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The end of the nice GTK button

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Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#21

Post by smoldesu »

naoqj wrote: post #6
malermeister wrote: post #3

libadwaita is very unfortunate in general and the zeal of the GNOME community has been very off-putting

Can you elaborate? Especially about the first part

They're probably referring to the functional regressions it made with it's first official release, and how it furthers the idea of GNOME/GTK lock-in. libadwaita has made it extremely difficult to package cross-platform desktop apps, especially while appearing native on different desktops (eg. adopting the native Breeze look on KDE while retaining the native Adwaita look on GNOME). The lack of this functionality at launch (and subsequent empty promises of a replacement) have rightfully left a bad taste in some people's mouth, particularly now that much of the GNOME leadership denies that this is a problem in the first place.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#22

Post by HeckFeck »

mholt wrote: post #7

The flat UI trend baffles me. The removal of text from icons and buttons baffles me. For example, in Windows 11 I spent close to a minute looking for "Rename" in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer. Turns out it's not there! It's been removed out of the flow of the list and put in the top of the right-click menu, behind a small, picture-only icon that I've never seen before. MacOS is guilty of this too: Buttons…

This is why I have reverted to the CLI whenever possible.

There's something deeply assuring knowing that I don't have to relearn my whole workflow every few months when the trends change. ls, grep, find, ps, htop will always be what they are. Even the Windows CLI is thankfully consistent.

All I want is to get work done the way I want, and I've found the CLI is increasingly the path of least resistance.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#23

Post by smoldesu »

MartijnBraam wrote: post #18
smoldesu wrote: post #4

All of this is pretty much how I feel on the matter, too. GTK3's interface was a really lovely blend of skeuomorphism and more abstract widgets that came together to make a really unique experience. Even if it didn't work in every context, I appreciated how well it worked for less complicated applications and making great-looking, device-agnostic GUIs. Cawbird was a wonderful native Twitter app made possible with GTK…

This is exactly how I feel about it. The sad thing is that if the whole gnome ecosystem burns down I'd have to use the alternatives that I like even less. I'm just not designing gtk4 apps untill it's actually better than gtk3

Definitely. Keep on trucking, I'm developing GTK3 apps right alongside you!

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#24

Post by duskwuff »

mholt wrote: post #14
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In macOS, you can actually right-click many header bars (like Finder) and choose "Icon and Text" instead of "Icon" for what shows.

I do this, but I do not want to do this. Also it looks funky. The padding is messed up and the text doesn't fit.

There's also an accessibility setting (under the "Display" section) for "Show toolbar button shapes".

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#25

Post by Nextgrid »

HeckFeck wrote: post #22
mholt wrote: post #7

The flat UI trend baffles me. The removal of text from icons and buttons baffles me. For example, in Windows 11 I spent close to a minute looking for "Rename" in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer. Turns out it's not there! It's been removed out of the flow of the list and put in the top of the right-click menu, behind a small, picture-only icon that I've never seen before. MacOS is guilty of this too: Buttons…

This is why I have reverted to the CLI whenever possible. There's something deeply assuring knowing that I don't have to relearn my whole workflow every few months when the trends change. ls, grep, find, ps, htop will always be what they are. Even the Windows CLI is thankfully consistent. All I want is to get work done the way I want, and I've found the CLI is increasingly the path of least resistance.

> ls, grep, find, ps, htop will always be what they are. Even the Windows CLI is thankfully consistent.

Those command-line tools don't have any "engagement" opportunities nor are there bloated teams of product managers & designers having to justify their salaries by reworking them for no good reason.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#26

Post by phendrenad2 »

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. (You can't break the back of modularity-induced fragmentation and make a consistent GUI without making a few people unhappy with the UI design that the majority chose).

That is Gnome. Gnome has become a top-down project that values consistency/coherency over modularity/theming. It's an extreme, and I suspect that they went too far, but with it comes a number of benefits, such as a unified visual style across all apps, and an easy to use internationalization/localization subsystem.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#27

Post by Gualdrapo »

naoqj wrote: post #6
malermeister wrote: post #3

libadwaita is very unfortunate in general and the zeal of the GNOME community has been very off-putting

Can you elaborate? Especially about the first part

I don't think adwaita is that bad, but rather feel like they _yet_ have to polish some small details.

Like the interline spacing on things, sometimes it feels inconsistent. KDE menus, for example, have a nice spacing - but GTK ones feel cramped. And those submenus that they place on things like the top-right menu on the panel have different line heights.

Some other third party apps, for example that mail client I tried the other day (it wasn't evolution, but I can't remember its name) had serious layout issues. libadwaita was supposed to fix those inconsistencies and make devs lifes happier, but...

And speaking of buttons and top right corners, I will never, ever get why they place the open/save/select dialog buttons in the top right corner of the dialog. Where you are used to find the 'close' button. Why?

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#28

Post by HeckFeck »

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…

I'm also really not sold on those new "tabs" which are just text with an underlined colour. It's low effort and dreadfully unclear. I can only vaguely guess what they are based on their upper placement, but what's to really distinguish that from a menu? or just a descriptive label?

I don't like saying this because I want Linux desktop apps to have every success, but these small and pointless frustrations kill my enthusiasm.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#29

Post by pmontra »

Wait ten years. New people will start working, old people will move on to other things. The new people will change stuff, mostly for the sake of it as it always happens, and one of the results will be less flat interfaces. Old people will be infuriated by the change. Very old people will rejoice but also complain that those UIs are not as good as the really old ones. New people will shrug them away and keep changing stuff mostly for the sake of it as it always happens.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#30

Post by simion314 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8

For everyone mad at at "Don't theme my apps," consider why developers are doing it. Getting complaints about how your app is broken because of an overzealous theme that is beyond your control sucks . And after 10 years of dealing with it, GNOME developers decided it was enough. And... I don't wholly agree, but at the same time, themes had a decade to get their act together and stop angering GNOME developers. They did…

But why Qt/KDE developers don't lose their minds ? Either GTK theming is broken or the GTK app developers are not using it correctly or GNOME devs are assholes and really.really want to force their branding and vision. The above OR is not exclusive so it could be all 3 things.
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