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Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

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Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#21
In no particular order, running arch with gnome and trying to reproduce the author's complaints:

- List view and view options buttons, while combined, have a visually distinct hover state, highlighting each half of the button on hover, and making it very obvious (at least to me, as a 35 year old power user) that they are different. (you can see this in his screenshots). Perhaps the author has visual issues and contrast is an issue? If so - agreed, perhaps my largest complaint with gnome is that contrast is low by default in the light view.

- Author complains that the recent and starred sections in the left nav have tooltips that are duplicative. No argument... except... he conveniently leaves out that for the vast majority of the default items (Downloads, Documents, Home, Music, Videos, etc) it shows the exact system path of that shortcut.

Compared to the shenannigans that MSFT is playing with things like onedrive - it's delightful that the system paths are displayed there. I am never confused by where a shortcut actually lives. The only duplicative items are items that don't have a path (they are internal groupings in files, like recent)

- I simply cannot reproduce not being able to get the path bar in edit state by clicking. I'm on a different distro - so maybe this is a debian thing? Single click or tap on the path display always opens the text editor for me. No shortcuts required.

- Shortcuts lists the keyboard shortcut for shortcuts for me in the dropdown menu. I have honestly never cared to check for it before, so maybe this is a valid complaint about an older version still in debian?

- He's completely right: Search in the files shortcuts menu sucks. It misses a lot of keywords that it shouldn't.

- For the scrollbar... come on man, at least try the thing that is easy. Yes - the scrollbar visually enlarges when you mouse over it, and yes - this leaves your mouse visually pointing at some new padding. That padding works for scrolling just fine (seriously - just complete the action you were intending, it works...) So he is very incorrect with this "meaning that my mouse pointer is now pointing at... nothing. Thanks, Gnomebama." It's pointing at the scrollbar and it works just fine.

Better yet - don't ever click and drag the scrollbar to scroll. It's... not the done thing with the new kids these days. Use your fingers (gestures) or use the mousewheel. The scrollbar is a visual marker for progress and for quick jumps. I am also on team "Show me the scrollbars all the time!" but I understand the goal of returning real estate on limited viewports.

---

I have a TON of complaints about gnome, but these just feel... forced. Made worse by the fact the author admits he's run a bunch of customization in the console to fix his "solid color desktop" stuff first (I'm suspicious of whether he broke his own path bar... I use it all the time, and I don't ever remember it not just being a click away to edit, even 5+ years back).

This is the kind of thing I appreciate that the Gnome team mostly ignores.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#22
post #6
post #3

I don't use Gnome since the days of version 2, which was really nice and friendly. But I was impressed by how well the latest iteration works in a tablet. That's a great advantage, because it's the same UI as a desktop. Plus, they have made sure all core applications work well using a touch UI.

From the article's summary: > Some common features are only accessible - and discoverable - through keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts listing is non-interactive, modal, and incurs a substantial mental context switch.

He's just wrong though. Clicking anywhere on the bar immediately turns on the edit for me (and has for years).

So either debian is turning on some odd defaults (maybe? It's been a long time since I used debian with a DE).

Or... (and this is my guess) he mucked around running commands he didn't understand trying to fix his "solid color desktop" issue and broke it himeself. I'm very suspicious of the lack of anti-aliasing in his screenshots as well.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#23
post #20
post #17

Glad to see someone go deep on this in a way that I've felt while using it but was unable to fully articulate why it's so bad. Again, I'll keep saying it, I'm not the biggest Apple fan in the world, but however many Gnome devs in a trenchcoat will never equal a Steve Jobs and it's weird, borderline pathetic, for them to keep trying -- when all they end up doing is changing things for the sake of changing them.

I have actually had more problems with the Mac OS finder then I have the gnome one, and all of my problems stem from answering the question “how do I go up a directory from where I am?” Never bothered to figure out the actual right way. Might be easy. But hard to figure out

I'm with you. Modern macOS is... just not good for the basics right now. I have to use it for work, and I genuinely like Gnome more most of the time (files/settings/gestures/workspaces - all better on gnome).

Mac is doing what Windows is doing "The user is stupid and must not be allowed to understand what the computer is doing - we will guess what they want instead and show them that". Basic nav in finder is painful by default (100% agree about not being able to consistently move up).

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#24
I want to add - outside of the technical discussion here.

read in the voice of jeff foxworthy --- You might be a boomer if...

you unironically think "thanks gnomebama" is a good thing to make a pun out of in a ui discussion

the chef's kiss is the complaint is incorrect.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#26

[flagged]

The author does not seem unreasonable with their critique. The response to any critique shouldn't have to be, "write your own software, if you don't like it!". You know, just as well as any of us, that writing software is hard. UI is also hard. It would be good to learn from any critique.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#27
post #18

Was happy to read this, as I've often imagined doing this myself (i.e. thoroughly hashing out commentary on a bunch of nits in a GUI that annoy me and I'm convinced should be better). I agree that ctrl+L is a weird shortcut in a vacuum, but it's one I've known for 15 years, originally from using browsers. And it always makes me happy that Windows and Gnome (and Nautilus, which isn't the gnome default but is still pre…

The writer is just using an old version, you can just click the bar to enter edit mode.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#28

[flagged]

Like all of us the author is busy opening a bank, insurance company, an Asian restaurant, an ebay replacement, a car factory and an adobe replacement. The google replacement is on the cards

Be real, when the article is a spray of incoherent criticism its irrelevant, constructive criticism good, ignoring feedback bad,

Your mileage may vary for this article

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