours a day for the past 20+ years.
The last 5 have been on OSX, and I'm not going back to any of them. You can't make me.
I've been experimenting with Unity, and hate it quite passionately.
i installed KDE 4 for a friend's friend. it took me 3 days to set up, because their ISP is very unreliable, at the extreme end of a broadband connection and they get 15k/sec (not kidding).
it all installed: i ran it, logged them in... and could i understand what the fuck was going on? not a chance. it was incredibly embarrassing. i spent 15 minutes _failing_ to do something as simple as set their background image. first we couldn't find it - i had to log in at the console and use "find . | xargs grep {filename}". then we couldn't find how to even _change_ the background image. on standard desktops, it's right-mouse, click "set background". done.
they now are so angry with me over how i told them that linux is great, and windows will result in their bank account details being stolen (a virus destroyed the bootloader, which is why i was called in), that they are no longer speaking to me.
now - you tell me that it's a great idea that KDE spent an entire multi-million Euros EU grant merely copying the UI of the most vilified and failed version of windows, ever, known as "Vista", and then make yourself known to me some day face-to-face i'll punch your fucking lights out.
gnome - i've never installed gnome, so i don't know about it. but, personally i'm sticking to fvwm, and i'm going to install LXDE for people, from now on. it's basic, it works, it's a known paradigm, and it's quick.
eventually i'll get round to finishing pyjdwm https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyjdwm/ though, and the first version _will_ copy the "standard" paradigm. window. bar. cross. menu at bottom. maybe :)
There should be TWO panels for programming, one for "active" programs and one for launching and support. I have many programs running at once for development: servers console in two shells, network tracing, the IDE and browser, email, skype,.... Unity get too full. there is only small arrow indicating active programs.
I usually do not run full windows. so having the menu away from the application is very confusing. Unity almost requires all apps to run full window. Not Good! I remember the last place the program I want was located, I just have to click on it. Less mouse movement
I want to see most of my options with just a simple click, slide click. With Unity, it is click, slide, click, type, slide click.
I upgraded to 11.10 and I had to install gnome, OK but gnome is very broken. If Ubuntu wants to make unity the default, OK, but they better allow and support gnome that is not broken.
Unity may be fine for beginners that only run one of 7 programs one at a time. ( redundant). But for programmers that need to look at many things at once is is bad.
I hope I have explained the reasons Unity is not good in logical terms, I hope Ubuntu understands FIX IT OR FLAKE OFF!!!
The only feature I use regularly in gnome 3, unity, and win 7, is the app search bound to the super key. It accomplishes basically everything that I need from an OS GUI in all three. Once you throw in good alt-tab and window resizing/splitting too (which they all do well too) I'm all set.
Its not so much we hate the new GUIs as the fact that we recognise there is a fundamental difference between the requirements of a desktop computer and that of a tablet. Input method, screen size, resolution etc... all these factors make it very clear that you cannot design a GUI that accomodates BOTH the needs of a desktop user and that of a tablet user. One size fits all doesn't work. We are mad at the idiots of the Gnome foundation and Ubuntu for failing to recognise this truth.
No one is stopping them from developing GUI for tablets for god's sake. What they are doing instead is developing primarly for the tablet and then using those same GUIs for the desktop. That is idiocy to the extreme. And no amount of self agrandizing on their part (we know it all, the users are stupid etc...) will fix this problem.
The way I look at this issue, is that these UI's are being written, not because there is some outstanding need to implement such new features, but because the vendors that made them wanted to look like they were still innovative and agile.
Sticking with the same tried and true ui, and simply optimizing every bit of code that makes it work, to the point of perfectly polished code perfection is not what gets non computer experts excited about purchases. What does, is "the shiny!".
Thses days, I could clearly see a need for a very efficient and simple ui system for cross device remote purposes. The less the window manager has to do to present information, the better it would be for that purpose. However, that is not the direction that the ui is being pushed.
Realistically, in terms of functionality, you could build a useful ui using blitting tech from 20 years ago, and be just fine.
Instead, we are using more processing and memory cability to run solitaire than entire mega corps had in their computing labs from that period. (That dx10 certified gpu you have rendering aero for you, so that solitaire can present pixel shaded 3d cards to you is able to crank out more flops than a cray supercomputer from the 90s. Think about what that means, when it is a requirement to play solitaire.)
Clearly, the ui designers simply reject the KISS principle of engineering, and do so because "we can, and resources are cheap."
This is the biggest reason that I hate nearly all newer generation ui flavors.
Gradients mean that contrast on one side is compromised. There is a good foreground/background color pair, and the rest of the gradient is necessarily worse.
Curves help the eye follow object edges. When multiple similar rectangular objects (windows, buttons, whatever) all have corners in the same area with some of them being aligned on one axis or the other, rounded corners dramatically help telling which edge goes with which object.
Gradients make you slower. Curves make you faster.
I don't care about the desktop and I have all the other crap squished down into a single little task bar across the top of one of the screens. My remaining issue is window placement and the solution has to support the mouse well out of the box. I've got better things to do than learn new keyboard shortcuts and tinker with config files. Using terminator for my terminal interface got me a chunk of the way there. Looking around the next Gen UI's the only thing I like is Win7's maximise to left and right half of the screen operations.
i have a new nvidia video card that allows me 3 monitors - however the first two are 'spanned' giving me a work area of 3840 x 1080 (which is perfect for my video editing), HOWEVER:
when clicking the maximize symbol in the upper right hand corner the application window will spread across both monitors.
is it possible, or is there any software, that will allow me to set the size of a maximized window?
i also get all windows messages opening in the center of the two screens, very annoying and sometimes hard to read....
thanks for your time,
ushere
Switching to Win7 took some learning curve and sped up nothing. Switching from KDE to Gnome took some learning curve and sped up nothing.
But switching from WinNT to KDE took some learning curve and I really liked multiple desktops, cut/paste with the mouse alone. Switching from Win3 to Win95 gave me the right-click menu and that was one of the best ideas ever.
Learning the tablet touch OS was frustrating for two days and now I like it and tend to laugh as I mistakenly touch other screens.
Mostly, I miss Jef Raskin; his attitude does live on in some of Apple's work - Jef *studied* what worked and didn't; tested people's time to get something done with various UI strategies and could defend his designs as maximizing efficiency.
With Gnome 3 and Unity, I've seen no evidence that they used the scientific method and tested hypotheses with experiments about speed of work, complexity that could be handled, options given the user to solve various needs. They seemed to be "designed" the way architects design the "look" of buildings -as some kind of art project with no regard for the actual usefulness.
I like trying new GUIs, mainly because I'm open-minded enough to realize that tradition be damned - we aren't perfect, and sometimes interfaces we've come to accept aren't the most efficient at presenting and manipulating information with, no matter how long they've been around.
That said, Unity and GNOME 3 are rubbish because they're (mostly) inflexible and lack customization features. Windows 7 was a great improvement over XP because of the new features such as Aero Snap and Peak, BUT it also contained familiar attributes that were present in past versions of Windows, as well has having a ton of configuration options (you can even move the Superbar around to any edge of the screen you like - fuck you Unity).
I'm not sure what to think of Windows 8 yet, but I actually believe Microsoft won't screw this up purely because they have a lot more customers than Linux and can't afford to experiment as much without relying on a massive amount of user feedback. The GNOME 3 team seems to believe they are a revolutionary force in UI design despite there being a lot of complaints about basic, stupid decisions that shouldn't still be in even the latest 3.2 version. Perfect example: hiding the Shutdown command in the user menu, unless you hold down the Alt key before clicking on the menu. Yes extensions can fix this, but why the fuck do you not even have it changeable in the options, much less a default people are naturally expecting to find there?
Maybe I just hate that even WINDOWS BLOODY 7 is more configurable than GNOME 3 and Unity combined out of the box. GNOME 3 has a ton of extensions that surpass what you can get in Windows 7 however, but you have to install them, whereas Windows 7 has a lot of fiddly bits all ready for you. That's the main beef I have with these new GUIs, specifically the Linux ones anyway. The lack of user-friendly configuration (no, text files and recompiling the source to fix hard-coded settings are not acceptable).
To all newcomers - people here are very close-minded and can't handle complaints about Linux. Keep this in mind.
The problem, to me, is not that the UI has changed. I'm generally OK with changes, even bad ones. I can deal with it.
What becomes an issue is when all the GUIs out there seem to have showstopping bugs. KDE4 is a great example. I haven't used it in about 6 months, because it was nearly too glitchy to use and the constant graphical errors were starting to make my head hurt. I'm sure someone will tell me "KDE 4 works now!", but that's a lie and you know it. KDE 4 "worked" when I was forced back to Windows because I could barely use Firefox without having a seizure or at least slamming my keyboard through my monitor. I didn't even use the first releases of KDE 4: they wouldn't run. I only went to 4 at all when programs began to require QT4.
Yes, my ATI drivers had a hand in this, but that's part of the problem itself: why do all new GUIs demand glossy, sugar-coated rendering at the cost of my processing power? Why do they do so especially when they are aware of the driver issues that their member base constantly faces? Most GUI projects only want to look "cool" and seem new, not actually provide a usable product. That is evident in the horrible (or even non-existent) support for software rendering. For the record, even KDE4's non-accelerated mode rendered incorrectly.
I used to be the biggest proponent of Linux around, but it is really difficult to advocate something when its quality is dropping so quickly, and you yourself are barely able to operate it. Linux-sphere developers don't care about the user anymore, they care about themselves and doing what they want. This is evident in how almost every Linux-oriented project is now run as a dictatorship. Do not question project leaders. They know best. It wasn't always that way, and it needs to go back. The reason we are seeing more forks of major projects than ever before is precisely because of that. "My way or the highway" invariably leads to forks.
Meanwhile, Windows still seems to have no issues. I hate that I am using it, but I actually have things I need to do. I can't rely on a system that is built on so many flawed systems and only gets worse with every release. It's time for Linux developers to pull their heads out of their asses and start working to actually make a usable product again, or others will start jumping ship, too.
Another example of all this is Blender. Blender was a love-it-or-hate-it GUI. Eventually, if you forced yourself to use it, you would love it and no longer want to use anything else. Getting to that point was more brutal than anything, but it was arguably worth it. So what did the developers do in the most recent version? Completely change the UI. Every hotkey changed, the menu layout completely flipped around, and in general all the things the users had gotten used to no longer being as they were. Worst part is, it is still impossible to put it even close to how it was. I'm not convinced this change was in any way for the good: it's still as hard to learn as ever, and of course, now EVERYONE has to learn it again. Why was this done? Who knows. Certainly not me. I frankly don't care, either, as I no longer use Blender, nor will I ever use it again. And, yet again, Maya and 3DS keep on.
Great Intellect...
My complaint with interfaces like Unity is that they try hard to be good, but fail so badly. I recently (within the past week) sat down and tried using Unity from a live CD to play with a new machine I'm setting up. My goals were simple: Install VirtualBox, make a test VM, and identify the contents of a few old hard disks.
What I found was that from Ubuntu's main frame (I'm not even sure what it should be called... it's the interface where you pick what application to run, from ones that aren't listed on the side), I could install and launch any application I wanted, as long as I knew exactly what it was named, or where in the classification it was placed. I quickly gave up on directly looking at the contents of the drive, when a few minutes of clicking around showed me no sign that the disk was even recognized. I ended up using a terminal session to list the drive contents. Installing a new application meant hitting a button, and being presented with an entirely differently-designed interface, which I then had to figure out in order to use.
That's when I realized that Unity was not a good interface for me. I dislike Microsoft's vaunted Ribbons for the same reason: There is no consistency between levels of classification. People make hierarchies well. When a program has lots of commands, it's natural to organize them into a hierarchy. The Ribbon interface uses text labels for the top level of the hierarchy, unnamed segments for the next level, icons for the next, and an assortment of widgets (sometimes menus, sometimes option buttons, sometimes a color picker, sometimes a table grid thing) for the next, and so on. Consistency between levels is gone, and I see Unity doing the same thing. The top level is buttons, the next level is icons, the next level is a custom "find something to install" design, and so on.
Another problem (or an extension of the same, depending on how deeply you choose to view the issue) is that the interface changes drastically depending on what you're doing. Again, I use Ribbons as an example. I used to be able to tell my mother over the phone "Look along the top of the screen with all the buttons. Find the one that's a bold 'B'. Click that to make your text bold." Now, I have to first have her switch to the "Home" ribbon, hope that nothing's been customized to where the button's missing, then have her look for the bold "B". Explaining things that used to have their own window (like line spacing) is even worse, because I now have to try to describe the icons, rather than using English words.
A program should follow the `Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least. --The Tao Of Programming
Once upon a time, commands could be expected to be organized by what they did. If you were looking for a command to change the line spacing of a paragraph, you could look first in a "format" menu, because it's a formatting option. You could then look in a "paragraph" or "line" or even a "spacing" menu, because those are all reasonable categories for the task you want to accomplish. Now, to find the same option, you must look wherever it seemed aesthetically pleasing to put the option's icon, and in each place you look, you must learn how that particular interface is designed. It's tedious to find simple commands, but it sure looks pretty!
The final straw in my Unity experiment was that installing VirtualBox required clicking the disabled "use this source" button to install from the universe. After 15 minutes, I figured out that the button was disabled because I didn't have a working network connection. There was no error message. The intent is there, but the polish that made Ubuntu once a decent distro simply isn't up to the level I expect.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I like e17 better than e16. (:
All GUI should, need to evolve, but some the recent attempts seem more like a de-evolution to me...
Netbooks, touch-screens and noob-users are an important part of the 'new' ecosystem, but these new approaches are only suitable for a small portion of the user base, and limits the core power-uses, and have no place in major distros.
The dream of having Linux on netbooks everywhere shouldn't be at the expense of the power-user.
If you want a unix based system that's easy to use and ticks the other boxes, get a Android or a iPxx device if you must. Linux doesn't need to go there; evolution is more importance than revolution...
I hate to say it but win8 and the metro interface is the right way to do it, easy on top, with the power interface below, both ends of the user spectrum catered for... But personally I think I'll disable metro, if I can...
Yes we do. All of them. KDE4 has won me over time.
I have two main reasons..
1> Don't change what isn't broken. My mother took forever to figure out XP and now she's stumbled through Windows 7. I really don't want to think what will happen with Windows 8. Don't say you can still get to the Windows 7 interface. It's not the same as running vanilla Windows 7 for a USER. (Key being the four letter word at the end.)
2> As I get older I find myself in the category of a USER more and more and I like keeping things consistent so I can focus on newer things myself. I don't like disruptions that have me relearning the way I do things just because somebody else thinks they can give me a better way. If I want an improvement I'll ask for it. I haven't needed anything major since the transition from Windows 3.1 to 95/98/XP/etc. This is why I won't be buying Windows 8, I don't like the direction they're heading with the interface. I do like their modularity idea I just wish they'd leave the desktop to the desktop and the phone interface to tablets and phones.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
In my experience there no significant difference between the various Windows, Mac OS, and Gnome KDE variants - desktop, icons, some kind of tool bars and launcher bars; drop down menus. At this point anyone who can use one can use another with minimal difficulty. It comes down to personal taste.
Some people love Unity - I hate it. I'd rather have a menu full of everything that I might need instead of the dumbed down Top Five BIG icons that Unity gives you. Maybe it works for some people, but not for me.
I guess at the end of the day my biggest measure of a UI is how quickly I can find the function, app, setting, or file that I need. On any system - Mac, Windows, Ubuntu - my first move is to set things up so that docs and downloads go to ONE place that is defined by me, not into whatever variation on "My Documents" the OS thinks that I need. Likewise I nuke most of the icons that get dropped onto the desktop and add what I want - Chrome, some kind of File Manager, LibreOffice or MS Office. Maybe a couple more.
Three Squirrels
The wrongly-named "GNOME 3" should have been a new project. Don't force us to participate in your experiment. New ideas can be great, but normally they suck. We have work to do, and we can't be having our workflow fucked up because you thought the UI was no longer cool. If your project gains a reputation for being nice, then one by one we'll try it to see if we like it. You won't get complaints. If you drag us unwillingly into your experiment, we'll rightly be pissed off at you.
Both Unity and Gnome 3 have both taken steps that degraded usability for the sake of looks.
Gnome 3:
You can't log off, as if we were using a tablet and had unlimited resources.
Having more than one window open is hard.
The windows are not side aware because that's what you have in a tablet.
If it weren't for the hot corner, it would take one more mouseclick to do almost everything; now you must constantly take trips to the screen corner.
Clicking on a minimize/maximize button is faster than double-clicking on the menu bar.
There is no parent/child organization of programs by type; there is no organization period, so the user has to type in multiple searches.
Unity:
Ubuntu with Unity's footprint is almost twice that of Gnome 2, and for what?
Menubars are hidden for the sake of appearance.
Unity is subversive to Gnome, on which it depends; this is a suicide attempt.
Please, everyone do not use Unity, just because a marketing person puts it on a disk doesn't mean that you have to use it.
Both Unity and Gnome have taken steps to disempower the user for the sake of looks and constricting the users actions all to force a method of using the computer which is not sound.
Hand out the impeachments.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Yes, they all suck dead sweaty donkey balls.
Next question please.
...just the ones that suck. This new movement towards "tablet-friendly" UIs has created some very crappy UIs. No matter how comfortable you are with Unity/Gnome3/Win8, the layout WILL interfere with your productivity. They are simply not well suited to keyboard and mouse input. I have tried Unity and Gnome3, and I can't wait for a touch-screen tablet running a Gnome3 based distro; it would be absolutely, mind-numbingly awesome for that. For a desktop/laptop with a decent amount of screen real estate and a keyboard and mouse, however, they hugely impede productivity.
I am not against these changes because I fear change; I am always looking for new and interesting ways to interface with my computer. I just don't want the interface to get in the way. Is that too much to ask?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I use a fairly up to date version of the latest Ubuntu, 11.10, as my desktop.
One thing I dislike is when they complicate things that used to be simple. It used to be if I wanted to switch to another workspace, I would move the mouse to the top of the screen and click which of the other workspaces I wanted. Simple.
Now to do that I have to move my mouse to the left side of the screen. Then a bar pops up on the left side of the screen, then I move to the workspace changer and click on it. It moves to workspace switcher mode. Then I move the mouse across the screen to the workspace I want and click. It complicates something that had been simple. In fact it's changed my behavior in a way I did not want it to - I used to run Firefox and Eclipse in separate workspaces, but as workspace switching is more of a hassle, I now have both open in one workspace.
Aside from things like that, Canonical decided it wanted to do things its own way and has been moving along with a Gnome fork. Which might be OK if it had enough resources. But it does not. for example, here is a bug that I encountered. Orange windows pop up all over your workspace while you're trying to work. It can be quite annoying, as the users comments suggest. It was reported over three weeks ago but a fix has not been released yet. Unity does not have a wide base of developers supporting it like Gnome or KDE do, almost all of the developers doing this type of work are working for Canonical.
New just to be new and a slow merging of all OS-es/
I do not like it.
Windows 8 will be great - for the vast majority of people who use it.
Business users will take so long to migrate that Windows 9 will be out by the time they get there. My office hopes to complete the migration from XP to Windows 7 early next year.
Apple has seen steady sales growth for their Mac lineup. A large number of these sales go to people switching.
Tablet and other mobile devices continue to take market share, especially from low-end PCs. My sister barely touches her desktop computer now that she has an Android smartphone.
Linux on the desktop continues to grow - slowly, yes. But it is growing, anecdotally from people that want an OS upgrade but don't want to buy a retail copy of Windows (because of the cost, nothing else).
The vast majority of Windows 8 users will be new or inexperienced computer users. And it will be great for them. I think Microsoft is doing a very good job on this. The developer preview they put out needs a lot of refinement, but I believe it will get there.
As an aside, I think that the new application management concepts are going to end up being very successful. Mainstream developers got their first taste with Android and iOS, OS X Lion has them, and now Windows 8 will as well. Linux should not ignore this. The system knows far more about its current conditions than an application ever could and can really benefit from shutting down and restarting applications without the user realizing if the conditions are right for it.
Airplanes today have basically the same controls on them -- joystick, foot pedals, etc -- that they did when the Wright Brothers invented the airplane early in the 20th century -- they haven't changed the UI in that amount of time.
Cars haven't basically changed since they removed the manual lever throttle and went with the gas pedal -- many decades of a standard UI.
Why can't we do that with computers? Stop reinventing the wheel!
Do normal people really care about KDE versus GNOME? Don't they just want a UI that works and isn't constantly changing things?
Look at Windows. What are the UI changes between Win95, Win2K, XP, etc. etc. Aren't they just cosmetic BS to make people say, "Gee whiz, they changed X, Y and Z -- isn't that cool?!" Were people really demanding that Microsoft keep rearranging the Control Panel?
What was wrong with the UI standard that every program will have a pull down menu, and on that menu will be a File menu, and in that File menu will be a Close/Exit option, and on every pull down menu will have a Help menu, etc, etc.
The problem with our UIs isn't the UI, it's a lack of standards and a bunch of clueless coders that keep reinventing the wheel and confusing the hell out of 90% of people for no good reason.
Something to keep in mind for the next release: just because Apple is doing it doesn't mean it is good.
All the GUIs mentioned can be altered to your needs and each do everything required. If anything to be extended from these opinions would be mainly choice of OS. Like picking a car with automatic or manual transmissions or a moon roof versus convertible, etc.
I was happy with Windows 2000. Then XP came along and some stuff got shifted around. Some of it made sense, some didn't. But it wasn't a big adjustment. Then came Vista and Windows 7 and the new Office with the ribbon thing. My reaction? Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org, which looked a whole lot more like what I was used to than the new stuff. And what matters to me is being able to find things where I expect them to be so that I'm not wasting time. So then I finally decided to upgrade from 10.04, took one look at Unity, and went to Debian and Xfce. I'm very happy with it (albeit after only 24 hours). I'm hoping the "less is more" design principal of Xfce keeps it from being the next interface I leave behind.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
I'm sort of in the middle of this. I'm more a consumer than former programer these days, only reason why i even would get new OS is due fact i had no choice.
Companies like Microsoft want make money, Desktops are taking backseat to newer mobile devices that aren't true computers in sense of word. Average person isn't programing for fun, their running their movies, playing their game on simplified devices. Win8 is suppose to be duel purpose OS, with alot give and takes. It makes sense MS is trying to adapt to the market
I'm not crazy about it direction their taking, mainly the fact that Win7 is barely few years old and now Win8 is rolling in. That means obsoletion for alot of the older software i have including games and other applications barely ran on XP. The average person isn't as adaptive to getting their older wares to work on the newer ones. Its gets tiring (and expensive if your not programer who barely understands how to use open source software) adapting so rapid fire with couple years. I get impression that companies are forcing obsoletion to get consumers to buy more, regardless they can afford to or not.
Look, it's one thing to fix bugs or add features. But when you suddenly move everything around it's like buying a new car and finding that rather then give you steering wheel they put in a joystick. I really don't care why they did it. It's not what I'm used to and I don't like being force to use controls I have never used before.
It would be one thing if they made it optional. Let the user decide what they want to use. Hell, I don't even mind if they default the system to their new controls. Go for it. But ALWAYS leave me the option of turning them off.
Screw with me on this and I start looking for GUI replacements like I did with Windows 7 after it became clear that the new version of Explorer would not allow me to rearrange icons within windows. Most people probably don't use that feature but it's been standard in windows since version 3 and I've grown accustomed to it. Finally, I found a registry hack that added the feature back into windows 7 but I never should have had to do that.
I have no experience with this new ribbon system they're talking about and maybe it's great. I don't care. If it is great, then I will voluntarily prefer it. Forcing me to use it... giving me no choice... it makes me angry.
I have been a long time MS windows user but stuff like this is making me consider a move to linux if only because I'll have more control over the GUI.
Add to that the loss of backward compatibility for 16 bit programs and MS is really killing a huge reason it was so popular for so long.
The thing with Windows is that it was a standard. It wasn't particularly good but it was consistent. Disrupting that and ruining backward compatibility... it's poisoning their brand.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
N0W GET 0FF MY LAWN!
I hesitate to admit that I don't hate Unity as much anymore. It's now more of a vague dislike: miss the menu where I can find the app I want, find Unity's desire to maximize any window I touch annoying, and, most of all, the menu proxy is difficult to use in combination with focus-follows-mouse (menu changes on the way up to the top bar if I mouse over any other window).
I find I just don't hate it enough to maintain my used-Linux-for-15-years snobbery.
...and it would be nice if someone listened to the hate coming their way for a change.
If the GUI didn't change, then nobody would **need** to purchase "new" programs. Microsoft **and** Apple **and** Canonical do this. Whether "new" is "better" will be left to history.
The typical Windows user is prepared to buy new software for each OS release. They expect it, even when it isn't strictly needed.
OTOH, almost all my games are completely worthless under Windows7. They were designed for Win98/ME.
I'm a long time UNIX/Linux AND Windows, OS/2 user. I tried Unity and Gnome3. Both worked poorly under a virtual machine and were unstable. My 10.04 desktop stays up in a VM until I need to take it down, 11.04 with Unity or Unity-2d or Gnome3 all crashed within 4 hours even when doing nothing. Stability trumps everything else.
Windows7 has become pretty stable since June too. Explorer still crashes about twice a day, but the OS stays up indefinitely ... until some patch mandates a reboot.
I've been tempted more and more to go back to fvwm. The current DEs are really bloated and I honestly don't understand what they do to use so many resources.
Software vendors make money selling their software. But you can't sell somebody the same version of the OS that they already have, unless you are Apple, then you just move the OS version up by 1/10th and the iFanboys will buy it. Windows 7 came about because XP had nearly reached the saturation point. Windows 8 because 7 isn't giving people a reason to leave XP. The big problem is we really hit the level of maximum usability in your UI and now you have to make changes for the sake of making it different, so they rip out the functionality and claim it's "improving the experience". No thanks, I'll stick with what I have for as long as I can and hope that sanity returns when I eventually have no choice and have to update because of hardware issues.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
I find Unity very usable and smooth. My previous experiences in GUI's are lots of Windows & some Mac's. Until this past July, I always used Linux in commandline. I set up Ubuntu (with Unity) on a laptop for my 80 year old Dad, and he finds it easy & useable too. I tried Gnome 3... but I found it the most cumbersome waste of time to get anything accomplished, that I quickly moved on to Xfce, which was good. I think Unity is my preference though. If I wanted to waste time customizing Gnome so it would be usable, then I would... but guess what? I'm busy. Too busy to mess with trying to make my GUI work out of the box... which isn't very out of the box. My big issue with Gnome is that it forces me to make several clicks just to do something I could do in one click on Unity. For example.... if I want to open my FTP program in Unity, I just go click on it in the side bar. In Gnome, I have to go up the corner of the screen to click on something so that I can click on the word "Applications" to get a screen of icons of all my apps, scroll down to find my FTP program and then click on it. Are you kidding me?? That's not worth my time, and neither is taking a lot of time to learn how to recode the whole GUI to make it work normal.
While I can't comment on the latest GNOME and KDE interfaces, I can say that when Apple gave us Aqua and Mac OS X, it was a real breath of fresh air. With a few exceptions, every version has added new and useful features to the GUI that make my work more productive.
When I try and use a windows pc with 7 or vista, it is really painful. I still can't get over how they botched the task bar. So I will agree with y'all there that windows has taken a turn for the worst. The PC next to me has an icon in the task bar for firefox. Every time I click it I get a new window with an identical firefox icon in the taskbar. It's just maddening. I'm sure I can right-click and choose properties and click some other tab and then click options and then turn it off and press apply... but it's a shame to have to tweak something so obvious.
As for linux, I used to like xfce and blackbox. When I'm using linux as a desktop, I have totally different expectations. I don't expect drag-and-drop to work, I don't need a "Finder", and I usually am only interested in one or two specialized applications.
Overall, I believe the GUI should stay out of the way of the user. Think of a typical work day -- you're using applications. Concepts like the "taskbar" (or whatever it's called in KDE and GNOME) really are not programs the user uses except as a utility to switch applications and windows. Thus, they ought not be so prominently visible. Except when you need them. Hence auto-hide, which I find doesn't always work out on windows. Heck, for some users all they need is a giant "the internet" button.
I appreciate Apple's Mac OS X interface because it manages to stay out of the way and yet be incredibly useful and (excuse the use of this word if you develop AI) thoughtful.
Don't waste your time with Gnome & KDE.
I am actually in process of removing the Gnome crap from my desktop Gentoo box.
My laptop was always running Openbox + LXpanel and finally I realized that I gnome-panel doesn't really have anything special.
I don't understand what the hell do I need this "desktop environment" for. I need a window manager, launcher and task switcher, do I really need a megaton of crappy software to do that? Not to mention that the whole "desktop" metaphor is beyond stupid, because I see desktop for about 5 seconds after logging in before I start first program.
Some of the recent advances in GUI have been good. The OSX inspired pinning of applications to a unified taskbar where mouseovers show active instances is something I like, and it is now present in gnome3, unity, windows 7 / 8, and osx. I think you can get it in XFCE through some addons. Another thing I like is the menu global search they are all implementing. In the same way that google is the front page to going places on the internet through search, I feel in the long run it may not be a good idea to indoctrinate people into the idea of search being how you find everything rather than by the file system, but for the average joe it is a great abstraction of the system. Makes finding stuff a breeze if you know the name. Some other stuff, like making the GUIs take up large fractions of the screen (cough, unity) or have flashy FX (windows, osx) is all gloss with no purpose, and doesnt really belong in the GUI. I think the problem is that GUIs need to be designed by what is natural to the user, instead they are all just trying to copy the current most popular OS even if its GUI isnt remarkable.
I like the interface for Windows 7. I would have been perfectly happy if Microsoft had just improved on Windows 7 and released a new version called Windows 8. When Windows 8 comes out, all I can say is that I hope that there is a settings to turn of the new Metro UI. I'm sure it would be great on a phone or on a Media Center PC, but not on my Desktop I spend so much of my time on everyday.
Yes, I hate them. Call me a Luddite, and get off my lawn, but I think the basic concept of the windowed desktop GUI interface has been mature for a long time. This headlong rush to force a tablet interface onto desktop users is a mistake. It's bad enough that Windows 8 will be doing it, but the sad thing is, the way things are going with GNOME 3, Unity, etc., there'll be nowhere to run.
You can have my desktop PC when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Tried the new google gmail UI.... it SUCKS. Are all of the UI designers on drugs or what???
It seems to be that I'm the only one that likes the new interface. I think it's not only a natural evolution but a most welcome addition. After using OS X for some time I felt that Linux was just getting stuck in the past. I had to chance to try Fedora 15 and was blown away by the new user interface paradigm that the Gnome 3 people brought to users. I'm still using that Fedora 15 system for my daily activities, and just planning to upgrade to see what new stuff they have come up with.
We all now people don't like change, but just like the ribbon interface, which is really good, meant that you had to relearn Office, the same thing is taking place in Linux and that's a good thing. The only assurance that Linux and related open source systems will always be relevant is their ability to adapt quickly to new things. People, especially the open source community, should embrace these changes, as it is this diversity which makes us stronger.
each new UI is designed to make things easier for users who have trouble with previous UIs. So everyone currently using them, and comfortable with them, get a lesser, albeit more pretty UI. So they complain, and rightfully so. All of the new users don't have anything to complain about because they aren't current users. They don't rejoice in advance because they still don't believe that the new UI will make it easier for them. And generally, they are correct.
Phone screens and tablets are output-mostly devices. Their primary function is content delivery, not content creation. Inherent in the touchscreen concept is that pointing, dragging, and viewing work work well, but input is slow and difficult.
Exporting the output-mostly metaphor to desktop machines is painful for people who do any significant input or content creation. But that's what seems to be happening. This reflects what the average user is now doing with a computer - watching TV. A third of Internet traffic is now Netflix.
Incidentally, while the low end is struggling with point and drag UIs, the high end of 3D animation and engineering systems is finally getting that problem solved. 3D content creation systems have been painful for two decades. Finally, programs like Autodesk Inventor have managed to make 3D drawing and navigation fluid, without requiring vast numbers of hotkeys or multiple 2D views. You do, however, need something with a sharper point than a finger, like a mouse or tablet, to get work done in that space.
Maybe, the problem is that none of the "new" GUI's are really all that new. I see little more then the current whack a mole interface that has plagued the whole GUI interface from the beginning. The only new interface I have heard of is Apple's Siri.
The biggest problem with the mad rush of new dumbed-down smartphone interfaces is the loss of flexibility. More and more controls, functionality and features are being removed from user interfaces in a failed attempt to improve simplicity. These changes have created nothing but frustration for power users who like a sense of control over their desktop. That is the point - control is being taken AWAY from the end-user thus rendering them subject to the whims of the OS developer or hardware manufacturer. The end-user is considered hostile and untrustworthy and needs to be controlled. It stinks and I can't see it getting better with the security nightmare that is cloud computing.
Practically everybody thought so. Up until Gnome 2.3, most people looked forward to Gnome upgrades.
I could give many more examples.
I would say that people like change when things actually get better, but dislike change that makes things worse, or change just for the sake of change.
I kinda an hyped up for the new Win 8 UI... It looks cool to be entirely honest and it's about time that Windows got a facelift. I tried the new Gnome UI and I don't see a great use for the changes (I have a small screen) but it's still kinda cool looking.
From what I've seen in articles, videos, etc.:
Mac OS X Lion gets almost everything right, but there have always been little things in MacOS that annoy me to no end when I try to use it. If it was free software, I would have switched.
Windows 8 . . . I haven't noticed anything compelling. Probably fine for most people.
Unity is the only free software desktop that puts the menu bar in the right place by default. The indicators seem to be shaping up well.
Gnome 3 has the potential to be awesome, I think, because they are exploiting JavaScript for so much. That Linux Mint will be releasing extensions to make Gnome 3 like Gnome 2 is a testament to this. Show me that the menu bar can be put in the right place and I'll consider it. Put it there by default and I'll probably switch from Unity.
KDE Plasma looks like it has good widget, window, and file management, but I've only seen screenshots and may be imagining things work a certain way.
I've tried REALLY hard to use Unity on Ubuntu, and I've sort of gotten it to work, but I still hate it. I'd go back to Fedora, but it's got its own "NEW" interface, and it is almost as bad.
The problem is that THEY DON'T WORK YET. For the most part, the basic functionality is there, but in order to release them, the developers have mostly stripped out all ability to customize or change the interfaces to suit the user. In Unity, YOU CAN'T EVEN CHANGE THE UI FONT SIZE without downloading a special "tweaks" program. You can't get the cube to work without half an hour of fussing with config files. You can't get any of the accelerators to work without major Compiz futzing. The launcher they use is absolute crap -- you have to freaking type in the name of the program you're looking for, and hope you can guess at the name. I don't mind typing in a program name on a command line, but in something that's supposed to be a GUI?
Who suddenly decided that they are so smart that they have to CHANGE THE WAY WE DO EVERYTHING??
This kind of "people hate everything" mentality is just a cop-out to ignore the very real problems with these GUIs.
My GUI dedicates mayor hotspot to Widget configuration, replaced the desktop with a Widget, and essentially tried to use widgets for everything, despite the fact that Widgets suck, they are crippled versions of mayor apps whose only purpose is being digital paper weights, which wouldn't be so bad except a decent desktop backgrounds outdoes them for me.
Gnome Shell has great promise but right now is a mass of usability blunders that fit neither desktops or tablets, and the real tragedy is that the devs are commited to their ways. At least KDE4 devs adapted folder views to restore the original functionality of the desktop*. Gnome guys revel in contradicting their current userbase.
My mayor gripes with Gnome 3 are not with Shell but the configurability of Gnome 3 itself. Do you remember that old saying about MS Office, that people only use 10% of it's features, but it's always a different 10%? Same happens with the desktop, I have had two non-power users request two perfectly reasonable changes to Gnome 3** my point is, you don't have to be a special case to want to change a setting and they are getting rid of almost all configuration.
Unity, Mostly the same, plus is really slow, this a Gnome Shell are hiding a lot of stuff from users and is perfectly reasonable stuff. One user requested help to find Solitaire game. Moving from Windows to Gnome 2, this user never had a problem finding the games section, not anymore in this new GUI.
And of course there is the problem of the icon docks being fixed to the left side. In about 15 years of desktop usage I have seen all sorts of users push the taskbar to all four sides of the monitor. This even in 1997 with Windows 95. When a modern desktop doesn't let you do what ordinary users casually did with Windows 95 YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.
* What's the problem with folder views? Well the case of folder views is tragic, they ARE more powerful than the traditional desktop methaphor but also more complex, the original desktop can be used thoughtlessly, folder views don't. But folder views are less useful than dolphin windows. So you don't really have a reason folder views ever.
** Two user requests.
1) Disable password prompts, only doable through dconf-editor which is not included in Gnome 3 packages by default. You can achieve the same in Gnome 2 through dialogs alone.
2) The appearance dialog was murdered and replaced by a cheap impostor that doesn't even let you do the simplest thing, in this case display exactly the desktop wallpapers the user wanted. In Gnome 2 she deleted most of the default wallpapers from the appearance window and added some the walls folder inside the Pictures folder. In the new dialog default walls are set in stone, the alternative is the Pictures folder with is not where she stores her walls. As a bonus adding walls to this windows makes it seem like you are moving them to the Pictures folder.
But... the future refused to change.
... Is that these changes were imposed onto the community over a very short time-scale.
In the case of Unity, it first was introduced in 11.04 as the default (with gnome fall-back was an option) and as standard in 11.10 (Gnome fall-back removed). Their was a vocal group that had problems with Unity and felt it was not ready for prime-time and Conical was only rushing Unity out the door (so to speak) to keep up with Gnome 3 "Gnome-shell". Which has just as many haters as Unity!
I think if they slowed down the introduction by having it as an option instead of a default in 11.04 and then having it as default in 11.10 it would probably have let the community drift towards Unity once all the bugs were ironed out! then in 12.04 have it as the standard option with more public support!
Unity is bearable on my 15 inch laptop (but gets tiring after a while!) but I put up with it. My desktop is on Ubuntu10.10 and is probably last version of Ubuntu it will see!! Looking at Mint or another Flavour that keeps a Gnome 2 style interface.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
After using OS X for many years now and still occasionally tinkering with Windows and Linux, I'm pretty much completely content with Snow Leopard or Lion. Add onto that the clean and easy UI you get with the iPad and iPhone and I'm sold. At this point in time I spend a majority of my computer usage on the internet and I'm more appalled with Web UI than I am with OS UI.
Humans have not evolved to sit in chairs staring at computer screens all day, we just aren't made for it. People have done their best to make the system usable, and done a pretty good job. But in the end all GUI designs are going to be shitty in some way or other because we are human. We have just learned to deal with it, there will never be a perfect GUI.
Most people have spent a lot of time learning the GUIs we have now, and I mean a lot. It is one thing to know it academically but quite another to have it built in as reflex. So when software comes out with a new GUI the question is not whether it is better, it's a marginal cost/benefit question. Is the improvement the new GUI over the old one worth the hassle of re-learning the GUI? Usually no. We have settled on suboptimal designs, but the cost benefit ratio of switching doesn't add up.
It is like the QWERTY layout. We know that it is suboptimal and that better layout exist yet no one switches, why? It is not worth the effort. Gaining an extra 5% WPM is (for almost everyone) not worth the hassle of having to spend hours and hours learning to type all over again.
To me it seems that the new interfaces do not give you as much control. Tweaking Gnome 3, Unity, or KDE4 seems harder than their predecessors and that lack of customization is what is alien to me. Linux is billed as a custom OS I guess that is why their are so many different flavors. When that is taken away you have basically you have something that resembles a Windows environment although I think it's actually easier to customize Windows that any of the desktops mentioned earlier. Perhaps I am jaded or maybe I am just not used to giving up control of my desktop.
Chris Sheppard
The current generation of GUI designers think they know better than the actual users. They will cite usability studies when completely disregarding the feedback of users. More and more these elitist 'artists' are given control of design. More and more the 'vocal minority' fallacy is used to dismiss those have the inclination and ability to provide feedback.
The problem with this mentality? Users interact with the study, not usability studies. Users care about how close the next button they need to click is or how hard it is to find it. They don't stop and consider whether an element 'logically belongs' to another element.
I have no problem with finger friendly GUIs on tablets/phones where they belong.
But just like Mouse interfaces suck with fingers, Finger GUIs suck with mouse.
Keep stupid fat finger interfaces off my desktop.
The shared menu bar at the top doesn't work for me - I would prefer it to be in the app window, close to where my mouse is already. I also dislike the fact that the menu options aren't visible until you move your mouse over the bar.
The problem isn't the global menu at the top; Mac OS has had that since 1987 when MultiFinder came out. The real problem is the second thing you stated: a mystery meat global menu.
Major changes to a GUI are an expensive (time AND money) venture. They aren't changed without reason, and if it were just to change the proverbial drapes then all you'd need to do is develop a simple theming system once and you'd be done. Changes are being made because of a perception that there's something wrong, or that people are changing the way they use their computer - and they're right. Think how much more you use a browser and mail-contacts-calendaring uber-client now than you did 10 years again.
Chrome that provides feedback or contextual cues is good design. It's good design for physical hardware, and it's good for software. People are naturally very visual. Changing layouts and interactions to handle different modes of input (touch and gestures as opposed to keyboard or mouse movement), also very important.
What's happening now is that developers of GUIs are awakening to the fact that the elements of the UI define the ergonomics of interaction. Just like in the physical world, you can't turn screws with a hammer or pound nails with a screwdriver (you can, but not effectively). GUIs are no different. To make a GUI an efficient means of operating a computer, you need to consider the means of input, the ratio of input to output, and the most frequent operations so that you can remove as much overhead as possible from the interaction. The use of appropriate cues, consistency in the UI, and references to well understood symbols or real-world objects are effectively symbolic documentation and can be very efficient.
I leave most windows at max, only bother to close programs I only occasionally use, use F11 (or equal commands) frequently as appropriate to any task, use Alt and Alt-Shift tabbing (system-level), Ctrl and Ctrl-Shift tabbing (program-level), and it all just works!. I only move or resize windows if I'm OCDing lol.
I often use the mouse for program and tab switching; gives a break in posture (that's a good thing).
And I only use one of four workspaces so I could easily do four times more "simultaneously".
This on a 10 inch Acer E-machine (love the little thing & sure I run it hard) running a slightly outdated Mint, a setup that anyone can best: 2 separate Firefox windows with about 70 tabs each (I take pride in balancing porn and non-porn j/k), Gedit with up to 10 different text files, File Browser with multiple tabs, Transmission, and often a terminal prompt, Evince, and SMPlayer (fullscreened if not running music). Mail, Inkscape, GIMP, etc. less often but always fullscreened if I do.
Why the fucking hell (srsly) are you moving and resizing away your time?
Nothing is perfect. While I love Linux and accept gnome, I really don't want them to be the pinnacle of computing design. In 50 years, are we really going to still be doing this? So yeah they need to try new things. Maybe they need to attract additional userbase to justify more development.
Let us not be the "old guys" who think that computers were never the same after they lost their favorite mainframe dumb terminal and REXX environment.
dont want to look for a program?
bam there is a search box, type 3 letters bang enter twice
dont want to resize a window?
bam normal, half screen and maximize and you dont even have to think and it takes a second (which I hate and disable)
you have some pretty petty arguments all in all, which might hold a can of water back when the input device was a non spring loaded analog stick, but honestly how much time do you actually spend moving and resizing? My windows are usually set to the size I want after the first time I launch it, and those millisecond that add up during a typical work day when I HAVE TO inside of some parent / child relation ship maybe adds up to a grand total of 45 second in a 10 hour day doing it hundreds of times.
We really need to spending more effort reinventing the wheel its round , always has been, lets change it make it uhhhh rounder ?
Is it not time for a change I mean we have been using round wheels for umpteen years so , it works , but hmm , let reinvent it anyway.
make it better , rounder uhhhh, well you know what i mean
I think its more that the new GUI's are less functional and oversimplified to the point where it becomes unusable. Remember Linus' rant regarding GNOME 2? The one where he famously said "if you treat your users as idiots, only idiots will use it"?
I think its the same sort of issue, most people had more tolerence for less options than Linus. He prefered KDE3 which despite was nice, was pretty bloated at the time. The new GUI's crossed the line for alot more people.
My issue with iOS is stuff like multitasking and options were made a headache because Jobs wanted one button, the walled garden apprach also limits what you can do with the device.
My issue with GNOME 3 is it removed basic principals like minimising and maximising windows (something I do quite a bit). My issue with Windows 8 is that too, despite I see its potential on tablets using Metro on a PC is terrible given you have to mimick finger swipes with your mouse. It makes no sense.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
As a fanbot, I can say with authority that it makes UNIX look good. Anything that the linices do in this area is just catch-up.
It's the classic trap of optimizing the solution domain instead of the problem domain. The center of the usability world is not the computer, but the human skills and limitations of the person interacting with the computer.
A computer ought to be like a good bartender, who just knows on the first look that you aren't going to start with a parasol sticking out of a maraschino cherry. It ought to greet me with an offer to try out a unique Slivovitz or the vintage Calvados rather than offering me the pitcher of Coors Lite for one buck less than yesterday as if I care.
There's a guy on Wikipedia with nearly 800,000 edits. Shouldn't the computer make certain assumptions about his work process rather than popping up an interface suitable to his grandmother? If I sit down at a computer I've never used before and plug in my iPod, shouldn't it notice that I've never listened to a three minute pop song since I bought the device, but I do have 16GB of hour long lectures in the areas of technology, psychology, politics, history, and economics? Should my 30 years of keyboard experience not be taken into account? Or my 100-500 Google searches per day, 300 days per year, for the most of the last decade?
The bartender should just know that I need tabs and desktops, or failing that, some reasonable way to spread out.
The ultimate human assistant is the one who knows exactly how much bandwidth you have available, and when and how to interrupt you with new information or a better approach.
The interface I deserve is the one designed for the F35 fighter pilots where they actually do give a shit about your cognitive limits and making it possible to reach them. The start menu is just another deck chair on a biplane. I'm sick of interfacing with the computer. Wake me up when the computer interfaces with me.
Comparing Unity with Windows 7/8 is a lame thought. Unity is badly conceived and it tries to impress the people who have hardly used computers.
I don't hate new GUIs, particularly for mobile devices where it's still a relatively new area and companies are still learning how to do it best. But for desktops, where work actually gets done, I just see no reason to take away something that's worked perfectly for years. Microsoft nailed it with the start button/task bar/system tray interface. We've used it for over 15 years now, and it's been cloned countless times for its shear functionality. But for some reason, many Linux distros/software, particularly Ubuntu, thinks that cloning OSX is the way to go. You know, OSX, the operating system which literally hasn't changed its GUI in 30 years aside from adding a dock bar to it. A GUI which was designed to handle individual applications at a time due to hardware limitations. And a dock bar which, I might add, is one of the most uninformative task management devices ever created. It's fine for grandma to see if she has her email client open, but not for someone who wants to see how many web browsers, directories, or terminals they may have open, and displaying where or what those windows are currently doing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with Microsoft trying something new, in an effort to bridge the desktop and the mobile device. But I want the ability to disable it on my desktop machine. Right now you can't without breaking shit. But this is Microsoft, and they're pretty well known for configurability and backwards compatibility, so I have a feeling nobody is going to be forced to use it on the final product.
I've been clamoring for UI change since the 90s, when there were a lot of new ideas floating around. As a hobby I've been developing and tweaking a UI design (just on paper, not instantiated in anything) that takes Fitt's Law to heart (most functions to perform on an object are in a menu directly under your cursor when you click that object, the most important system-wide functions are in the corners akin to the Apple/Start/etc menus, and everything else lives along the edges of the screen), and works equally well with touchscreens and mice by having no functionality depend on hovering the cursor and having contextual menus that work without a second button. A command line is integrated right into the GUI for the power users, available at all times with a single click but tucked away when not in use. The overall design philosophy is that simple tasks are extremely simple to do, but much more powerful functionality is readily available just below the surface, easy to get to.
Those are the kinds of UI changes I would be interested in seeing. Or some of the things Jef Raskin was working on. Those are interesting, thoughtful, clever. But instead what we're getting is nothing but massives steps directly backwards into earlier eras of user interface simplicity (with the consequent loss of the power we bought with complexity). Things are becoming less functional, less consistent, all for the sake of appealing to the lowest common denominator, pushing computers into devices solely for consumption rather than creation, and taking controls away from the users for the sake of the manufacturers.
All of these things, and other trends, are completely antithetical to the personal computer revolution, which put power in the hands of users, allowing them to become creators themselves and learn and grow above the lowest common denominator. And it saddens me to see Apple, who used to be a leader in that revolution, leading this counter-revolution back to the dark ages of centralized, dumb, consumption devices, now more popular than ever.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I think you are missing the point. Scrollbars are essentially a passive way of dealing with the window. It comes from a paradigm that the window is passive relative to the mouse. That doesn't have to be the case, think about all the activity that occurs in an IDE; or even the mouse overs in many web applications. What Apple is moving away from is passive windows.
That's going to be the norm across the board. They are moving away from notion of explicit save and moving towards explicit version naming and automatic saves. The idea being that with SSD the user has an experience of all of their applications always being in a fully running state. There is no distinction between a running and a non running application.
Apple has been moving towards less garish and more grey with every version. They are moving from "insanely great" to "subtle elegance". Apple doesn't have as much to prove. And the contrast with the garishness of the Aero works in their favor.
It is a good thing physical interfaces, say the driver compartment of an automobile, are not changed as often as the flipping 'operating system' UIs.
My experiences with Snow Leopard vs Lion
Dropped:
Seriously, why Apple?
Sigger than your average
Seriously, boo-frickedy-hoo. Aww, is the default window manager not what you'd like? You think its annoying to use and that something else - anything else - would suit you better?
Here's a tip: change your window manager.
I get that this isn't possible on iOS or Windows, though, but I quite honestly haven't seen nearly as much complaints from them.
Are there any actual numbers that would indicate how people really feel about Unity (or Gnome3, or whichever new UI)?
All I seem to hear is disgust for Unity (I feel much the same towards it) from users. When I run into the rare user who likes Unity they tell me that people who don't like it are the vocal minority. It's possible, I suppose.
I know getting stats on this kind of thing is difficult but has anyone done any kind of poll or marketing research on these new UIs?
I have a netbook with Ubuntu 11.4. I didn't mind Unity at first, but then I quickly realized that a) it is designed to prevent me from working the way I want to and b) it's really buggy.
I won't elaborate on the second point. If you already know what I'm talking about, then fine, if not then it must either be working fine for you, or you aren't using Unity at all. Regarding the first point, though -- there seems to be someone out there with some sort of religion about not having two windows of the same application at once. Years back, there was a big controversy about Nautilus not opening a new window when you double-clicked on a directory. I didn't pay much attention because I don't use Nautilus. More recently, I've been using gedit quite a lot to write code (take that, vim and emacs users!), but every now and then I want to have two windows open so I can look at more than one file at once. Can't do it. If I try to open another gedit window, it just creates a new tab in the existing window. Maybe there's some way to turn this off, but it seems like a pretty bad default to have an application go out of its way to prevent a user from ever looking at two files at the same time. Fast forward to Ubuntu 11.4. Now, the application launcher thing on the left has some default launch buttons that can be deleted and replaced with the applications I actually use (good bye, word processor; hello, terminal). These launcher buttons have strange behavior though -- if the app is already running, they just highlight the window of the already opened app instead of opening a new window. I'm not convinced that's a good idea even for a word processor, but for terminals it's just unusable.
To be fair, it is possible to open multiple terminals if you don't use the launcher, but instead click on the magnifying glass with a plus in it, which (contrary to every GUI interface I've ever used before) isn't actually a zoom button, but rather is used to search for applications. Searching for terminal and launching it from there allows you to open more than one window.
I feel like the party line about Unity is that "It may be different from what you're used to, but Unity is a significantly better, more usable interface and it will be worth a short learning curve." In actuality, it seems like the real story is, "Working with multiple windows is too messy. We've fixed that bug by not allowing you to use multiple windows. If this upsets you, then you're not Ubuntu's target audience."
I haven't tried the newest Ubuntu. If it isn't any better, I think it might be time to start looking for a better distro.
And everybody will be out to buy a new Amiga ;-)
..and I don't want to know. I just want my minimize button and my window selector back!
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
... are mostly clueless. I look at how GUI has developed on windows and there are days I wonder how those people got hired at microsoft.
A GUI should be simple, functional, expose what functions you commonly use and hide infrequently used aspects of the program. There are tonnes of modern day programs that could learn this lesson but you could see the start of it in I think it is Office 2000 ish (203?) where menu's would shorten and hide functions not used. Also for more advanced users you can edit the shortcut bar and add/remove functions/buttons you don't use to clean up the interface.
A great interface gets out of the way for basic users and allows more advanced users freedom of hiding/removing/editing functions they don't use from the program's interface.
The current crop of UI designers seem like they want change for the sake of change. Possibly because they need to justify working on a UI for Canonical or Microsoft so that their department doesn't dwindle, or maybe they think a stagnant area of thought is useless (not so; has anyone tried designing a wheel that isn't round lately?). Maybe they need to keep trying to be different like teenagers try to stand out from a crowd.
All I know is they're taking something incredibly useful and trashing it, just like modern car radio interfaces. Do I really want to be looking at a digital touchscreen menu while I'm driving instead of hitting the radio-button furthest on the right or the one furthest on the left?
Actually I love the iOS and Metro phone and tablet interfaces... I don't mind them trying out new ideas for netbooks in netbook editions. But keep them THE FUCK OFF MY WORKSTATION.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
They have almost universally based it on UI studies, expectations of UI study participants, and other UI guidelines. Maybe you don't agree with the data, but for the most part there is data. If you have ever seen non techsavvy people struggle with using the computer you'd realize that what we have now *does not work*. The goal always is to create a UI that helps the largest chunk of the usually tech-illiterate population. Ofcource unless the software itself is intended for highly technical users.
the days of what I would call a geek's interface on consumer computing is gone. Consumers don't care about disks and folders, and files. They want to do, and not think about the OS. Thus there maybe a niche market for a geek centred GUI? or would just a terminal window do? (I like terminal windows)
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In all of the fuss here. you've guys forgot the best gui yet. webOS. yeah, i said it. it brought it all together in one slick package (palm does it again). too bad HP had to have "big plans" for it. I feel Palm will rise again. Mobile/Touchscreen usability is where everyone is headed. eventually the desktop will be mostly touch. Command line is good for those who have time on there hands initially. but for the average Joe you need usability to get things going. HP is about to put webos on the selling block. Hopefully someone will scoop it up and slap in on top of there system. Android has got some good momentum. If they can add the usability of webos they could really deal a deathblow to the rest of the pack. Another big issue in gui and their usability is security. Security can be the most complicated thing and that's why the average joe should have almost nothing to do with it. Security in business and at home should be dealt with in 2 totally different ways. Unfortunately its not. Windows for example has the same security mechanisms in all version of its OS. They just to dumb things down for the average consumer and what you get is shitty security. the model has to be re-done. Users should be able to do what ever they need to, to get the desired result. anybody else can't. No online apps should ever be able to make a change to that system. just going to one site as an administrator account can totally screw things up without the user knowing (thanks a lot Command Line).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality . Everyone seems to be an expert in the field of UI, although the underlying concepts are not understood. This combined with people reluctant to change create a formidable setup for bitching about things without coming up with a better alternative.
Once I was a happy KDE user. Then, after KDE Vista (pardon, KDE 4) I dropped it disgusted for Gnome. Just yesterday I updated my Debian testing and Gnome switched to 3.0. After a reboot I was shocked, I spent one hour thinking "no, this must be a joke, now I'll wake up and this will not be true". Basically the day before I had a computer, and today I have the functionality of a cell phone. Now, am I the problem or are there? I need some basic functions to be guaranteed by a computer interface, why are they systematically removed year after year in the name of coolness?
The WM to rule them all! It is fast and was always worked without annoying features that make my machine slow for no reason. GNOME and KDE make me feel like I am using Windows, and that makes me a sad panda.
We seem to say we want improvments, then we proceed to complain it's not like the old.
I am running Fedora 15 w/ Gnome 3. It took me a couple of days to settle into it. The developers wanted too clean a desktop for my taste :-) Then I figured out how to customize it for my tastes, and now I'm OK w/ it (got most of my clutter back). Isn't that why many of us use Linux? To have it our way?
I've noticed immigrants to this country do this as well. Move here from wherever, then proceed to complain that it's not like where they left. Well duh!!
I suppose it's just human nature. Unless we're the ones designing the changes (mine are always best!!), we always find something we don't like.
Do Linux users really hate new GUIs? No. See all the people advocating XFCE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, and so on in addition to just whatever is default (usually Gnome but KDE for some distros.)
The problem is these all have considerable problems:
Unity is a tablet interface, that Canonical for instance is trying to push onto the desktop for some reason. I for one do not like a row of giant unlabelled icons, and I think quite a few do not.
Gnome 3 also has a bar with a load of unlabelled icons, no shutdown option (unless you hold down alt!), and just does a lot of odd behaviors "out of the box".
See the source of trouble? This isn't people complaining about new interfaces in general, it's the problem with having both the default and secondary default interface both prominently feature unlabelled icons and useability foibles the previous interface did not have.
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iOS -- no comment.
No comment on Windows 8's UI, it's vaporware essentially. It does seem like a bit of joke that Windows 8 for ARM is essentially not Windows-compatible in any meaningful way, so they tacked on a whole seperate UI to run Windows 8 for ARM-compatible apps in.
There are countless futuristic movies in which there is this fantastic intferface or sentient computer that makes ordinary tasks we never do seem so much more convenient. When have you really checked a detailed weather forecast before going out? I live in Holland, the weather will be grey and rainy with the wind blowing from all corners at once. Same with checking mail or arranging meetings. The sci-fi movie never happens. Or take the Star Trek computer. It seems so fluent that interface the TNG crew uses but have you noticed how what they do on the keyboard never has any relation to what is happening? That is because it ain't real but how many touchscreen fanboys wanted a computer with a touchscreen keyboard because of it?
Same thing with speech control, that sounds nice but needs to exist in a world where "help" is not a long google session.
The interface of tomorrow isn't happening because the tech of today just ain't there and PART of that tech is our own body. My voice is very different in the morning. If I had to use a voice command to turn the lights on, it would remain very dark. Coffee first but how do I get Mr Coffee to regonize my groggy voice?
The existing standard gui's on the desktop are very much based on the idea you have a surface on which you arrange windows containing applications or parts of an application. It ain't perfect but it works well enough since it means all each application developer has to do is present a rectangular box that either fits all screens (dialog) or can be resized. It is fairly easy... it is so easy in fact that on netbooks a LOT of windows and dialogs appear to far down and are cut off. They can't even get that right.
But Unity suddenly wants to throw this away and present an intelligent and smarter way of doing the same but different... and it doesn't quite work and most of us have years if not decades of experience doing it the standard way.
There may be room for a joystick driven car but if it crashes everytime I sneeze I am not going to unlearn my steering wheel skills.
Gnome and Unity are not just changes we do not want, their basic functionality was broken at the time of launch. Both crashed, had zero customization and removed widgets people had come to rely on. this would be like introducing a joystick controlled car that crashes when you sneeze with no windscreen no passenger seats no luggage space and an action radius of a half a mile. You can then bleat on about how good the joystick is, the hate for all the other stuff will kill your idea for ever.
Gnome 3 and Unity should have stayed as a research project for at least another year and only have launched for real when they were feature capable with the software they replaced.
As for Metro... am I the only one having flashbacks to active desktop? I am typing this in a fullscreen browser, like my toes, I haven't seen my desktop in years. Somewhere out there there must be people who run one app at a time, who have just 1 tab open in opera (mine are so small it takes totally mastery of subpixel clicking to get one) and when they are done they close everything to have the desktop re-appear.
It is not that we a stuck in the past with your basic window managers, it is that everything else has been tried AND deemed NOT to work. Try this one. Tell an Apple user that you do not think he is a complete faggot and fanboy and then ask him to honestly speak about the unified menu on a large screen setup. Handy no? Having to move your mouse for miles to get to the menu (people who use OSX just for photoshop and moved their menu to their touch pen thingy don't apply, you bought an expensive gadget AND spend ages to learn it to get away form the menu on the screen being out of easy reach.
Maybe like so many other things we have just gotten used to, the standard desktop gui just works. And if it isn't perfect then at least it is better then the usual attempts to fix it through half-finished code implementing barely thought out ideas that only apply in a few cases.
Ta
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you wouldn't care, you wouldn't hate it :)
It is not proven that Gnome3's or Unity's approach is perfect yet. However, the problems of the taskbar/windowlist is, that they are grouped by no order at all. Minimizing a window leaves no trail where to find it again, except the 0.3 second animation with shrinkboxes or some compiz effect. Users might remember that for some time, but not much.
Gnome 3's approach: When there is no way to minimize a window, it keeps its position. Keeping positions of objects is a powerful cognitive concept that Windows and KDE seem to have completely dismissed. And after pressing the funky key, users can see all the windows, not-overlapping, from a bird's-eye view and select much larger surfaces to access them. That is actually much more "efficient" that scanning a list of minimized windows that is arranged in a random order, or rather, in the order they happened to be opened.
Another good idea in Gnome3 is creating virtual desktops semantically instead of having a fixed number of them. So if a user is starting a new thing to work on, they can create a new desktop and fill it with the applications that they need for this task. This actually solves problems.
Removing many functions can be very "efficient", if efficiency is what "power users" are after, aka, doing things fast. Many great configuration options in for example KDE are totally pointless. I know I love changing stuff around a lot and have another checkbox to set some weird option, but since I changed to Gnome2.x, which was at the time laughed at for being dumbed down the same as Gnome3 is now, I am able to work much more, and more relaxed. My mind doesn't wander off by going through hundreds of tabbed config dialogs. I don't check the network traffic with an applet. I don't get a message popping up when a file finished being copied, along with a history of all file copy operations of the last month. Gnome is sparse. Which is great as long as it works well and you can be sure that the reason for a problem is not Gnome. In rich-option-environments, that, in addition, don't work well, you'll always feel anxious that some option you have changed might be the cause for the issue, and then try remembering which one that was.
Not directed against you, MrNiCeGUi: many people claiming to be "power users" and needing a lot of config options, are in fact wasting time and are just feeling to be productive by staring at pointless data diagrams or actually designing their own UI by moving stuff around, very likely making it measurably less efficient.
Hobbyists that love to fool around with their computers should be honest and say so, not stating "efficiency" as a reason. People who's job is to monitor computer activity, do maintenance or create work environments for others, might want and actually need loads of of options. But don't call that the peak of efficiency. It would for sure be more efficient if this work could be done with less configuration. In general, hating an interface without stating what it is used for, is quite useless.
BTW, iphone users also love their dumbed down touch interface because they feel more efficient with it. :) Of course a phone with a real keyboard is measurably more efficient, also the UI in my age old Palm Treo with PalmOS 5 can register dates and contact data much faster and more convenient than an iPhone. But it *feels* clunky because it looks like crap :) In the same way, powerusers might not feel like power users anymore when they have to do things that are commonly regarded as "consumer".
Not me. I'm a vocal promoter of change and development in interfaces, even when it causes some (growing) pain.
We've been copying one idea that Bill Gates had in 1995 and it's terrible. Time for something new and improved.
I have not been the most thrilled with the changes, but I find it's not really because of design. It's because of it implies a change in workflow. Most of changes seem to reflect a movement towards simplicity. They assumes something that has been true for me for a while, that normally I only launch of a few applications.
Though I still find the idea of Mac like global menu used in Ubuntu unpleasant.
I really did try to like Unity and GNOME 3. I gave both of them a chance, and there were certainly some things I liked about them. I could have accepted a lot of the changes they made and both of them, at first, seemed like things I could live with quite happily. But after a while they were just to restrictive and lacked features I'd come to rely on. Now I'm back on Debian with GNOME 2. I don't know what I'll do in the future but I'm considering XFCE, LXDE, and Enlightenment.
The kid has a sister?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yes, we do. With a passion
I love it, it's like a perfected OSX-gui.
(currently running only linux and mac at home)
I'm still running Ubuntu 10.04, it's supported until 2013. So I can keep using it with all security updates for another 2 years. After that, I'll have a look at the new LTS version. I'm sure that Unity (if it still exisits in the current form by then) will be much improved. Maybe some people really need to upgrade? I'm really interested in the reasons other than just because it's new. Ubuntu 10.04 works just fine for me, it runs everything I need to run, fast, stable, good looking and very usable.
> If your shiny new UI is going to make me click the terminal button on the task bar and scroll through a list of 14 different terminals to get to the one I want, we're not going to get on.
Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to me when I am using classic KDE or Gnome. At one point, the task bar is full of terminal windows that seem to be arbitrarily arranged (because i am supposed to remember the ORDER in which I have opened them) and suddenly they are all hidden behind one single button with the name "Terminal". The same with Windows, BTW. If that doesn't suck, then I don't know. :)
Gnome3 is not perfect, but at least it tries to address this problem by making window positions persistent and using a birds-eye view to remove the overlapping of windows. I really like this approach and am convinced that the task bar is bad for managing more than 7 windows.
The designers of the interfaces everybody hates now are not idiots, and if you think they didn't test any of the design changes with users, you are wrong. E.g., by testing with only a small group, the canonical design team clearly pointed out the problems with the Thunderbird interface that Mozilla doesn't seem to be able noticing. The problem with the "grand scheme" of UI design today is that it tries to balance "emotional response" with usability. I agree that this plainly sucks, but I doubt it was the motivation behind Gnome3.
Indeed, users do not have much to say about how they want their interfaces. At the same time, on contrary to developers, users are not at all organized, usually cannot really express what they need, start shitstorms over small UI changes, in most cases suggest hideous fixes that are worse than mystery meat, and, usually, after a few months, just use the new stuff without complaining and wait for the next change to rage again. (This is not directed against you, SaussageOfDoom, just the impression I got over many years. And I am not even a developer.)
But democracy is hard and a lot of effort. FOSS users need to form organizations just like developers, staffed with designers that have community credibility and collect feedback, create interactive mockups (not the typical "i tried to balance eye-candy with simplicity"-screenshots popular in the community that are nothing but skinning), do actual testing instead of guessing what's best, etc. And then developers will probably accept this as valuable input. I have never met a developer who would not react positively to a well thought-out design or re-design concept, or would at least be willing to start a meaningful discussion on base of that.
In one end, we have the CLI: powerful, but difficult and awkward to use.
In the other end, we have the GUI: easy to use, but not as powerful.
There can be a mix, you know: a GUI that helps the user built CLI commands using the mouse. The GUI will offer all the possible phrases on a pop up menu, and when the user touches the menu, new options relating the menu item can popup near it; for example, command line options.
The result of executing the command can be composed of objects that can manipulated graphically, using a combination of commands applied to them.
For example, suppose I am trying to list all text files in a directory: I place the mouse on top of the 'ls' menu item, and a bunch of command options appear. I select the necessary options, and then select one of the possible file extensions in the directory or known to the computer from previous attempts. Then I click on the applied command and a new window with text files appear.
Now, I can click on those text files and manipulate them with the mouse.
If it takes me longer to get used to an interface than the interface will save me during its lifetime, then it's pointless to use it. It doesn't matter who I am. Novice computer users may only run one or two programs, and those all from the desktop, but they will struggle if you change things. Advanced users might have 10 common programs and dozens of handy little programs and utilities and you can't put them all on the desktop. So the novice user will acclimatise at about the same pace to a new interface as an advanced user. First rule of UI: Don't piss off the established / advanced user, or cater only for them.
Similarly, if the interface costs me more in CPU, loading times, hunting-the-program times etc. then it's pointless. It's like defragging a modern laptop hard drive - the time I save in less seeks is VASTLY outweighed by the time it takes the damn thing to defrag. I really don't need or want fancy Aero-accelerated sidebars and clocks, thanks. No, honestly. No matter how cool they are they will get switched off as one of the first things I do.
Although there are obviously reasons for GUI's aimed at other uses, every machine I have is set up to do what I want as quickly as possible and no messing about. Fancy graphics are disabled. Stupid menu items are removed (Help on the Start Menu in XP? Just how often did ANYONE ever use that?). Timeouts for UI elements are set to their lowest (e.g. Start Menu flyouts in XP). Desktop elements that are unnecessary are removed (everything from screensavers to backgrounds to sounds to anything that tries to throw crap on my taskbar at all).
"Intelligent" menus that adjust to my usage are disabled (*I* can't predict what menu items I will need next, or most, so I'm *certain* that it can't either). Shortcut keys are used infinitely more than browsing through a menu for the right option (so even changing a keyboard shortcut to something new messes me up for almost all future versions of that UI - I still have to edit Opera's config so that Ctrl-N gives me a new tab and not a new window and it's been like that for about 5 versions now). Take note designers - no keyboard navigation from day one means I won't use it. If your desktop is too context-driven, keyboard navigation is impossible, nonsensical or too confusing.
Menu bars are flat colour. Window icons are simple and clean. Hell, give me a modern equivalent of the Windows 3.1 desktop (and by modern, I mean in what it can do, not what it looks like - I'm always scared of "Modern" themes and tend to stay on "Classic" themes for my entire usage of a computer) and I'll be more productive. "The desktop is a customisable programs window with subwindows" was always such a wonderful idea compared to "The desktop is a random dumping ground of whatever junk you or programs want".
I *will* happily spend some time customising a UI if you give me the option and most of those customisations will be to turn crap off. I don't want to do two clicks to get to a particular window of Office being open (Stupid task-bar "grouping" costs clicks and stops me finding the right file so I just Alt-Tab instead or turn it off). Is the Windows key or Ctrl-ESC REALLY the only option to open up the Start menu from the keyboard? How long would it take you to allow the user to customise that? Similarly, why isn't the Windows key the default to open menus in most Linuxes and why can't I even customise it to BE that key if I want?
What's quicker? Going into the Start menu using the mouse and waiting for menus to fly out and scroll down and search for the program I want, or just pressing the same keystrokes every time to get to it without having to explicitly suggest a keystroke for every program? (Hint: Start, P, I, O runs Opera for me unless I install another program starting with O into my Internet folder on my Start Menu - and YES - that categorisation is invaluable. From a clean desktop, I can start a handful of my programs quicker than they can load and sometimes quicker than the Start menu
Hi, I'll reply to you with what might be a middle ground in all this.
What GUI's excel at are being easier on the memory than command lines. Most of the examples of CLI FTW I have seen in this topic are for functions. So what's a GUI user to do? "Make an app/plugin for that!" Let me call up my first rough example - grep for Windows. (It does have about 3 screens too many but that's just design.)
What text do you want to find? (Toggles for Match Case and Whole Word Only)
Which Folders do you want to search in? (Toggle for Include Subfolders)
File Types to Include
Search
Oh look! There's a little note. "When you are familiar with the way Windows grep works you may wish to switch to Expert Mode. You can do this by selecting Expert Mode on the Options menu."
Well hello! "Thread Over". Every GUI then just needs an Expert Mode! There it is, all in three screens! But on those screens I can lay it all out visually, then hit "go".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Until alt+tab is restored to work on windows again and not group by apps, I will not be using Unity/Gnome-shell.
Seems to me nobody understands what a User Interface is all about. Maybe Steve Jobs did but everyone else is just not getting it. It's about communicating with the user...and in direct communication the tone of the conversation, the melody of the language, the pronounciation and the poetry of what is said play a very very important role. Present GUIs talk to you in a manner that makes me want them slap their faces. And I don't see much improvement on the newish ones. I'm curious about Windows 8, but going all touchy is not the solution when you have mouse and keyboard. It's chasing a unicorn when you better improve the saddle for your horse.
Only the professional puts productivity first. Everyone else prefers nice things and tools over ugly ones, provided they deliver enough(!) productivity. Sometimes the productivity is better, when things are more complicated but easier to grasp.
And to all of you CLI-only-Freaks: Watch your porn in ASCII from now on!
I have to say that as a multiplatform guy the new interfaces are really interesting.
I am a work iphone user and this weekend got a Windows Mango phone and it blew me away so easy and intuative.
Innovation is necessary and can only lead to better products.
I love all the attempts to make things better.
Paul
Being Mutual - Working together for a better society
I can get used to things being different. But they need to work before I can use them. If you remove an api or functionality you need to provide some proxy or working fallback until the application developers have ported over the functionality to the new APIs. The systray is gone so gPodder minimize to nothingness and needs to be run again to show up. Crazy. It has come to this. I've actually considered switching to Mac because I need my workstation to just work. And it used to do that before Gnome 3 or Unity. I claim to my Fedora 14 at work and won't switch until they have fixed all issues.
>> People hate change. End of story.
Not in this case.
Much of the functionnality of gnome has been taken away (in Gnome3 and in unity). For example, there is no discoverability. What the hell do you type in the search box if you don't remember the name of the program you need sporadically ???
Why does nothing happen when you right click ? Hell, i have TWO buttons on my mouse, or more, these guys just declared their users are not interested in using more than one. Well, most users want context menus !!!!
where is all the config gone ? hidden in text based config files ? gotta be kidding me !!! even the average user occasionnally wants to make a setting, like the behaviour of the computer when closing the lid. And he will be frustrated that this common setting is available only in some obscure text file. THAT IS NOT USER FRIENDLY.
aaaaaaa
Hello from OS X Lion - I like it and I consider myself a power user.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
We've had the win95 interface for 15 years now. In that time two things have happened: 1, the home computer has become a commodity for many people.To the vast majority of people who use computers nowadays, the windows95 style UI is what computers look like and work like. Any new interface is a break away from the expectancy of users model of how a computer functions. This will confuse and frustrate users.
To replace that interface with something new, that new thing sure add help should be damned good at what it does, or people will not want to switch. And that's exactly what these new UIs are not. They don't have the maturity of the tried interfaces we've been polishing and perfecting over the last 15 or so years, and anyone who has tried to find the right browser window amongst just a handful, or tried to open a third terminal window while keeping two other terminals, and say a browser window open willl know what I am talking about.
The true pain here is that were trying to switch to a system that is not what we are used to, and the advantages of new paradigms and utilities doesnt provide enough of an advantage to make the switch.
Usually the nerdly adopters would have switched earlier than the bulk, but there are so many things they want to do, but are broken in that next gen UI, they too leave it for what it is. Lack of use then will likely slow down maturity of the product too.
The solution: give the old interface, and let the geeks switch element for element, adopting the good parts, allowing more work on the bad parts. Well get there eventually. We just have to recognise that for now its still one big clusterfuck
I'm like you i don't like unity and i don't like gnome shell, i'm thinking either moving to xfce eventually mint will follow either with gnome3 or unity, .. which to me is almost the same.
maybe the new gUIs are being pushed because they are easier "to program". ... liked unity on my netbook (ubuntu netbook edition). ..errr... sell to a bigger audience,
the less you can do in the gUIs, the less difficult it is to make/program it.
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or maybe the gUI programmers girlfriend just likes stuff simple?
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i dunno
i like gnome 2 (opensuse) on everything else.
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i think it's okay for windBlowz to dumb down the gUI, so they can reach
but for linux=compile sh1t, look at source code, hack-away-mentality? it's like dressing up you dog?
and if the trend of what the consumer likes/buys continues, we end up with mobile phones with a
broken half-assed working browser but with working dedicated facebook and twitter apps *omg*
I love the irony of discussions on bad user interfaces on a site with a bad user interface!
Why did they do away with the panels?
On gnome 2, you can add panels wherever you want, on any screen you want. That is very nice to have on a mult-imonitor setup. Then on those panels you can add items. Those items can be anything you want. The application menu, shortcuts to applications, shortcuts to locations, a clock, a weather applet, a radio(-tray) indicator, a window-switcher (nice thing in gnome 2 is that the window-switcher will be smart enough to only show the windows on this virtual-desktop and monitor, a virtual-desktop-switcher, a systemload indicator, ....
Lot of the indicators are coming back in gnome 3, but in a hackish way. Had they gone the other way. That is, had they implemented there grand vision for a desktop using the (existing) technology of panels, we would not have this problem. Implementing it that way would not have been a problem at all.
This distinction between content delivery and content creation is probably the best comment posted to this thread. Smart phones and tablets are for content consumers and will eventually replace desk top computers for most users. Desktops will continue to be used for content creation and be used, if not be more sophisticated users, at least better trained users. So they require a different desktop. The guy who came to replace your roof was most likely driving a pickup truck, not a two seater sports car.
I got used to the Unity fairly quickly. The first thing I enjoyed about it was the efficient use of vertical space, a welcome change since I have a laptop with a widescreen display, like most people that bought their computer in the last three years. Also, the left bar feels (to me) like a more efficient way to move around open applications, with the added benefit that it allows launching the popular ones that I pinned there. I must admit that I preferred the Ubuntu menu in the top left corner as it was in Ubuntu 11.04, and I believe making it the first button of the left bar was not an improvement. Clicking on a button for an application that has multiple windows and having only those windows displayed for me to choose is an improvement over using alt-tab to switch amongst all application windows arranged in no particularly intuitive way.
Using the Super key to access the Ubuntu menu is (duh) much more intuitive than ALT+F1, I don't think I need to argue about this one!. Super + shortcut keys to access shortcuts from the left tab is nice as well.
But the best improvement of all, and that was introduced first in Windows Vista AFAIK, is that I can just press Super and then *type* the first few letters of the application name, and launch it with enter, optionally using arrows to select the right one first, or pointing the mouse. This is a HUGE improvement over the previous browsing-only menu.
Placing the application menus in the top is efficient use of screen space. Getting rid of the left bar when I need for a window is good. Not needing a title bar for maximized windows is then again more efficient.
The only drawback I find in the new interface is that browsing the applications is harder than with the previous one. Before clicking on the Ubuntu menu and just browsing around the available applications was dead easy. Now I have to perform some clicks to get there. I don't care much though since typing is *so* much better.
I find that the new Unity interface makes better use of the assumption that I have both a mouse and a keyboard. I like it much better than anything else I've tried.
YES
As to why - they are inconsistent. They are change for the sake of change and so they get in the way of productivity. They are not well integrated, the apps within them are not well integrated at all. They are mostly ugly too.
They suck and yet we are stuck using them because to make it really better will take a paradigm shift that would be just massive, because it's about uniformity among visual components and layout implementation. It's about ease of use, ease of moving data between applications. It's about good use of space, not wasting space. It's about the interface actually trying to be good without forcing the user to have to adjust it.
As I said before - Windows 2000 and XP had this right. I just tried Windows 8, it blew my mind how horrendous it is. Good thing it wasn't on my computer, otherwise I would have thrown the whole thing into the garbage bin.
You can't handle the truth.
Yes, we hate them. Or at least I do. That's why I only use wmii on my computers.
The plasma desktop still acts 'weird' to me. They've restored much of the capability (adding plasmoids to the panel plasma, resize), but somehow it still doesn't feel as straightforward as the panels that preceded it (perhaps for one, when I change screen resolutions occasionally the panel plasma decided to retain the previous resolutions width). It certainly isn't touch happy, but I think a bit too 'gadget' happy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
When somebody asks you to fix their computer, you do exactly what it takes to solve their immediate problem, and absolutely nothing more. Take it from somebody with 15 years of industry experience. Sombody who's made this very mistake more than once.
If you go above and beyond -- mark my words on this -- they will NOT appreciate it. On the contrary, they will resent it. They don't care that you made it quicker, or cleaner, or more stable. They don't understand that stuff and don't want to. They are ONLY interested in their immediate problem.
If you go above and beyond, what they will notice is not that it's better, but merely that it's different. And to the end user, different is ALWAYS BAD. You aren't the guy who fixed their computer, no matter how much time and effort you spent. You're the guy who made it "different". You're the guy who "changed something". You're the guy who's getting in their way, not the guy who's helping them along.
I don't care if it's the most abominable windows installation you've ever seen. You don't touch it. You leave every last toobar and spyware program running. You don't replace programs or try to get them to change. You do precisely what it takes to fix their immediate problem, and then you call it a day. And in the end, this is exactly what they wanted. Let them continue to rot in PC hell -- after all, they don't even care to realize it.
i'm going to install LXDE for people, from now on
Oops, well maybe you didn't learn the lesson after all. My suggestion is to pick up a couple of used PCs and satisfy your need to tinker and learn with your own hardware.
At my age there is a certain amount of "set in my ways" thinking that leads to discomfort when too much change occurs, in addition the GUI's are new, not as polished as they could be, and check me on this, they feel "dumbed down" or some how less useful for intensive projects like video editing, music making, writing or anything else that made large use of a mouse and keyboard.
I just don't feel as productive on them.
The options and level of accurate control seem diminished, but again that may be me being less the willing to adapt more than a failure of the GUI.
I love PC gaming can't stand consoles, I tired making some music on an iPad frankly it sucks, though in some aspects it makes an interesting controller, without even trying Windows 8 I'm sure that will suck, because it's a "skips a generation" thing IMO, WIn8 is the new Vista and I am happy with Win7 and won't change for another 10 years like I did with XP.
Don't get me started on the dumbing down of Apple products...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I strongly agree. Business 101 - try to innovate while NOT alienating your user base. Put in new features, but leave an 'out' for those who are not enamored with them. Otherwise, you see, well, what we are seeing: a bunch of people, like me, rejecting both Gnome and KDE for a lightweight desktop, that works.
Speaking as a UI designer, I really have a hard time understanding why you do that. If I were designing a window manager, I certainly would not expect a normal person to have 24 windows on the screen at once. Could you please enlighten us ignorant souls on what you have in them and why they all have to be visible simultaneously? This is a serious question, not just an attempt to bash your preferences. How about giving us a list containing each open window and what you have in each one? Then please explain why each one needs to be persistent. Why not just launch apps as you need them? Why do all these windows have to be overlapping and partially visible instead of fullscreen and switchable by Banner+#? If you do need to see more than one window at once, why don't you tile them instead of wasting your time manually positioning them "just right"? Do you primarily use the mouse to switch tasks, and if so, why, when using the keyboard is more efficient? Are you also a user with multiple virtual desktops? Could you please describe what you have on each one and why they can't be merged?
Honestly geeks are set in their ways. I am liking Unity because I had a similar setup with Dock on the left and one bar at the top, so it feels like a spiritual successor to my setup pre-Unity. On that note I am fan of Gnome Shell as I feel claustrophobic when I use it.
The reason I hate Gnome 3 and switched to KDE has to do with muscle memory and mental pathways. People who use computers all the time develop muscle memory, and subconscious pathways, about how to do things. We don't think about them, we just do them. Gnome 3 is like rearranging the furniture in a blind man's house. If I've done something a certain way for over a decade, and I'm an incredibly productive software developer, I have no reason to change and don't want gratuitous change shoved down my throat. If the new Gnome 3 stuff was optional, and I could do what I had always done, fine. But they don't, they force me to change my muscle memory and mental pathways, and I have no reason to do that since what I'm doing works and I get paid to produce software, not relearn a GUI that doesn't need to change. Let's face it, software developers are the only ones really using Linux, so if you alienate them, who's left? Who are all these people who want a new GUI, anyway? Have the Gnome 3 developers discovered people whose needs were not being met by Gnome 2's interface?
Even FireFox, the poster child for unnecessary gratuitous GUI change, lets you put the reload button back where it has been for a decade. Change like this is stupid and annoying - if something has been in a certain place for a decade, LEAVE IT ALONE. People know where it is. If they don't know where it is, it doesn't MATTER where it is.
I think this is the source of strong feelings - people who are productively cranking out code don't want to relearn their muscle memory, workflow, and way of thinking because some moron doesn't have anything better to do than rearrange GUI buttons and cripple virtual desktops.
Most people on \. are dinosaurs from the pre-GUI command line loving era of software so anything new and bright hurts their eyes and they automatically hate it. Most \.ers think they know better then everyone else and so when some company invests millions and years in R&D and comes up with new GUI, they automatically assume their $0.02 worth is better advice. My litmus test for new GUI is that if you can't go back to a previous generation of OS or software because it is missing the efficiency and features of the new GUI, then it is a successful GUI. For instance, few people I know like using XP anymore after they have used Windows 7 for a few months, so, Win 7 GUI is successful. I am sure that once Windows 8 is released, people will find it hard to go back to Windows 7. Try and go back to Windows 95 or OS 9 and you will realize how far along Microsoft and Apple have come in GUI design. If you try a new GUI and find that you want to go back (give it a few weeks at least), then it is a failure. New GUI is about efficiency in workflow and use. While sometimes the workflow changes (and again most \.ers are adverse to learning anything new, muscle memory, LMAO, it take about week for your muscles to remember something new), if the new workflow requires more effort with little gain in efficiency, then it is a failure. GUI is not about color or chrome, it is about usability. Hating an OS because of color is an obtuse view of software design. If you complain about color or chrome or whatever and insist that battleship grey is the only color that should adorn a dialog window, then go back into your cave or maybe find a nice tar pit to snuggle up in.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The latest versions of XFCE, LXDE and KDE are all decent. Pretty much everything else though, yeah it can go die in a fire.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't think were to set, but I would say the current released GUI designs just work. Changing what works just leaves users unhappy, that's what all these new GUI's are doing, there changing the happy desktop into a new system that just doesn't catch us. It doesn't mean were set but it does mean there making to many changes to quickly and it's not leaving the users with an effective experience.
what is nice in linux that its possible to work with different windows managers. I use a minimal windows manager myself (blackbox) Sometimes, I switch to KDE, sometimes to Gnome, or explore Unity. Installation of a new windows manager is an apt-get away. I sometimes wish this would be possible in OS X.
I waited Ubuntu 11.10 to upgrade from 10.10 gnome2... Tried unity again, and I really didn't like it. Make me feel to much like OSX interface that I really thing is unproductive.
I've finally upgraded to 11.10, but using gnome 3.2... and it FAR from perfect, their is ALOT of bugs and TONS of feature missing that from what I hear are the 'design team decision'...
So now day, even if something doesn't make sense and is less productive / user friendly, if it not visually pleasing, it not going to happen !
We are getting forced to a vision from a guys who doesn't seem to really use their computer for much more than their pleasure... I really use my desktop, lot of software opens, and windows.... So I need a good and responsive interface to navigate them all... Gnome 3 and Unity are not that. As for KDE, I tried it too often in the past to want me to give it a try again..
I'm actually tempted to go back to WinXP with classic win2000 look right now... But I'm still giving hope I'll find a windows manager that is efficient like gnome2 was with good integration with applications.
We don't hate them as long as they are on the tables and phones for which they were clearly designed.
Try and put them on my desktop and the, yes, we hate them.
Back when it was new and OS 9 was the most, used, OS X took a beating in public opinion.
I remember people who refused to move to Windows 95 because 3.1 was just perfect.
Hell, I remember when Photoshop 4 changed a bit of the UI over 3.5 and people were pissed.
We just get set in our ways. Of course, the OS 9 guys did have some valid, objective points.
Yes, precious, we hates them. We hates them forever! Nasty little interfaceses.
In fact, this post will probably get some "I'm smarter than you, I hate your opinion" replies as well (if any at all).
We hate GUIs that remove functionality; especially when its functionality we like.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Gnome is like a bad copy of a 20 year old Apple.
Unity just sucks balls.
KDE4 doesn't work.
So no we don't hate all GUIS - just all the crap ones that keep getting pushed at us.
When I started using Linux, I used WindowMaker as my window manager. It was a bit bloated, but it was fast and efficient.
I soon switched to Fluxbox, since it is much nicer and easier to customize and it does not get in your way.
With Fluxbox, there is nothing (no icons, and no annoying screen-estate eaters or blinking distractions) but a single menu always /just one mouse click away/
with your most used applications in it. You don't even have to move your mouse and hit (or miss) an icon first.
Desktop switching couldn't be faster, just press alt+fx or scroll with your mouse.
No annoying or time consuming animations to distract or delay you.
I love Fluxbox!
I prefer openbox myself, and use it on all my personal machines. Awesome is nice as well. But I've tried using Unity and Gnome3 and lo and behold, they still have a terminal. Install tmux on them and I'm ready to go. I mean all my graphical applications that I use (like lyx for documents and firefox for web related stuff) still work on the new GUIs, so what's all the controversy about? As long as the new user interfaces aren't all bugged, It's not going to change my opinion of them. I never really used gnome or KDE that much before, why should I care that they've become even more simplified?
No, just the new GUIs that totally suck! Such as all of those listed above. Of course Gnome has always sucked, Gnome 3 just sucke worse...
Joel Spolsky said it better than I could:
A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
There are a whole lot of new interefaces that have pissed off their existing users in an effort to attract a few more new users. It is the recommendations of the power users that drives many beginners, I think we'll see quite a few people move to XFCE or Mint and we will have another shake up.
The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface has evolved over several decades, via failures and successes in the software ecosystem, to a point where it has become a fairly good way of interacting with a computer. Touchscreen/tablet interfaces have also gone through significant evolution and many failed iterations to get to where they are today. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to challenge the collective wisdom of decades in a single generation. Just as most genetic mutations are harmful, so most changes to a mature UI will make things worse. This is not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, but that it's likely to happen in the same way that it has in the past: through slow and incremental changes based upon repeated failures and small successes. Sure there are path dependency problems here, but they aren't going to be solved by dashing off an untested product and expecting everyone to fall in love with it. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Unity is terrible and it should go away.
They've been doing this forever on Windows as well.
I don't mind if they rearrange the interface to make it easier to work, or to support some faster workflow that I don't know yet. No problem. But what they keep doing is:
1: Move one or more icons from somewhere inconvenient to somewhere unintuitive. Neither place is really superior to the other, but at least I knew where all the old stuff was.
2: Impose a different workflow and remove my ability to customize it. Actually Windows has been pretty good about preserving UI configurability and letting you undo their shitty changes... not so much with Unity.
Unity (for instance) crashes my ION2 chipset based netbook hard.
and even if I can get it to work, it takes up so much real estate without going away (both screen + control) that the computer itself becomes unusable.
They've all - in the pursuit of being nice to some border edge of computers - managed to produce an interface far worse than anything produced before. Who are they getting for UI design - facebook?
(facebook easily has the worst user interface of any website I've ever worked with - and it gets continuously worse every revision)
You should have tested whatever you were going to install _before_ going over there.
Also, why the hell didn't you download it beforehand on your own?
Doesn't the high amount of forked versions of these dictatorially-perverted projects mean that the process is working as it should?
I think with Blender, it was a case of being so radically hard for new users to get into, that their only options were outright alienating their existing base to allow for much better future growth, or stagnating in terms of demographic growth.
I haven't tried Gnome 3 or Win8 yet. iOS is okay, and Unity seems like a OSX/NeXT ripoff. I keep things simple...as few icons as possible and a plain black desktop is what I like to look at.
To answer the question- I don't hate new GUIs, I just don't use them.
"...should be required reading"? Check.
Freshly-graduated from college? Check.
What's good for me is good for everybody? Check.
What I don't prefer is excrement? Check.
Dismissive and angry in general? Check.
Yes, I bash (the shell, not the petulant behavior). Yes, I know regexes. Yes, I used E16. Yes, I was a zealot of class-A caliber. I see me in you. An angry, condescending, spiteful me. Slashdot is a back-slapping, high-fiving cesspool of that kind of me. It's why your very hackneyed post was modded up as "insightful": it validates very common anti-social, us-versus-them attitude that permeates this place. It's why my own post will be modded down as "flamebait", because I am refusing to validate this very same spiteful, self-satisfied group of people, as hungry for validation as I used to be. Am I better than that now? Somehow superior? No. Just less angry. More accepting of myself and different preferences in others. Less needy of punishing and feeling self-satisfied for having done so. More aware that happiness it the birthright and responsibility of every individual, and that computer UIs are a preference which exist solely to serve humanity's needs, and only after that are a technical (not moral) issue. Maybe when you see your two year-old child working an iPad you'll feel a little bit more merciful, but something tells me that parenthood is light-years away from your radar.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I've been using for most of my personal (and professional) computing for a little less than 10 years at this point. I was rather unsure about gnome3 when I first saw it, but I've quickly grown accustom to it, and at this point would probably be annoyed if I tried to switch back. I'm not really vocal about it, in part because I've heard so many people trash talking it, but for me it just works. My experience may not be typical, but I have to imagine there are others who feel the same.
I like the way the new interfaces uses the "windows" key, for example. When I start my laptop up, first thing I do after logging in, is press the windows key and start opening programs. I like that where ever I am, if I press the windows key i see a nice display of all the windows I have open on my current desktop to select from. I like that whether I need to open a file, or launch a new application, if I press the windows key and start typing the name of the file/program, it is searching my computer for what I might be looking for, and showing me its best guess (kind of like a GUI version of command line auto-completion).
Another note: At least for me, it handles dual monitor support perfectly right out of the box. In previous versions, I've had to jump through hoops to get the dual monitor support to function correctly, and even then usually had to restart X after connecting the second monitor before it would work... with gnome3, it just plain works. If I'm already booted up, and I plug in an second monitor, just opening the "display" system setting makes it recognize, and begin using the second monitor. If I plug in the monitor before I boot, it just recognizes it out right. Beyond that, the 3D acceleration on my graphics card (ReadonHD 6750m) works without jumping through any hoops to install special drivers.
I'm not saying its all flowers and lollipops, there are a few things I don't like, and a few about which I'm on the fence, but all together, I think the advantages outweigh the negatives, at least for me they do.
I am actually very willing to adapt to new user interfaces. What makes me furious is when a new user interface doesn't work well (or at all) and replaces an interface that worked perfectly. I frequently run Ubuntu Linux on laptops that have very poor 3D acceleration support (Intel integrated processor). My last two attempts to try out Unity ended in disaster for exactly that reason.
Part of the reason I hate updates is, honestly, my geek skills erode with each new package. With DOS I was a god; with Windows 7 I'm just a n00b.
I had to deal with gnome 3 when I had to "upgrade" one of my user's system to FC 15, and *loathe* it: screens of icons that vanish unless you roll over them, transparency - it's all eye candy for the sake of eye candy. It also goes vehemently against the *Nix & F/OSS idea that you do things the way *you* want to do them, not the way M$ (or whoever) wants you to do them.
The concept that "screen real estate is valuable" seems to have passed them by. I'll put up with everything being fullscreened on my netbook, *NOT* on anything else.
And, of course, the idea that you might want to use your processing power for, um, doing things, or work, rather than spending so many cycles doing *nothing* other than running eye candy also passed them by.
mark, who runs all 600k IceWM at home
first post in a long time on /. but this is one topic that has been burning my ass for a while.
I will admit kde4 at the core is still sort of KDE, but the current release of kde 4.x doesn't hold a candle to kde 3.5
KDE 4 originally was supposed to be a unifying update around a core library change (qt3>qt4) and tying a lot of subsystems together into neat little bundles.
In reality they managed to switch to qt4, added a lot of "eyecandy" and broke/killed off about 40% of the functionality of kde 3.5 and clusterfucked everything else.
Gnome 3 is a raging pain in the ass to use and is completely fucking broken IMO.
gnome 2x wasn't terrible after a good bit of tweaking, I'm not sure what the fuck the plan was with gnome 3 (lets chase the touch gimmick and remove any power user functionality. maybe? The Linux DE for retards who should have just bought an ipad?)
Currently I'm rather fond of XFCE. There are still menus, buttons,etc, fairly configurable. Its ugly (I'm sure you can make it pretty but i never much gave a fuck whether it was pretty or not) but It has a good convenience/power tradeoff and stays out of my way when I need to get things done.
Windows 7 in comparison to XP
I'll give it to Microsoft, for the most part windows 7 was a major upgrade in usability. There's a few dumb ass features that could have been left out (libraries? lets tie a bunch of folders together into libraries so people have no clue where the fuck their files actually are) but all in all windows 7 was an improvement.
I have a feeling windows 8 is going to be a clusterfuck because of the shitty new UI, and the sad part is they're actually doing some pretty nice under the hood kernel work.
OSX - for the most part pretty consistent, Apple has mastered the principal of least astonishment.
I see that tablets/touch/fingerprintery shit is flying off the shelves, and a lot of people are happy with them. A lot of people realize they bought a tablet and wanted a laptop.
The "consumerification" of the pc market in general I think is the cause. Hopefully at some point the suits and design committees will realize that yes you can make simplified devices and interfaces for the average joe jerkoff who's computer use is confined to facebook and watching porn but a lot of people still use computers to get work done and we can't be dicking about with broken "gimmickey" interfaces made for the least common denominator.
Quick rundown on my opinions on various UIs:
- Atari/Amiga: Straight, honest frontends with some fun and personal touches that made you smile even if something went bad (guru meditation, busybee, bombs etc.)
- NT4/Win2k: Industrial like interface, really efficient, has a few gaping issues such as lots of messy tabs and checkboxes.
- Win7: Ok to use but feels quite pale.
- OSX: Great looks, great apps but it somehow feels disconnected. Maybe I didn't have enough screentime but it always felt like somebody elses desktop to me.
- Gnome2: I used and liked this one. Nautlius was a work in progress and was never quite there but it was a sane approach on flexibility, HIG and nice looks. I think that's why the initial Ubuntu was successful.
- KDE3: I never really liked it, it felt like windows with strings attached.
- KDE4: Never used it. The reviews turned me off and I was solid in the GTK app camp.
- Gnome Shell: Unusable mess. Insanity. No shutdown button? Seriously? Broken taskswitching? Ugly spacing and default colors without an obvious way to change it? I'm outta here.
- Unity: Same as Gnomeshell except that the colorscheme is even worse and I can't even turn of or move the dock. It's supposed to be docky code but no effects and options. Great! A combined menubar? On Linux? That doesn't even work? File searching with strange suggestions? I could go on. No, sorry Mark, I'll try something different.
Right now I am running the PPA from the elementary OS guys and I must say I like what I see so far. A plain working toppanel, a neat dock and of course modularity as a integral part of the development. Something I appreciate a lot on a Linux system. (Don't like plesk? Use docky. Don't like the WM? Change it. Don't like the filemanager? Use something else. Want a systemwide searchengine? Install Synapse. etc.) Slingshot is a fashionable Applauncher but also gets the job done. Most decisions seem solid and reasonable to me. I am really hoping this project gets traction and continues. Otherwise I don't really know where to go. XFCE actually works, but it's 2011 and I want a working and a pretty desktop. I am staring at it all day!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Software developers are not interface designers? New News-newsflash 4U: When you design GUI apps, you design user interfaces. End of subject. It's kind of frightening listening to bullshit artists speak around here on slashdot that haven't actually done the job at hand being spoken of, and you fit that bill to a tee.
There are 2 kinds of people who use computer GUIs :
1. Who carefully test various GUI options, and select the best
2. Who use whatever came out of the box
The former variety has spent time and energy to choose the GUI features. They are using a particular GUI not because it just happened to be there in the box they purchased. They use it after careful consideration of many alternatives. Now if this chosen GUI changes drastically, obviously this variety of GUI users will not blindly accept the changed GUI. This is because they hadn't accepted the original GUI blindly either, but rather after careful consideration of alternatives. They hate change because present situation is not an accident for them - it is carefully chosen software carved into a part of their life via diligent customizations. They may like the new GUI also, but unlikely if the change is too drastic. Because if they liked something of this nature, they wouldn't have chosen the drastically different earlier version of it.
On the other hand, people of the latter variety are seen as "adaptable" to change. But actually they are incapable / unwilling to research the alternatives and configure them according to their own taste. Adapting is their only choice.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
It just comes down to this: Laziness. Everyone's spent a decade or so learning to use Mac, Windows, or some form of open-source UI. Most people just want to quickly adapt to a few new buttons here and there; as opposed to re-learning how to use their computer.
No, I will not work for your startup
I don't know why everyone is complaining about Gnome 3, I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried it. I tried Unity and I'm not that big of a fan, but I prefer Gnome 3 over Gnome 2.
I tried out Gnome 3 and while it has potential and good ideas it's lacking the flexibility of "classic" desktop environment like XFCE or even Gnome 2. Looking forward to things from it influencing more conservative DEs though.
you can get most of that back by doing an apt-get install gnome-panel then log out and as you log back in click the gear on the log in screen and choose Ubuntu classic! If you still have your separate home partition that you last used the gnome desktop on most of your setting will take effect and your top and bottom panels will be back, you can have your applets back also!
A way to select and operating a group of objects.
From the previous Slashdot article about this debacle (the one where Shuttlesworth says "power users" are all wankers for not loving the Unity) one is directed to https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/882274/comments/36 and then http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-unity/ which states that the usability of Unity was tested on 15 people, where "Of the 15 participants recruited, 13 were Windows users, 1 was a Mac user, and 1 used both Windows and Mac. None of the participants was familiar with Ubuntu."
This is jumping the shark with *lasers*
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
"Some day, you will be able to carry a phone, and dock it to a keyboard, mouse and display and use it as a full desktop with all your apps and data. Or use it as a tablet, in a different dock." - M.Shuttlesworth.
This is the 'vision.' With a simple dock, and a healthy dose of kool-aid, you will be able to turn a mouse into a finger, and a big wide screen with no touch capability at all into a touch-sensitive screen. The only thing missing is the part where a mouse behaves even slightly like a finger, and a display behaves even slightly like a touch screen.
Then, instead of relaxing your forearm on a desk and making small precise hand gestures with a mouse, you will be able to either use the mouse to drag the cursor (which you can hardly see) across large distances to precisely hit a sensitive area which you can also hardly see. OR, you will be able to wave your arms around wildly while gesturing at this vertical surface with your fingers ... except of course your forearm and upper arm muscles will quickly tire from all the effort.
We tried this in the lab, and the results are in: hand-waving is the way of the FUTURE!
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
we do.
Simple usability is the test:
Any user interface that doesn't allow me to place a collection of MY most frequently used apps (not the ones the designers think I use) one click away is a failure. Period.
I can adapt anything that will let me do this but many of the new UIs make it difficult to impossible.
Installing on my systems will be difficult to impossible. Period.
I started to dislike GNOME 3.0, KDE and Unity and the reason is simple - They do NOT provide me the enough capability to customize my desktop!
GNOME used to be my default desktop because it is stable and it has all gadgets I want, and, it does not have to pretend to be another Windows 95/XP GUI. Remember there is "Redmond" theme for KDE 3.x? Well, the Unity seems to be another Apple GUI, the new GNOME GUI in ubuntu removed most of customization features and KDE 4.x seems alike a Windows 7 GUI. There is just nothing unique for Linux! Gee, I 'd rather use LXDE to forget about all those hassles for a while.
I've been at a complete loss why there's so much hate expressed online for newer UIs, and particularly for Unity. Of course it's not flawless. But everyone I've shown Unity to, at whatever level of experience, has loved it. I've seen inexperienced users quickly access and use system features that I've read reviews claiming were removed from Unity. My younger son prefers Unity; my teenaged son decided, after using Unity, that he wants to switch from OS X to Ubuntu.
I use windows of different applications as one "batch" and other windows of the same applications as another "batch". This was why I loved multiple desktops and sloppy mouse focus. It follows the pluralistic nature that was Linux in general for a long time. Over time I find one program that is good for one part of a particular task and another program that is good for the other part of that particular task. So accomplishing a particular task involves several programs. This is typical of gift economies. Someone doesn't bother to try and replace something that already works.
Most regular users use one program(Web Browser etc) at a time or one program suite(MS Office, Adobe Creative etc). The monolithic silos that are typical in capitalism. Someone always tries to replace everything they can to increase market share.
Therefore because the modern GUI is decided upon by designers, who have been brought up with the mono culture of Adobe Creative and know little or nothing about the benefits and challenges of what we(typical /. crowd) think Desktop's are for. Which is helping all of our different programs work together. To them they are just for switching between monolithic suite 1(MS Office) to monolithic suite 2(Adobe Creative) to monolithic 3(Web Browser).
And unfortunately this GUI trend gives more and more advantages to the monolithic mentality which IMHO isn't a good thing.
You are not alone.
I believe that programmers are not good designers of friendly and functional user interfaces. The interface should have been designed by an industrial engineer with skills in time-and-motion studies, as well as a good taste in graphics design.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Congratulations and thank you www.yurdanyapi.com
I've been playing with old laptop boards to make a tablet. Found Unity worked great when my pointing device is my fat finger.
unfortunately, 98% of my Linux time is on a desktop with a mouse and keyboard. I've too many common apps for the dock bar and navigating the app menu in Unity is a pain, even with search. When usability improvement was only marginal in 11.10 I switched back to Gnome.
I'm a bit frustrated with a lot of the GUIs available right now as well. The new Gnome 3 wont let you use any of the new/cool effects without having a graphics 'powerhouse', not to mention it is slow and memory hungry. The new KDE 4 is really cool and I think very functional, but a bit memory hungry as well. Unity I just don't like. I searched around for a while and stumbled upon xfce, e17, and lxde. Lxde is really REALLY fast, and super small. Its also extremely customizable. However, its a bit too customizable for my liking. A bit too much setup work. I'd happily run it though. E17 is really shiny, and strangely small and fast in light of this. Finally Xfce is my favorite. Its the closest thing to gnome 2 I can get, and it is small and super fast. It even works with all of the gnome taskbar Widgets. Just a few other options for you there.
--
Fitts' law: The fact that they're at the top means that no matter where you are on the screen they are very fast to access. They effectively have infinite height.
Motor memory: No matter where you are, what app you're in, the File or Edit menus will always be in the same place on the screen, making them faster to access.
OS X is also centered around being able to have many windows of an application open on the screen, and they all share a common menu bar instead of needlessly duplicating menus.
This is effectively the same as Photoshop with multiple photos open -- all your documents all around, one menu bar at the top. Only on the Mac all of the documents aren't restricted to the one main Photoshop window, which now doesn't exist, leaving you to focus on just the photos.
Witness: HP and Dell both produce large all-in-one competitors to the iMac with touch screens. Does anybody actually use that feature? Imagine if they had an OS that required the use of the touch feature. I see lots of arms getting very tired, users getting frustrated.
Don't forget to hate Lion with its stupid Launchpad and lack of Spaces/Expose like they used to work.
Gotta say that I love iOS5 but hate Mac OS X Lion. In the Mac world, the simplicity and interface design of MacOS X 10.4.x was the best Mac OS has ever been, since the Mac 128, even.
I switched to xfce this year, and I am never looking back. It's everything I want and need, and nothing I don't.
I've been using Ubuntu since 7.10, I support about 10 people with 10.04. This is the first release where everything seems to work without issue. For once i didn't feel the need to "upgrade" to any of the new releases. With the Bisigi themes it looks fantastic and it dead easy to use. Now we have Gnome 3 and unity. I keep trying to like it, I keep thinking it must just be me after reading positive comments on the Ubuntu forums. I keep thinking of my parents and my inlaws that I support. They will screwed worse than I am with this. To me a menu seems common sense, why why why......
Hopefully Mint will be fully polished before the 10.04 LTS updates are done. If not I will most likely be switching people back to Windows.