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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

#151

Post by malermeister »

jraph wrote: post #89

It seems like KDE and Plasma is the place where look and feel is constantly but incrementally refined; we've been saved from this flat design trend so far and things keep looking pleasant and modern and being usable. We know they care, and have great attention to details because that's documented weekly [1]. I find the Breeze theme really well done and its GTK port, Brise, is also very nice, to the point Gnome looks…

How's KDE/Plasma with touch these days? I'm running GNOME on my Surface right now because it does pretty well with both Desktop and Tablet modes, but I'm pretty unhappy with the at times patronizing philosophy behind the project.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#152

Post by Flankk »

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…

Every screenshot in this blog post showcases dated design paradigms. Flat UI was popularized around the release of Windows 10 in 2015. When I go through dribbble I see a lot of mediocre and copycat design. Design is about more than copying what Apple is doing. You're not going to get style from fat guys with ponytails.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#153

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#154

Post by worg »

jeroenhd wrote: post #61
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?

For what it's worth, I recently discovered that I can move windows on GNOME by holding down the Windows/super key and dragging. It's a small thing but it's actually quite nice.

that has been the case in gnome since the 2.x days

edit: #dyac

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#155

Post by lwkl »

capableweb wrote: post #105
woah wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inherently, good design requires top down authority to force a consistent look, and implementing it requires a bunch of programmers to spend time on boring work. That just doesn't work well in open source where people only want to work on their own thing, sometimes, and in their own way.

Same could be same about good software design (as in programming), but we've found to design well written software before in a open source manner, I'm sure we could (if we focus on it) figure out something for UI/UX design as well that works in a open source context. For example, style guides written and enforced by a small team can allow open contributions for the UI design. I think it's mostly that not many have tr…

And look at how these projects are organized. Most of the time it's pretty much top-down with a. It's why we have the term BDFL.

> good software design (as in programming)

That's the second problem. Most programmers probably know about about how good software design works, but have poor taste and prefer designs that aren't suitable for software that is to be used by non-programmers that want sane defaults that work and don't overwhelm them.

Just look at the theming debate. People in software developer forums are mad about it. Most users probably don't even know it exists. They just want settings and a UI that's simple enough for them to understand and allow for some basic settings.

So you would have to force volunteers to implement a design that they feel is bad. And you see how a lot of people react to it in the Gnome project where people leave because of it. But at the same time Gnome is a good example of how to do UI/UX for a big open source software project (even if you don't agree with their design decisions).

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#156

Post by j1elo »

> I feel like the designers of this new theme have never sit down with anyone who's not a "techie" to explain to them how to use a computer.

The designers of this new "everything is flat and devoid of visual hinting" trends are maybe, at most, enthusiast, but not professional designers. I don't mean professional in the "hired for work" sense, but in the "really has the knowledge and has studied the psychology behind what makes a good UI design for human beings". Otherwise, nobody with solid background, experience, and/or scientific studies in their hands would in their right mind sketch the current shape of mindless "modern" UIs on a paper and feel like that's a very well thought out work right there.

And here I'm bashing not only OSS designers that think a bland and unclear design is the best that can be done, but also the same for designers of big companies that get paid for their work. Althought ironically now that I think of it, maybe the latter are somewhat less to blame, knowing how the corporate world works and knowing that they possibly don't agree with the results but their boss insists on how all buttons should lack any depth. So in the sense of not having a pushy boss with an agenda to fullfill... yeah it seems to me that OSS designers are acting worse by voluntarily pushing these supposedly "better", but almost quite objetively worse designs, into users' throats.

/rant

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#157

Post by malermeister »

jeroenhd wrote: post #78
MereInterest wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's definitely something. Implying that tinkering with the low level aspects of a system are acceptable, but don't you dare apply a different stylesheet, because adjusting colors is delicate work that shouldn't ever be done by anybody but the developer.

I agree with the key points though, which is that distros need to stop messing with themes unless they can validate that all applications work with custom themes. They bear no ill will against users who download or make their own theme.

They might not bear any ill will, but they don't mind them being collateral damage either.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#158

Post by nine_k »

lmm wrote: post #91
traverseda wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that Red Hat (now part of freaking IBM) has always been oriented to big corporations, knows how to speak their language, and is an obvious choice for corporate Linux support. If you're already in bed with RH on the server front, it makes obvious business sense to also follow them on the (much, much smaller) desktop front. Since RH basically owns Gnome development (I know, I know), they impressvely used it as a lever to push systemd adoption, for instance: major distros had to switch to it not (solely) on its merits, but because they could not drop Gnome support.

KDE does not seem to have an equivalent behemoth behind them, even though Qt enjoys a lot of heavyweight corporate support.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#160

Post by calvinmorrison »

Sunspark wrote: post #81
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…

The flatness of some UIs along with the removal of some visual cues has happened that I have tapped on things that aren't actually a button thinking that they might be one. When I make my own apps one day, I am going to ignore design fads and only make intuitive interfaces.

we started using Full Story at work. It tracks clicks on non clickable items. It is staggering that this is even a problem. Having to explain to people that links and buttons and radio boxes and checkboxes should look uniform has gone the way of the dodo and now we must instead have people clicking random items to hope something happens.
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