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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?
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
I still fail to see why anyone but Grandma would want a UI that even Grandma could run.
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.
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?
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 :)
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.
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...
As a longtime Linux and KDE user, I don't mind iOS at all actually. But only when I'm using an iPhone. I wouldn't want a minimalist interface like that on my PC or laptop. But on a handheld phone where I'm never doing more than one task at once, it's fine. The problem with all these stupid new UIs is that they're trying to force us all to use the same kind of interface on all our devices, and it doesn't work. It didn't work when MS was trying to get us to use a shrunken-down Win95 interface on handheld devices with styluses, and now that we've found we like touch- and gesture-based UIs on handheld devices, it doesn't work to have those UIs on desktop machines.
Since when does iOS use a mouse?
iOS
mouse
There's your problem.
Millions of people think Justine Bieber is awesome too. Shiny does not necessarily mean great.
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.
... 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"
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 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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Windows are not grouped willy-nilly on the taskbar. They are grouped by the order in which they were opened, so there's a temporal flow to them. Your bird's eye view is useless when there are multiple document opened in a program and they are all similar looking, because you still have to mouseover and read their title.
You misunderstood the "caring" part. I just meant that I don't care to betatest or use Gnome, or Unity, Windows 8, or Lion, because their ideas are not demonstrably better and are, frankly, not worth my time. I've stopped at Snow Leopard, Windows 7 and I'm considering migrating my Ubuntu 10.4 install to Debian Mint. Interface designers seem to have simultaneously lost their marbles as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not complaining about power user needs not being met and in fact I was not claiming to be a power user anywhere in my previous post. I'm just annoyed that I can't leave someone with an Ubuntu install and be reasonably secure that I won't be hearing from them very soon. Because I used to do that and then Unity springs up and people call to tell me that everything's broken and those Linux people are stupid.
I don't patronize people by calling them "consumers" meaning that I really think they are stupid and that "power users" are smart. People mostly use computers to do things, not to use computers for their own sake. Doing things may mean simply reading the web and composing an email, or viewing photos, chatting online with their kids or grandkids, or designing a house for all I know. The interface shouldn't make things more difficult, undiscoverable, indescribable, illogical. People have said many bad things about the Ribbon interface (I mostly like it), but no one denied that at list that thing was trying to be discoverable and logical.
And, in a response to a post you made above that says that users make a big fuss about changes and than swallow the pill anyway, I bring you the recent example of Vista, where users stayed away in so effectively that even Microsoft had to acknowledge that they make a mistake.
In my country we have a saying: when two people tell you that you are drunk, you go home and sleep it off. The Gnome and Ubuntu/Unity developers are drunk, are being told that they are drunk, and they are challenging everybody with a broken bottle. This is going to end bad for all parties.
Windows are not grouped willy-nilly on the taskbar. They are grouped by the order in which they were opened, so there's a temporal flow to them..
The order in which people opened their windows is very difficult to remember. And those who found out that they can move the taskbar buttons around are spending too much cognitive energy doing it :) The taskbar is a terrible interface, which does not mean there are no worse ones around.
Your bird's eye view is useless when there are multiple document opened in a program and they are all similar looking, because you still have to mouseover and read their title.
True, unless the title is also shown in the bird's eye view as well, which i believe compiz is doing. If drag and drop between bird's-eye windows would also work (like it does on MaxOS), it would be tremendously useful.
I like your example about Vista, which looks as if consumers suddenly exercised power by "voting with their wallets". The other interpretation is that Windows7 is also a piece of crap, its just better than Vista so in comparison one can more or less accept it. The same happened with Gnome 2. People hated its "simplicity", but compared to the starting out KDE4 it looked like the revelation. A lot of this is about what history has brought in front of users and what we have learned to use.
The desktop metaphor itself has lots of problems. Not surprising, it has been around for more than 30 years and was developed by Xerox for a computer to create graphics that should be printed on a laser printer. At the moment, designers seem to be bold enough to try something new. Even in FOSS. That is quite a new situation and as it seems the FOSS world is not prepared for it. Developers, users and designers need to work this out, or FOSS will become a "product" like commercial software.
The users' part in my opinion make a useful contribution. One part is to identify the problem that interfaces without text, based on gestures, have bad discoverability, like you did. Don Norman also points this out in this article: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp Users have to acquire the language to describe their tasks and interfaces, deeper than "i don't like it" or "cannot get my stuff done". Telling the developers and designers that they're drunk will not help, because they aren't crazy. Maybe Steve Jobs could pull that off, but the FOSS community should strive for a better work model.
So, while I agree that Unity is rough and Gnome3 is lacking stuff from Gnome2, hating is not the answer. Identifying the good ideas therein and analyzing what should be changed is better. IMHO.
It is not proven that Gnome3's or Unity's approach is perfect yet.
To say the least. But I've tried both for a few weeks each and they definitely make me less productive than Gnome 2.
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.
You can see at a glance which windows are open by their icon (which admittedly only shows the program, not document), title, and you have a good cue of which window is which from its position (rightmost is most recently opened). There may be a better solution but this is excellent in minimising number of clicks (everything is one click away) and quite good on impact on short-term memory (not much demand to remember which windows are open).
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.
This pretty much fails when you have overlapping windows. It doesn't help that a window keeps its position if I can't see it. I find it's also useful to minimise a window to reduce visual distraction. I find in Gnome 3 I waste lots of effort manually shuffling my windows around so I can either hide them or so they're slightly overlapping so I can click on them without putting my cursor into the corner. Surely the opposite to what was intended.
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
It's less efficient in the sense you have to click somewhere or press a key or move your mouse to see the windows. Changing mode to change windows and having all those windows flying around I find is more distraction to my workflow. Maybe our brains work differently? I'd be happy to have both options however as sometimes an expose-style window map is useful if you've "lost" a window.
Another good idea in Gnome3 is creating virtual desktops semantically instead of having a fixed number of them.
I think this is potentially a good idea that needs more polish. In Gnome 2 I can click on the desktop I want with one click from the taskbar but in Gnome Shell I need to go into the separate mode.
I think a lot more can be done with virtual desktops. It would be nice for example to have one project per desktop and then to be able to save that desktop (open programs, views, files) as a project, close it, and be able to reopen it at a later date, link it to a to-do list, etc.
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.
I agree to the extent that you can make something too configurable. Too many options make it hard to find what you want to change, make things too easy to break, too hard to test. However, you can also make things not configurable enough. People's brains work differently so like to work in a different way, people have different hardware and software setups (e.g. number of displays), and work on vastly different projects. I think Gnome 3 shell and Unity have gone significantly into the "too little configurability" camp. Gnome 2 was a very good balance by contrast.
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.
Yes, precious, we hates them. We hates them forever! Nasty little interfaceses.
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