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Should Apps Replace Title Bars with Header Bars? (gnome.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the window-frames dept.

Gnome contributor Tobias Bernard is on a crusade against title bars -- "the largely empty bars at the top of some application windows [that] contain only the window title and a close button." Instead he wants to see header bars -- "a newer, more flexible pattern that allows putting window controls and other UI elements in the same bar." Tobias Bernard writes: Header bars are client-side decorations (CSD), which means they are drawn by the app rather than the display server. This allows for better integration between application and window chrome. All GNOME apps (except for Terminal) have moved to header bars over the past few years, and so have many third-party apps. However, there are still a few holdouts.
He's announcing the CSD Initiative, "an effort to get apps (both GNOME and third-party) to drop title bars and adopt GNOME-style client-side decorations... The only way to solve this problem long-term is to patch applications upstream to not use title bars. So this is what we'll have to do."
  • Talk to the maintainers and convince them that this is a good idea
  • Do the design work of adapting the layout and make mockups
  • Figure out what is required at a technical level
  • Actually implement the new layout and get it merged

Implementation is already in progress for Firefox, though it has not yet been started for other high-priority apps like LibreOffice, GNOME Terminal, and Skype. "If you want to help with any of the above tasks," writes Tobias, "come talk to us on #gnome-design on IRC/Matrix."


3 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. AC Replaces Title With Glorious First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    keeping it real, m'ladies

  2. Re:Just. Fuck. Off. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Funny

    I remember an exchange here that went something like this in a thread where a load of people were saying how great the macOS UI is

    Primus: The macOS UI isn't that good. For example the window border is very narrow and you have to click on it to resize.

    Secundus: Narrow border? Hard to click on? What are you, some kind of spastic?

    Tertius: Apple fans show their people skills once again.

    I was laughing about that for ages.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  3. *Actually* improving things is not wrong! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The problem is how *utterly* retarded and out of touch their mindsets and goals are.
    It started with Apple, and Microsoft, Gnome, KDE, (What[TheFuck]WG,) Google, Mozilla, everybody followed them ... like a literal mind virus that drives people retarded. (Has anyone seen BrainDead, the TV series? That's how this feels.)

    Frankly, everybody who stopped using plain words in their programs, but uses only abstract icons instead, can fuck off and die.
    Even worse if the UI is monochrome. The kind of people who like that, are those who made *literal fucking gray in gray* the year's most popular "color" scheme!
    Everybody who says "app" gets a chainsaw to the asshole to the tune of "Bananaphone".
    Anyone who dumbed down efficient elegant emergence into "OMGSIMPLE” and "KISS", because he's so moronic that he believes it's either Emacs/VIM or Notepad/iOS as they are mutually exclusives and the only choices and having the best of both without compromises is just beyond him, gets to ride a cactus covered in salt and ants and vinegar, until his head pops off!
    Anyone who fucked up "everything is a file", "do one thing, and do it right", or basic modularity, needs to take a long hard MASSIVE WHALE COCK at himself. Anyone who contributed to the situation that "there is an app for everything" because there *has* to be an app for every permutation of features, because you aren't trusted with putting Lego pieces together yourself anymore, deserves to get raped in the ass by zombie Steve jobs, while he slowly feasts or the fart cave he calls his head.

    Yah. I'm sorry kids. You and your society went insane. You're literally mentally ill. (Not you, dear reader. You know who I mean.)
    And I have had personal eye-to-eye talks with most of the nutjobs that decided that shit, over the years. (Mostly because I wanted to check for myself.) I'm not a therapist, but three people in my family are, and I've been emerged into it since early childhood... but if I were, I'd gladly say this IS medical advice.