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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

#531

Post by account42 »

drdec wrote: post #519
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of one of my personal bugaboos, which seems especially bad in Microsoft Windows: windows that spawn child windows that require input focus, but that don’t grab focus leaving you typing into nothing at all! Truly its crazy making.

IMHO, a worse practice is when you are happily typing along and the system throws up a dialog randomly, grabbing the focus and thereby "pressing" one of the buttons when you thought you were typing. Who knows what you just agreed to.

I'm glad that KDE has options to prevent that: https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kwin/kcontrol/windowbehaviour...

Generally if you were interacting with the computer then whatever new thing should get focus iff its appearance was a direct result of your current interaction.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#532

Post by totalkrill »

grishka wrote: post #269
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…

Borderless buttons to have the right to exist, but you should be very careful with their use. For example, take this UI I made recently: https://mastodon.social/@grishka/107998100334356147 , 2nd screenshot. The button to decline invitation looks like a link (same color) and it's next to a real button. No one would ever get confused by this, it's pretty clear it's clickable. But a black word in a larger font among bla…

Like so many other pointed out, this is wrong, I got confused, it looks like a link, would that get me to some kind of unsubscribe page? is it phising?

buttons should be actions, links should be directions,

directions would take me somewhere, actions would has an effect and consequence. That you think this is okay, and assume no-one would ever be confused by this. Is clearly an issue in the industry at large

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#533

Post by account42 »

drdec wrote: post #520
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are ludicrously fast nowadays. Games are capable of doing a whole lot of shit in <16ms consistently while responding to user input, so I don't buy this "it's doing a lot!" argument, it is coded badly.

I imagine the hold up is that it is connecting to an external service.

Some games also connect to an external service.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#534

Post by inetknght »

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…

> 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.

Congratulations! You were able to recognize that it's a _login screen_ without seeing that there's a hidden password field.

The first time I booted to Gnome I waited damn near ten minutes for it to tell me it's ready for my login before I decided to start typing things to see if it was stuck.

It's _not_ intuitive.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#535

Post by zozbot234 »

totalkrill wrote: post #532
grishka wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borderless buttons to have the right to exist, but you should be very careful with their use. For example, take this UI I made recently: https://mastodon.social/@grishka/107998100334356147 , 2nd screenshot. The button to decline invitation looks like a link (same color) and it's next to a real button. No one would ever get confused by this, it's pretty clear it's clickable. But a black word in a larger font among bla…

Like so many other pointed out, this is wrong, I got confused, it looks like a link, would that get me to some kind of unsubscribe page? is it phising? buttons should be actions, links should be directions, directions would take me somewhere, actions would has an effect and consequence. That you think this is okay, and assume no-one would ever be confused by this. Is clearly an issue in the industry at large

Perhaps online, but links in a GUI dialog box are often actions too.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#536

Post by samtheDamned »

rezonant wrote: post #292
happymellon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a dumpster of features, you have no idea what you'll find in there. Has someone hidden the zoom buttons in there? How about print? Perhaps that's also where save is, or tab colour? Most things in the hamburger menu are completely unrelated but exist for the removal of context. Button outlines so you have no idea what you can and cannot click on as well, which is mentioned in the fine article, are all modern design…

So on desktop applications, I assume you prefer all your functions to be on toolbars, and you have similar disdain whenever you encounter a File menu? I guess if there's a lot of functions, you probably need some tabs on your toolbar- so the Office Ribbon interface is idyllic I assume?

The ribbon menu was actually a step in the right direction for desktop only UI paradigm

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#537

Post by WayToDoor »

andai wrote: post #530
fxtentacle wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the main reasons why I switched from XCode to CLion. XCode lost keystrokes, which drove me crazy. The other thing was that I could reliably type faster than XCode could display the letters, which made me feel like I'm drunk. CLion seems to be quite excellent at recording and replaying everything, including stuff I type while the auto-completion is loading. Plus it has a really fast key to screen loop.

JetBrains did a lot of work to reduce typing latency of their IDEs: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-la... As an aside, I find it amusing that more latency is introduced by a USB keyboard than existed in an entire 80's computer (from keypress to rendering on screen). See also: Carmack's rant about how it takes longer to put a pixel on the screen than ping across the Atlantic.

Link to the rent https://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-fa...

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#538

Post by phkahler »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #169
phkahler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's also an accessibility setting (under the "Display" section) for "Show toolbar button shapes". Fascinating. Sounds like if you can't read the mind of the desinger you must have a disability. What a great attitude :-p

1. Accommodating disabled people is in no way an insult. 2. Being disabled is a normal fact of life, also not an insult. 3. Accessibility affordances are not only for disabled people. Lots of people who wouldn’t identify as disabled routinely and gladly use a wide variety of accessibility features. 4. Having difficulty identifying actionable elements like buttons isn’t about reading anyone’s mind, and it isn’t a univ…

1. Accommodating disabled people is in no way an insult.

No, but treating non-disabled people as disabled could be. Just like offering help to some disabled people triggers them.

I was going to respond to these numbered points in turn, but that'd be silly. My point is that having basic (previously standard) UI cues like buttons is important and stuffing that option anywhere is a poor choice. To put it under the accessibility options can (if we're even a tiny bit snarky) be seen as an insult - possibly to disabled people as well since it lumps a simple standard usability thing in with stuff designed for people with actual challenges.

It's also not cool for them to make critical UI cues an option when they also take away themes which are the ultimate option.

Ultimately they have given no valid reason to make so many things look the same when they used to be visually (and functionally) distinct.

Sorry for the trigger, I didn't mean any insult to anyone other than the UI designers.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#539

Post by imglorp »

audidude wrote: post #301
imglorp wrote: post #181

I may be alone here, but maybe there are mountains of functionality never tackled in Gnome. Basic things like trackpad gestures are just now arriving for example. Meanwhile, the visual design has been hashed over and over: I've lost count. Why is L&F consistently prioritized over basic capabilities?

> Basic things like trackpad gestures are just now arriving for example. All they had to do was go fix the input drivers, the user-space library to communicate them, the compositors to be able to mediate gestures, the toolkits to process them, the X11 server extensions, wayland protocols, etc... One of the biggest problems in this is that you can't just fix one input driver. You have to go fix them all so that the ex…

Oh yeah, I get it, there's a ton of work there. And I am grateful to everyone touching Gnome over the last 2 decades. I have even supported the trackpad fellow. I'm just asking where the developer attention cycles are being spent.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#540

Post by thrower123 »

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…

> today only work in some super old apps like Notepad.

Old applications that actually follow the platform UX and accessibility guidelines

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