The end of the nice GTK button • Hacker News Board

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#91

Post by lmm » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

traverseda wrote: post #69

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #41

--- Now one of the worst parts is that everywhere I only even hint at not completely loving the new libadwaita theme I instantly get shut down and disagreed with before I can even get the chance to give some feedback. Apparently not liking flat themes makes me a madman in this world. Why am I not allowed to even have opinions about the look of the operating system I'm using? --- But to be honest, isn't it one of the…

It's kind of cathartic watching this happen to a new generation of developers. They can't say I didn't warn them! Ultimately I think this will be quite good for QT/kde in the long term. Gnome/GTK gets a lot of corporate support, especially from red hat, but seeing the issues pop OS had with GTK makes me hopeful that more companies will adopt QT.

I've been hoping that for 20 years but it hasn't happened yet. It seemed like American companies always favoured GTK/GNOME (I guess because Qt/KDE development was more European?), even though Qt/KDE generally managed to do more with less. But I can appreciate that if you're aiming for the corporate market, customizability may be a downside.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#92

Post by amelius » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

The problem with buttons that have shadows (even subtle ones) is that you can't rotate the screen 180 degrees and have it look nice. This is a problem if you put your phone or tablet flat on the table and someone sits opposite to you and looks at the same screen.

Better to keep the design flat. It's also simpler.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#93

Post by jms55 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #49

Can I also mourn the loss of title bars as I carefully hunt for a spot to grab a window to move it?

You can grab any part of the headerbar to move the window - even buttons and other widgets. It won't trigger them, it will just move the window.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#94

Post by lmm » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:45 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #73

jabbany wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The devs and designers are all using 4k, 5k displays these days. Trying to use modern apps etc. on just "FHD" (1080p) displays is painful.

Over 2/3 of regular users are still using 1080p[1]. If your design looks bad on FHD then it looks bad to most people. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Right, but it looks good on the designer's screen. That's the issue.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#95

Post by layer8 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #76

> The only issue with it is that font rendering looks horrific, but that might just be my machine. This is because GTK4 enables pixel/scaling-independent fractional vertical positioning, even with hinting enabled. There's a long (somewhat ongoing) discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 , though I haven't followed the last few months of discussion. Even though GTK4 aims to achieve scale-indepen…

“Scale-independent layout” (layout that ignores pixel aliasing) really requires PPI over ~200, that is, more than most desktop monitors provide. We’re still just not there.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#96

Post by azornathogron » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

tomduncalf wrote: post #31

von_lohengramm wrote: post #5

The font rendering on that example of "the perfect button" is rather atrocious. It's kind of sad that Windows is (was?) the last bastion of serviceable font rendering.

Interesting, I always disliked Windows font rendering and much prefer the was MacOS renders fonts. I couldn’t explain why, but I know many graphic designers who say the same. I guess it’s a matter of taste!

This has been debated for decades. Joel Spolsky has a blog post about it from 2007.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-ant...

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#97

Post by baybal2 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #15

I agree 100% with the author, the old GTK button was gorgeous, it will be missed. > I have had to explain to people tons of times that the random word in the UI somewhere in an application is actually a button they can press to invoke an action. This is one of my biggest complaints with the super flat modern designs. Many widgets lost their skeuomorphic depth, which encoded a lot if visual information (the clickabili…

No post body was provided.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#98

Post by zozbot234 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #95

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #76

> The only issue with it is that font rendering looks horrific, but that might just be my machine. This is because GTK4 enables pixel/scaling-independent fractional vertical positioning, even with hinting enabled. There's a long (somewhat ongoing) discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 , though I haven't followed the last few months of discussion. Even though GTK4 aims to achieve scale-indepen…

“Scale-independent layout” (layout that ignores pixel aliasing) really requires PPI over ~200, that is, more than most desktop monitors provide. We’re still just not there.

You could do text hinting (snapping to the (sub-)pixel grid) after layout, based on some kind of auto-hinting heuristics. Arguably, this is needed anyway because text gets "laid out" all the time as part of advanced typesetting, including all sorts of complex microtypography that doesn't really play well with the old-fashioned "bitmap font" type of hinting.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#99

Post by ghosty141 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #15

I agree 100% with the author, the old GTK button was gorgeous, it will be missed. > I have had to explain to people tons of times that the random word in the UI somewhere in an application is actually a button they can press to invoke an action. This is one of my biggest complaints with the super flat modern designs. Many widgets lost their skeuomorphic depth, which encoded a lot if visual information (the clickabili…

I too hate the material design kind of flatness. For me, only apple somehow gets UI right (at least for me) and it feels very intuitive for me while also looking very good.

The new "flat" design that pops up everywhere sometimes just feels like a lazy version of UI design, where you basically don't need proper styles anymore and just make everything b/w with maybe a border here and there.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#100

Post by jms55 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

A lot of comments in this thread are negative. As a developer using GTK4 and libadwaita, and as a user that uses gnome, I really like the changes. GTK4 brings some much needed changes, and the major bugs like listview scrolling being broken or bad text rendering on non-hidpi displays suck, but both have people working on fixing them. Libadwaita is a huge improvement, and makes it way easier to build good apps.

As for themes, I quite like the new libadwaita theme, and prefer it to the default GTK theme. You're free to disagree, but you can't say your opinion is correct, nor can I.

Keep in mind that libadwaita is an optional library _specifically for gnome apps_. If you don't like gnome, don't use libadwaita. If you want the widgets from libadwaita, but don't like the styling, then either copy the code (it's open source, fork it!), or use libadwaita and disable the libadwaita stylesheet (and add styling for the widgets that aren't part of GTK).