21–30 of 79 posts
Ubuntu's decision to move to Unity made me go back to Debian for GNOME/Clearlooks for the first time in a while, but what am I going to do now with the way GNOME 3 looks?
Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked. 1. How am I supposed to know what these icons do? Why even title them? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.p... 2. Eight of the eleven icons in the dock have significant title clipping. Did no one notice this? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw…
I'm amazed by how dumb and severe the icon label truncation is. That screams to me that it was designed without testing it with real content. How can anyone see Network C…, Network P…, Network P… in the preference panel and not wonder if the truncation is too agressive?
In a nutshell: it's more of an introduction to GNOME Shell, which is just one part of GNOME3. It's going to be used by default, by old interface will still be available for those who want it. The UX is probably the least finished part yet, since a massive amount of work first went in invisible improvements for v3 (such as gobject-introspection).
Something the HN crowd will like: the Shell is written in JavaScript, has bindings to low-level libraries using gobject-introspection, uses JS libraries like jQuery, and comes with its own FireBug-like tool for inspection and modification at runtime. Since most of the look&feel is done in JS, you can just jump right in and hack left and right. One of most impressive demos at GUADEC2010 had a couple of JS oneliners doing various special effects on the desktop. Also, the whole thing is themeable in CSS, which is a lot nicer than doing gtkstyle theming.
A lot of effort has gone into this; it's a shame to see so many disparaging posts here. I think the developers should be applauded for their work. Between this and Ubuntu's plans to adopt Wayland in place of X, there are some interesting times ahead for Linux on the desktop. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.
Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked. 1. How am I supposed to know what these icons do? Why even title them? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.p... 2. Eight of the eleven icons in the dock have significant title clipping. Did no one notice this? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw…
People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its probl…
Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process.
I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document and the dropdown menu headings.
Wrote a long comment and then the web bug ate it :-( In a nutshell: it's more of an introduction to GNOME Shell, which is just one part of GNOME3. It's going to be used by default, by old interface will still be available for those who want it. The UX is probably the least finished part yet, since a massive amount of work first went in invisible improvements for v3 (such as gobject-introspection). Something the HN cr…
Does this mean the ludicrously generous padding will be as easy to change as
html * { padding: 2px!important; }
Wrote a long comment and then the web bug ate it :-( In a nutshell: it's more of an introduction to GNOME Shell, which is just one part of GNOME3. It's going to be used by default, by old interface will still be available for those who want it. The UX is probably the least finished part yet, since a massive amount of work first went in invisible improvements for v3 (such as gobject-introspection). Something the HN cr…
> Also, the whole thing is themeable in CSS Does this mean the ludicrously generous padding will be as easy to change as html * { padding: 2px!important; } That would make me very happy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, the whole thing is themeable in CSS Does this mean the ludicrously generous padding will be as easy to change as html * { padding: 2px!important; } That would make me very happy.
Well, HTML/DOM is not used, but you should be able to do something of the sorts to the UI elements, yeah.