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The end of the nice GTK button

blog.brixit.nl

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Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#121

Post by zozbot234 »

jchw wrote: post #106
layer8 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

It’s going to be a bloody mess for a long time, because the choices for how to handle resolution independence are all inherently filled with compromise. With font rendering, I think there is hope. Horizontal subpixel positioning with vertical hinting seems like a good tradeoff to me. Grid fitting vertically is not too jarring, and grid fitting horizontally to subpixels instead of pixels looks pretty good too, on low…

> For example, if you want a crisp 1px border on 96 dpi, you could specify it to be a 1px border at 96 dpi… but then what happens at 1.5x or 1.75x scale?

The border width should get snapped to the physical (sub-)pixel resolution as part of rendering. Typically, this should come with changes in contrast too, such that if a line is forced to become thinner it also gets drawn with higher contrast wrt. the surroundings, and vice versa. All of this stuff can be made to work.

Also, if you are forced to render a canvas at a resampled resolution because existing APIs give you no other choice, at least do it right using a proper Lanczos-style resampling. This might end up with a quaint "watercolor" effect but guess what, that's a lot better than a blurry, eye-fatiguing mess.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#122

Post by eptcyka »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #55
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 spend far too long in GTK apps looking for the right menu to do basic stuff. It's like someone once saw an iPad from across a room and tried to implement what they remembered of it.

Funny, I usually have the same opinion of iOS user interfaces.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#123

Post by userbinator »

warning26 wrote: post #113
flukus wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So basically the new GTK is iOS but without the professional designers behind it. Professional designers seem to be the ones creating these problems. Back when it was just programmers you could tell a button was a button, a tab was a tab and we didn't hide basic functionality behind a swipe gesture or long press that users were supposed to just know. Now everything is pretty but harder to use.

> Back when it was just programmers you could tell a button was a button, a tab was a tab and we didn't hide basic functionality behind a swipe gesture or long press that users were supposed to just know. Keep in mind that programmers also gave us this: http://www.martin-achern.de/wgetgui/images/linux_wgetgui.jpg People across all disciplines are capable of making poor design choices

Keep in mind that programmers also gave us this

You're basically proving the point. That is so much clearer and obvious to use than the screenshots in the original article, and it doesn't treat you like an idiot.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#124

Post by RachelF »

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 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.

Exactly this. I often help others use computers and phones. In the old days it was easy to see what could be clicked. Now input and output look the same. It makes it harder to use.

In many ways it is a victory of style over substance - UI's are now designed by the same crowd who designs high fashion, that is clothes not designed to be worn but to be gawked at.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#125

Post by azinman2 »

capableweb wrote: post #72
azinman2 wrote: post #42

So basically the new GTK is iOS but without the professional designers behind it. What I cannot understand is how Canonical, Red Hat, or some rich SV person hasn’t thrown money at the problem and hired a big wig design firm or person to overhaul it all. Johnny Ive is now even available (if he’d take the project). But even going thru a site like dribbble there are so many amazing designers out there. To me it would be…

Easy for someone who works at Apple to say "just throw money at the problem" while there is so much more to consider. Design as a workflow for Open Source design (as in UI/UX) hasn't even been worked on that much. Ideally, open source contributors work on projects because they care about it, and want to improve it. I'm not sure how many designers are using GTK applications day-to-day to care enough about it to start…

As I mentioned before, Canonical and Red Hat have money and could afford proper designers. Programmers are expensive as well, and they have plenty of those on staff.

Someone is putting together standard HIGs for Gnome, writing these standard themes, designing the base apps, etc. So you can't just say it's all decentralized and so there's no hope -- there's a ton of collaboration and top-down work happening with Gnome. Pulling in great UX/UI design talent should be prioritized.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#127

Post by azinman2 »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #117
azinman2 wrote: post #42

So basically the new GTK is iOS but without the professional designers behind it. What I cannot understand is how Canonical, Red Hat, or some rich SV person hasn’t thrown money at the problem and hired a big wig design firm or person to overhaul it all. Johnny Ive is now even available (if he’d take the project). But even going thru a site like dribbble there are so many amazing designers out there. To me it would be…

I think the problem Gnome, and Microsoft, have is they keep throwing money at designers. So designers keep making designs for the sake of designing. They should stop designing, stick to the design they already have and only do incremental updates when new widgets come out.

It's not like everything was perfect in the past and so we're done. Far from it.

Even beyond that, the world is changing. New needs, new expectations, new styles in design. Just like we wouldn't expect cars to be frozen in time in the 1950s, we shouldn't expect UI/UX to be either.

Linux DE's have never had a particularly well thought out, well designed look. There's been a lot of themes that people create to mimic other commercial systems out there, but not a lot of very high quality original work going on. Yet we can see plenty of good work technologically. For a long time when it was largely grey beards most people didn't mind so much, but now people expect good design across all products. The standards have risen, and the FOSS world should meet that challenge head on.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#128

Post by eternityforest »

Flat design is pretty awful. It really does seem to be popular because it's the minimum possible amount of design.

Skeuomorphism definitely is harder to get right and different elements can clash. But that's less of an issue when you're making one unified theme for all.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#129

Post by eternityforest »

dheera wrote: post #47
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…

UIs go through 3D and 2D in phases. Windows 2.0 - 3.1: 2D Windows 95 - 7: 3D Windows 8 - 10: 2D MacOS 6 - 7: 2D MacOS 8 - 10: 3D MacOS 11: 2D As a side point, I predict Sheriff and Sans-Sheriff fonts to also go into similar phases too though over a longer time scale. We're in a very long Sans-Sheriff phase now but I think Sheriff will be "in" in 20 years.

The Serif Sheriff wants you in jail if you use Serif these days

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#130

Post by userbinator »

> TASKS WILL APPEAR HERE

Another one of those things that irritates me about "modern" design --- instead of showing an empty list, which would've been obvious that it was empty by having subtle cues like gridlines (also now disappeared by this trend), it decides to treat you like an idiot and show a giant banner stating what should be obvious. The "Add Tasks" button probably disappears after you make the list non-empty, and just looking at that UI, I'm not sure where the "normal" one is. But I guess it gave a designer an excuse to create some more bland Corporate Memphis art?

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