The end of the nice GTK button

Not sure what you mean here - both MacOS and Windows have icons in the system tray for background applications and it's been that way since before Android was a thing.

Windows does hide excessive icons, which MacOS doesn't do - it's a great way to hide running the pre-installed Skype and Teams at the same time :laugh:

I should preface that I love Gnome and am excited by the future. My criticisms come from a place where I want to see it be the best experience possible on desktop, and the obvious choice when it comes to choice of DE.

> there's an extension for that

Yeah this is fair, sadly it's not a satisfying solution. Extensions are often not supported on the latest version of Gnome for some time and even then, there's an issue of discoverability for both experienced and new users.

I understand the desire for customizability, but I'd prefer my desktop environment come out of the box tailored to facilitate a desktop experience.

> https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/

I am happy there is an alternative however this has the side effect of removing the "Hit the super key then type a search query" workflow. Ironically, an actual application menu is nearly entirely useless for me outside of niche cases. I have been using start menu search and spotlight for years at this point - gnome's activities overlay is just that with extra animations.

> I rarely have to do this (for me it's almost always IDE, Terminal, Browser), but "alt-tab then escape"

This is exactly how I use my desktop too.

In MacOS I used virtual desktops so heavily to organise this and it was an _incredible_ workflow.

Monitor 1, desktop 1 is terminal, desktop 2 is IDE. Monitor 2 desktop 1 is debugging browser, monitor 2 is slack, music and misc. Flicking between the desktops, everything is positioned exactly where I want it to be and there is no guessing what is going to be shown.

I only started using Alt+Tab after coming back to Windows and now again on Gnome. Alt tab is a bit too guess-y for my taste. If you have multiple windows of the same type (e.g. browser and seperate browser debugger) open, what does Alt-Tab open?

In Gnome, rather than using virtual desktops, I hit the super key and pick the application out of the application mosaic because it's deterministic and faster than Alt-Tab

> I am not sure what this means

Swipe down from the top left and you have applications, swipe down from the top right and you have quick settings. Clock is in the center. The elements are responsive. It looks and functions like the top bar for a mobile device.

The top bar doesn't have application shortcuts, it doesn't show you active background applications.

If you look at the effort that all desktop experiences have made to make their top bar/desktop bar useful, you will see distinct differences when compared to mobile operating systems that have to be cognizant of their use of space.

MacOS has a global menu, taskbar tray, taskbar add-ons (for cpu usage, international clocks, etc) and applications are opened via spotlight (Albert) search.

Windows has shortcuts, a start menu with search, and a taskbar tray, along with lots of options to administer the computer when you right click the start bar.

Gnome offers a horizontally space efficient mobile-optimised top bar and a full screen, mobile style application picker. Application search and the open apps mosaic are the saving factors of it

I never used the podcasts app before but just gave it a try. I can't seem to reproduce what you're describing. On the top-level pages ("Listen Now" and "Browse"), only the purple play button plays the podcast for me, clicking the purple text (the duration of the podcast) does nothing, and everything else opens the detail view for the podcast. Pictures always open detail views. What version of iOS are you on? I'm on 15.3.1.

I should have addressed the original article. As a sibling commenter mentioned, I didn't say all flat designs are good, quite the opposite. That to-do list design is very mediocre.

A desktop to-do list app that I think is super well done is Reminders on MacOS. Its basic functionality is immediately intuitive, and it gives love to power users too with its secret ability to parse natural English (e.g. "laundry at 9") for adding notification times.

>I always look forward to condescending GNOME apologists to reply to my comments.

Stop. This is nonsense and adds nothing to the discussion, it's like if I started off immediately dismissing you as a "GTK3 apologist" or something like that. If you have a history of getting hostile replies, your confrontational attitude is directly the reason why, and it's something only you have the power to change.

>Then why was it working fine in GTK3? Sounds to me like someone made a breaking change, and didn't anticipate the consequences.

Yes, that's what happened. The whole renderer was changed to a hardware accelerated one.

>The solution is to roll things back

That's not possible because the renderer touches the entire project. It's probably the main feature of GTK4.

>Unfortunately, the GNOME developers are more interested in scorching earth than they are in maintaining a well-made desktop.

Please avoid these comments. This is a pretty meaningless generalization and adds nothing to the discussion. Just like any large project, there are some GNOME developers that focus on new features and some that focus on maintenance.

>Oh, and it's not because it's a "hard issue" to fix

No, this is extremely wrong. The issue actually is that hard. If you are a font rendering expert and you believe the issue is easy to fix, then please submit your own PR. I'll be the first in line to try it if you do.

>There is not a single application written with GTK3 that can stop me from changing it's theme. I'm sorry if you disagree, but that's just an outright lie (I say this as someone who actually writes GTK3 code).

No, this is also extremely wrong. Any external configuration method you use, a GTK3 application can override it or disable it. I'm not disagreeing and this isn't a lie, this is an actual fact of the toolkit. Feel free to list any of them and I'll explain how it can be trivially disabled.

>...and I can override it again.

I'm sorry, now it sounds like you're agreeing with me.

>Correction, it doesn't help you.

No, this has nothing to do with me. You sound like you were interested exploring GTK4 at some point, if you're still interested, then you'll eventually have to take steps to address the issues. If you don't want those then I don't see what your issue is, your original comment seems to be making assertions about nothing in that case.

>That seems to be a recurring trend when negotiating with GNOME/GTK developers.

This sentence right here illustrates the main mistake you've made. GTK is an open source project, by choosing to use it you're not entering in any "negotiation" with anybody. It's a take it or leave it proposition, and that's the way it's always been.

>I'm perfectly satisfied taking matters into my own hands since they'll ignore me anyways.

In the long run, that approach isn't sustainable. I find that most open source projects including GTK or Qt or any of those other toolkits won't ignore you if you have something useful to add or can take real steps towards correcting the issues that you're having. But being combative and approaching everything as a "negotiation" is the exact wrong thing to do and is probably the root cause if you find yourself getting ignored. Don't do that. You are making everything worse for yourself.

>What features are there, right now?

As previously mentioned, there is the hardware renderer with improved performance. There is also the multimedia framework and the new, faster list models. Those are the big features that I know of. It's absolutely fine if you don't want any of those, by all means stay on GTK3. But if you do want those eventually, then you'll need a plan to migrate.

>ignoring everyone who doesn't throw away their current workflow to live in GNOME-land

What I was saying is that those people don't have to affect you. You can use GTK3 or GTK4 or whatever without dealing with them.

>Worse text rendering? Less accessibility features? More extreme, abrasive maintainers and fewer people writing code? A worse native experience, more middleware and less software freedom? Less native packaging? More Flatpak bloat? Worse touchscreen compatibility and an increasingly fractured codebase? More broken custom widgets that don't adhere to the GNOME HIG? An uglier, flatter overall design philosophy? Militant users and developers who hunt people down when they express their feelings about software they used to use on Hacker News?

To hit this in order: The old text rendering can be restored with a flag. The accessibility is actually improved because of the removal of Atk which had some major issues. The maintainers are the same people and it's about the same amount of people writing code. There isn't any more middleware than GTK3. The "software freedom" is the same, it has the same license. Nothing has changed with native packaging, Flatpak is completely optional. The touchscreen compatibility has actually gotten better. The situation with custom widgets hasn't changed from GTK3. The design philosophy in GTK itself hasn't changed, that only affects libadwaita. I'm happy for you to express your feelings but this whole paragraph and some of your previous comment are unhinged and unreasonable.

>Unless you start acknowledging the pragmatic reality of GTK's end-users, GNOME will continue to hemorrhage maintainers and stir up unnecessary and counterproductive drama for the sake of a few people's ego.

This kind of sounds like a threat, you should delete your comment or reword this. It's also pretty unhinged and unprofessional. Also you appear to be under the false impression that I'm a GNOME or GTK developer. I'm just another app developer, in the same boat as you.