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Introduction to Gnome 3

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Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#51

Post by acabal »

sciurus wrote: post #50
acabal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its probl…

One interesting thing about the Gnome Shell design process is that it has been very open and responsive. Although there was a heavy focus on creating design principles up front, the actual design has evolved a lot over the few years that the project has been active. The overview of the current design at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design has many relevant links that you can explore if you're interested. I know t…

Interesting, I didn't know about that.

One thing that concerns me is that they only decided to do usability testing in Feb 2010, but according to the Wiki page Gnome 3 has been in development since Jul 2008.

Shouldn't a huge UI overhaul receive incremental user testing to stamp out bad ideas before significant dev time is invested? After an alpha is delivered, does anyone really think that if one of their big paradigm changes is found to be disliked, that they will go in and remove or significantly change it? Maybe Gnome would, I don't know--but from my experience, once code is delivered in a semi-functioning state, it's very hard to overcome that inertia to make huge directional changes. (And perhaps no big change is needed--but from these screenshots I can say that so far I personally don't like the new direction.)

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#52

Post by unconed »

cturner wrote: post #27
acabal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its probl…

I think there's no substitute for clued-in developers. Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process. I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document…

The problem with the fonts is more than just aesthetics. It's about gamma correction.

For various reasons, the brightness of an RGB color value is not linear. This means that a checkerboard of white/black pixels will not look the same from afar as solid 50% gray. The correct shade is something like ~75%.

When anti-aliasing crisp details such as letters, this is incredibly important. Without gamma correction, there will be a noticeable change in brightness when a shape lies between pixels vs when it is pixel-aligned.

I think this is why Linux geeks tend to be vehemently opposed to anti-aliasing; they don't realize the rendering method they're using is crap.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#53

Post by rbanffy »

acabal wrote: post #49
rbanffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they didn't want to invite criticism, they shouldn't have release screenshots of a product they don't want criticism of. I am sure this will be a learning experience. It's alpha software, after all, and it is released in order to allow people to learn what works and what doesn't in the real world. As usual, with open-source, if you decide to use Gnome Shell right now, or in April, you'll be running the bleeding…

http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/News/Red-Hat-the-Top-... "The vast majority (70 percent) of contributors work on the project on their spare time, while an additional 20 percent of contributors do so on both a paid and voluntary basis." Adding the percentages of the top 5 corporate contributors adds up to just over a third of contributions from ostensibly full-time developers. So it appears to be just a fact th…

Have you tried to, instead of calling them "spare-time developers", file a bug report or a feature request? Did you get involved in any design decision? Do you subscribe to whatever list Gnome Shell developers discuss their ideas?

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#54

Post by jawee »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #15

I'm amazed by how dumb and severe the icon label truncation is. That screams to me that it was designed without testing it with real content. How can anyone see Network C…, Network P…, Network P… in the preference panel and not wonder if the truncation is too agressive?

For those complaining about the details: I think this represents the code and general work on a new interface that is coming out. The applications that it is working with are the utilities that have been included in Gnome for quite a while and the names worked fine with the old menu system; clearly the work being demonstrated is on the interface level. The current interface only takes the default application names it is being fed. I´m sure a finished ¨product¨ will take into account these details, but I don´t find it unreasonable that it looks how it does in an Alpha product. Simply changing what the name appears as in the shell isn´t going to be the long term solution.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#55

Post by joe_the_user »

acabal wrote: post #20
mikedouglas wrote: post #13

Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked. 1. How am I supposed to know what these icons do? Why even title them? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.p... 2. Eight of the eleven icons in the dock have significant title clipping. Did no one notice this? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw…

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its probl…

I think what's most unfortunate is that Linux desktop people follow MS' approach of integrating the windows managers and the graphic shell ever more closely.

This approach seems to requires a monolithic application.

I would imagine it could be more open-source-appropriate to separate out the Windows manager (in charge of the details of font and icons) and the shell (the taskbar, start-menu, explorer-type-application etc).

Caveat: I'm working on a shell-like project myself. I suppose I might feel some satisfaction to see Gnome get it wrong but I don't want to see a monolithic system that freezes out alternatives.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#56

Post by [deleted] »

rbanffy wrote: post #38
bouncingsoul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not criticizing truncation. You need to do it on long names. I'm saying it looks like the designers of the GNOME UI are using truncation as a quick fix for a flawed design. Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter: http://i.imgur.com/MN3Q2.png Notice how the tracking (spacing between letters) in the first item gets tightened to make it fit? It looks a little squished, but it's much preferable to reading d…

> Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter: Don't forget Apple (among others) has tons of silly patents regarding text rendering that Gnome developers have to program around while everybody else can just cross-license with their own silly little patents. It may be possible they simply cannot afford the risk of doing the obvious thing.

[deleted]

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#57

Post by Symmetry »

acabal wrote: post #49
rbanffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they didn't want to invite criticism, they shouldn't have release screenshots of a product they don't want criticism of. I am sure this will be a learning experience. It's alpha software, after all, and it is released in order to allow people to learn what works and what doesn't in the real world. As usual, with open-source, if you decide to use Gnome Shell right now, or in April, you'll be running the bleeding…

http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/News/Red-Hat-the-Top-... "The vast majority (70 percent) of contributors work on the project on their spare time, while an additional 20 percent of contributors do so on both a paid and voluntary basis." Adding the percentages of the top 5 corporate contributors adds up to just over a third of contributions from ostensibly full-time developers. So it appears to be just a fact th…

Ahem, "The study found that some 70 percent of contributors are unpaid, but that the majority of commits comes from paid participants." I'm not sure what basis you used to decide that only developers employed at the top five companies count as paid developers.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#58

Post by pyre »

acabal wrote: post #41
rbanffy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers You do realize you are criticizing the topmost user interface details of a theme of an extensively themable early release. I think those "spare-time developers" have been focusing their attention on the API changes that the Gnome 2 to 3 transition impose and the new concepts introduced by the shell. The core seems very good. What you co…

If they didn't want to invite criticism, they shouldn't have release screenshots of a product they don't want criticism of, complete with breathless captions about "beauty" and "usability." Furthermore, I have better things to do with my time than spend time mucking around with configuration files and theme settings. Back in high school I had the time and inclination, and in fact I did so; now that I run a business,…

  > If they didn't want to invite criticism,
If the only outlet for your criticism is Hacker News, then I would argue that it's not very constructive criticism. You're saying that criticism is what will make the product better, but that only works if your audience can directly affect the outcome (e.g. GNOME developers/contributors).

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#59

Post by yesimahuman »

cturner wrote: post #27
acabal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its probl…

I think there's no substitute for clued-in developers. Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process. I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document…

> but much yet less usable in the process

Based on what metrics and evidence? I think it does a good job making me more efficient.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#60

Post by joe_the_user »

rbanffy wrote: post #38
bouncingsoul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not criticizing truncation. You need to do it on long names. I'm saying it looks like the designers of the GNOME UI are using truncation as a quick fix for a flawed design. Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter: http://i.imgur.com/MN3Q2.png Notice how the tracking (spacing between letters) in the first item gets tightened to make it fit? It looks a little squished, but it's much preferable to reading d…

> Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter: Don't forget Apple (among others) has tons of silly patents regarding text rendering that Gnome developers have to program around while everybody else can just cross-license with their own silly little patents. It may be possible they simply cannot afford the risk of doing the obvious thing.

Could you clarify this?

Do you actually know that Gnome is actively "code around" some alleged patent violation?

Programming around any imaginable patent violation actually seems really bad, especially given that software patents aren't looking as strong as they once were. I vaguely Linus or someone saying it's better not to research existing patents, it limits your liability. But just on the principle of letting corporations covertly bully you, it seems bad. It seems much better to force the companies sue you and see what happens.

My googling shows Apple has a patent on the App-bar but there are plenty of App-bars out-there. Red-hat apparently was worried to remove a dock but the screen shots we see here clearly show something like a dock. But even thread discussing that situation sounded murky. Docky still seems to be distributed for example.

Apple has patent on "Open Type" but that also is used heavily in Linux.

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