If you think it's bad on consoles, you should consider how bad it is on PCs... most of the games require you to have Microsoft Windows installed. At least on consoles, you have the choice of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo's offerings.
You don't have to tweak. Just because the option is there doesn't mean you have to do it. I think people grow out of the desire to do it pretty quickly, but Linux still allows them to do whatever they needed it to do in the first place.
Oh, and you can tweak OS X too. You just have to download some 3rd party apps first for some of it.
That screenshot looks like a cluttered version of Chrome's UI. Clutter is not good. It's for looking at web pages... it doesn't need all those buttons!
No menu bar, no ribbon and no cluttered toolbar. Sounds perfect to me. Cluttered toolbar or ribbon would instantly put me off using it. Safari on Mac gets away with the menu because it's unobtrusive. Elsewhere, Chrome or Chromium wins for me.
I used to do a lot of software development and was familiar with Visual Studio around 2003-2007. I cannot think of a way that they could replace its toolbars and menus with a ribbon and make it more usable. In fact I found half of the toolbar options to be useless 90% of the time and would much rather have one or two simple toolbars and either use keyboard shortcuts or menu options for the other things. In fact with something like Visual Studio, I probably used keyboard shortcuts much more often than menus or toolbars. I just don't think the ribbon would work there.
I use pidgin for instant messaging. I probably use its menus once or twice a year. Again, having a ribbon is pointless... taking up an extra 50 or so pixels with something that I'd almost never use.
Wordpad is too simple to need it.
Office is a bit different. I can see how it might be useful in: Access (switching contextually for design mode, running a database app, etc) Word (switching contextually between tables, pictures, plain text) Excel (same contextual switching)
I don't see how it could be useful in an email client.
That said, I still find Office 2008 on OS X to be way more usable/intuitive than Office 2007 on Windows XP, even though I use it less.
How does this relate to a web browser? Chrome has 7 buttons and a text box on the toolbar, no need for menus (besides the two buttons that give page-specific menu options and application related menu options) and no need for a ribbon or cluttered toolbar. I don't see why Firefox would need any more than that either.
I use Safari on OS X and Chromium on Linux due to their simplicity. Nothing gets in my way, and everything is instantly locatable. The two 'menu buttons' in Chrome/Chromium are way better than Safari's menus IMO.
You do realize that having permissions on files on your removable media has absolutely no effect in preventing people accessing them?
The issue with permissions is that all file systems that support files larger than 4GB have permissions associated with each file. Different systems may treat these differently, and it's an inconvenience if you plug in a USB disk and the permissions prevent you from instantly editing a file.
I move large amounts of data on portable media too. Generally many gigabytes, with files too large to be supported by FAT32. Thankfully all the machines I use can read/write ext3, and I make a point of having my UID being the same on all of them so there are no permissions problems.
I imagine in most networks larger then a handful of PCs, each user will have the same UID on any machine they log into because it's centrally controlled.
If I need to move files on to a machine at, for example, a customer site, then I'd need to either make sure the permissions are correct while the disk is connected to my own computer or use a FAT32 disk.
Yes, and I have to say when I'm programming for fun, I'd rather be on a machine with Python and a text editor over one with Visual Studio. It is a nice IDE and a great debugger, but it's just not fun. That IDE with support for Python (not IronPython) would be nice... but ActiveState's IDE is almost as good and already supports Python/Perl/PHP.
For me, double-clicking an app's title bar (same function as "Restore Down" or "Maximize") is especially useful when I want to restore a maximized window so I can drag the app from my primary display to a secondary, or vice versa. I suspect many people do the same.
I just drag it and let my desktop environment deal with how it fits on the second screen. Although with Chromium I do need to find that awkwardly small bit of title bar to do that with, or click the "Restore" button first. There is the "Use system title bars and borders" option if I don't like this, but I thought I'd give Google's UI a spin.
Maybe if I used Word more than OpenOffice, I'd get to like the Ribbon as much as I like Chrome's interface. But I doubt it... it still takes up way too much space and I often use a netbook. I don't want to lose 1/3 of my screen to a toolbar.
I use Chromium on Linux. Pretty much the same as Google Chrome on Windows.
Why is getting rid of the menu bar a good thing?
It saves on clutter, screen real estate and things that distract you from the page you're reading.
Where did copy/cut/paste go?
They're on the page menu button
How do I open a file?
An HTML or XML file? Double click on it. Sure, the in-browser keyboard shortbut is there but how many average users actually open HTML pages with FIle|Open? The rest of us know the shortcut.
How do you print a page?
The print option on the page dropdown, or the usual keyboard shortcut.
How do I access anything that was in the menus?
Bookmark a page? Click the star on the address bar, just like starring your emails in GMail. View downloads/history/bookmarks? It's on the control menu (the other of the two toolbar buttons). Or open a new tab and all that stuff is automatically displayed.
I hate the new Office ribbon interface... everything that used to be in the menus is now scattered across several ribbons which I have to navigate through.
I have to agree. The menu arrangement was fairly standard across most office suites until Microsoft changed that. I use OpenOffice.org more, and find it really hard to use Word now because of the ribbon.
Try developing C/C++/Java/Python/Perl apps on your smartphone. For me the netbook allows me to do all that without the inconvenience of having to carry around a full size laptop. I guess I could do some of it on a smartphone but it would not be a good experience.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think it's bad on consoles, you should consider how bad it is on PCs... most of the games require you to have Microsoft Windows installed. At least on consoles, you have the choice of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo's offerings.
I was thinking more along the lines of Meatwad from ATHF.
What does this have to do with the United States? The article is about the UK. I'm sure copyright laws are different there.
here and here?
Landscape
You don't have to tweak. Just because the option is there doesn't mean you have to do it. I think people grow out of the desire to do it pretty quickly, but Linux still allows them to do whatever they needed it to do in the first place.
Oh, and you can tweak OS X too. You just have to download some 3rd party apps first for some of it.
Yes, the last 3 I bought didn't have Windows on them, and no they weren't all Macs.
That screenshot looks like a cluttered version of Chrome's UI. Clutter is not good. It's for looking at web pages... it doesn't need all those buttons!
No menu bar, no ribbon and no cluttered toolbar. Sounds perfect to me. Cluttered toolbar or ribbon would instantly put me off using it. Safari on Mac gets away with the menu because it's unobtrusive. Elsewhere, Chrome or Chromium wins for me.
I used to do a lot of software development and was familiar with Visual Studio around 2003-2007. I cannot think of a way that they could replace its toolbars and menus with a ribbon and make it more usable. In fact I found half of the toolbar options to be useless 90% of the time and would much rather have one or two simple toolbars and either use keyboard shortcuts or menu options for the other things. In fact with something like Visual Studio, I probably used keyboard shortcuts much more often than menus or toolbars. I just don't think the ribbon would work there.
I use pidgin for instant messaging. I probably use its menus once or twice a year. Again, having a ribbon is pointless... taking up an extra 50 or so pixels with something that I'd almost never use.
Wordpad is too simple to need it.
Office is a bit different. I can see how it might be useful in:
Access (switching contextually for design mode, running a database app, etc)
Word (switching contextually between tables, pictures, plain text)
Excel (same contextual switching)
I don't see how it could be useful in an email client.
That said, I still find Office 2008 on OS X to be way more usable/intuitive than Office 2007 on Windows XP, even though I use it less.
How does this relate to a web browser? Chrome has 7 buttons and a text box on the toolbar, no need for menus (besides the two buttons that give page-specific menu options and application related menu options) and no need for a ribbon or cluttered toolbar. I don't see why Firefox would need any more than that either.
I use Safari on OS X and Chromium on Linux due to their simplicity. Nothing gets in my way, and everything is instantly locatable. The two 'menu buttons' in Chrome/Chromium are way better than Safari's menus IMO.
table@diningroom:~ $ sudo mv salt seat1 seat3
Salt move successful.
table@diningroom:~ $
Let me know when such a machine exists.
No, like a dog.
Wasn't that sarcasm?
What's with this tar stuff? Butterflies are the way to go!
Unless they install an ext2/3 driver
You do realize that having permissions on files on your removable media has absolutely no effect in preventing people accessing them?
The issue with permissions is that all file systems that support files larger than 4GB have permissions associated with each file. Different systems may treat these differently, and it's an inconvenience if you plug in a USB disk and the permissions prevent you from instantly editing a file.
I move large amounts of data on portable media too. Generally many gigabytes, with files too large to be supported by FAT32. Thankfully all the machines I use can read/write ext3, and I make a point of having my UID being the same on all of them so there are no permissions problems.
I imagine in most networks larger then a handful of PCs, each user will have the same UID on any machine they log into because it's centrally controlled.
If I need to move files on to a machine at, for example, a customer site, then I'd need to either make sure the permissions are correct while the disk is connected to my own computer or use a FAT32 disk.
Yes, and I have to say when I'm programming for fun, I'd rather be on a machine with Python and a text editor over one with Visual Studio. It is a nice IDE and a great debugger, but it's just not fun. That IDE with support for Python (not IronPython) would be nice... but ActiveState's IDE is almost as good and already supports Python/Perl/PHP.
I just drag it and let my desktop environment deal with how it fits on the second screen. Although with Chromium I do need to find that awkwardly small bit of title bar to do that with, or click the "Restore" button first. There is the "Use system title bars and borders" option if I don't like this, but I thought I'd give Google's UI a spin.
Maybe if I used Word more than OpenOffice, I'd get to like the Ribbon as much as I like Chrome's interface. But I doubt it... it still takes up way too much space and I often use a netbook. I don't want to lose 1/3 of my screen to a toolbar.
I use Chromium on Linux. Pretty much the same as Google Chrome on Windows.
It saves on clutter, screen real estate and things that distract you from the page you're reading.
They're on the page menu button
An HTML or XML file? Double click on it. Sure, the in-browser keyboard shortbut is there but how many average users actually open HTML pages with FIle|Open? The rest of us know the shortcut.
The print option on the page dropdown, or the usual keyboard shortcut.
Bookmark a page? Click the star on the address bar, just like starring your emails in GMail.
View downloads/history/bookmarks? It's on the control menu (the other of the two toolbar buttons). Or open a new tab and all that stuff is automatically displayed.
I have to agree. The menu arrangement was fairly standard across most office suites until Microsoft changed that. I use OpenOffice.org more, and find it really hard to use Word now because of the ribbon.
People won't even read the URL then!
Try developing C/C++/Java/Python/Perl apps on your smartphone. For me the netbook allows me to do all that without the inconvenience of having to carry around a full size laptop. I guess I could do some of it on a smartphone but it would not be a good experience.