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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

#431

Post by hnlmorg »

fxtentacle wrote: post #374
Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

I still remember the good old days where keyboards had Function keys and apps would prominently display a F2 next to the save button, an F10 next to quit. Even for computer illiterate people, that made using keyboard shortcuts a bliss. Save was ALWAYS on F2 no matter what you did, so people would put physical stickers on their keyboard to make the F2 button say "Save" on the keycap.

What system was this? I've used every version of Windows (literally), DOS since the 80s, Macs since the 90s, Linux since the 90s, Atari ST, and several different 8-bit micros and I don't recall ever using F2 to save. I do believe your anecdote but it's completely escaped me what platform might have used F2.

Also worth noting that keyboards do still have function keys. In fact I use F2 as my `tmux` control prefix. :)

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#432

Post by jraph »

berkes wrote: post #415
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 is KDE these days? I abandoned KDE during the KDE-3 (edit: to 4) migration apocalypse, when nothing worked as it did before, or at all, and everything looked like it needed at least another year of refinement. Is this settled and past now? Is KDE still adament on making virtually every other pixel configurable?

KDE 3 was rock solid. They did break a lot of stuff when releasing KDE 4. That was very unstable / crashy. At that time I moved to Gnome 2, and moved back when Unity was shipped by default in Ubuntu. The late KDE 4.X releases were rock solid. I didn't like KDE 5 at first. A lot of things felt unfinished / not ready. but KDE 5 has been rock solid for years now, and from what I understand they have promised they would make more incremental changes from now on (so no more KDE 4.0-like disruptions). They are currently focusing on ironing out the small things instead of breaking stuff every month.

Now the world seems more mature: Cinnamon, KDE and The Ubuntu favor of Gnome seem to work very well (Each time I see Ubuntu Gnome I think "wow, that looks good!"). Xfce have been rock stable and reliable for years and years for people who like it. Still looks the same as when I discovered it 17 years ago. I've heard people like the current versions of Gnome and that the latest versions are better.

And yes of course everything is still highly customizable in KDE. There are people who make it look like old Windows, some who make it look like Mac and both work quite well. But you are not forced to customize, the default are top notch and that's what I use. They've been working on the settings center which was a mess and which is still not perfect, but it's gone to the point where it is one of the best I've seen. In comparison, the Windows' several setting centers are a huge mess and the Gnome settings are lacking, and you need to install Gnome Tweaks to have some useful stuff and now you have two settings panels.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#433

Post by dm319 »

While I'm here, what is wrong with menus? The ribbon interface needs me to learn what 100 symbols refer to, or else hover repeatedly to find what I'm after. I can read. Been doing it for a while.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#434

Post by pjmlp »

ho_schi wrote: post #380
linguae wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. It's like we're back to the MS-DOS era where every application had its own interface and you had to learn each application's way of performing tasks. macOS and to a lesser extent Windows prided themselves on consistency across applications. But this required developers to voluntarily conform to those platform's guidelines, and in the case of Windows, the goal of consistency was challenged by (1)…

I've never seen any consistency MS-DOS, Win9x and WinNT. The worst offender is Microsoft itself with the file-browser, settings and office-suits. They don't maintain and evolve their toolkit, they just add new ones and recommend to use them instead: Win32: Win32, Windows Forms, WPF, MAUI, UWP, WTL, WinUI, MFC and probably more Gtk: Gtk+, Gtk2+, Gtk3+, Gtk4 Qt: Qt1, Qt2, Qt3, Qt4, Qt5, Qt6 Gtk and Qt didn't just maint…

The big difference is that with any of the Windows toolkits, an application written on their heyday will keep working today, good luck doing the same with any Linux toolkit.

Also only Qt is comparable in the full stack experience offered by Windows frameworks (and MacOS/Android/iOS/...), with the caveat it is anyway cross platform and not Linux specific.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#435

Post by aitchnyu »

Derbasti wrote: post #348
Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

> In modern Windows, press Win-key and start to type, oops, it missed the first keypresses, presented the completely wrong results and made a mess of your workflow. The worst offender is the login prompt. In Gnome, from the lock screen, I simply start typing my password. As soon as I type the first letter of the password, the password prompt appears, and when I'm done I hit enter and it unlocks. On Windows, the first…

When I log into a Win 10 virtual desktop with 1024*768, the login form with 2 text fields and a button gets shoved into a box and I have to scroll down to see it fully.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#436

Post by pjmlp »

hulitu wrote: post #378
linguae wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. It's like we're back to the MS-DOS era where every application had its own interface and you had to learn each application's way of performing tasks. macOS and to a lesser extent Windows prided themselves on consistency across applications. But this required developers to voluntarily conform to those platform's guidelines, and in the case of Windows, the goal of consistency was challenged by (1)…

If you look at Windows 1.0 GUI and Windows 10 UI they look verry similar. Makes you think what Microsoft was doing all these years.

Internal political fights between DevDiv and WinDev.

If you are aware that DevDiv controls managed languages, and WinDev Windows/C++, it becomes quite clear why the back and forth between those UI frameworks, given who happens to be on top on a specific time.

And now there is Azure + WebUIs to add up to those resource fighting, oh well.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#437

Post by dm319 »

jraph wrote: post #432
berkes wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is KDE these days? I abandoned KDE during the KDE-3 (edit: to 4) migration apocalypse, when nothing worked as it did before, or at all, and everything looked like it needed at least another year of refinement. Is this settled and past now? Is KDE still adament on making virtually every other pixel configurable?

KDE 3 was rock solid. They did break a lot of stuff when releasing KDE 4. That was very unstable / crashy. At that time I moved to Gnome 2, and moved back when Unity was shipped by default in Ubuntu. The late KDE 4.X releases were rock solid. I didn't like KDE 5 at first. A lot of things felt unfinished / not ready. but KDE 5 has been rock solid for years now, and from what I understand they have promised they would…

Don't forget MATE. It got redone in GTK3, and it is terrific.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#438

Post by hulitu »

dm319 wrote: post #430
Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

Goodness the start bar on Windows. For something that is meant to be a key part of both the mouse and the keyboard workflow, how can it be so slow? My work computers can hang for so long on it, that it is quicker to find the application shortcut on the desktop.

Maybe because telemetry :).

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#439

Post by watwut »

bacheaul wrote: post #373
lelanthran wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there are a lot of behaviors that are not functioning well. The worst of which are dropdowns, lists or menus that inserts new items right over where your mouse is so that you accidentally click on the wrong thing. All browsers do this for the dropdown that appears when typing in the URL bar. I type a few letters, see the site I want is 3 down in the dropdown, hit the down arrow three times and press enter, only…

Oh, don't get me started... MS Teams has been doing this recently at work. Everyone is pinning messages, because when you hover over the Edit menu item for a message and go to click it, two more menu items load asynchronously below it, and switch the Edit button out for a Pin Message button right when you go to click it. And it's not even consistently like that, just sometimes. It's infuriating...

Personally what I hate the most is heart icon randomly suddenly appearing exactly where I wanted to click resulting in me adding hearth icons to completely nonsensical messages.

Teams are the worst.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#440

Post by tzot »

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.

You sansed the serif? What about the DPI-t?
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