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Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

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Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#201

Post by mixmastamyk »

jiehong wrote: post #65

This reminds me of not being able to right click in Files in list view for creating a new document or pasting something, because it only accepts a right click in an empty area. Yet, in list view, as soon as you have a few files and the window is full, you’re given no empty area to click in. I saw some people have the same issue [0] in the past, and it’s not really been fixed either [1]. [0]: https://ubuntuforums.org/…

Common issue. In this situation I use the main menu/hotkeys instead. Ctrl-N, Ctrl-C etc.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#202

Post by kuschku »

timlatim wrote: post #139
flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely worth it for people frustrated at Gnome's cleanliness-to-a-fault. For me it's not that. I don't mind white space, and I don't mind flat design. It's simply that Gnome is too 'chaotic'. If Gnome would simply copy macOS instead of trying to invent their own UI paradigms it would mostly be fine (not that macOS is perfect though, it has been regressing massively too in the last decade, and some things never…

> It's simply that Gnome is too 'chaotic'. Just to offer a different point of view, I see it as the opposite. I like a lot of things the KDE community is doing and I think it's particularly good at power user oriented apps like Krita and Kdenlive, which may be the best open-source tools in their respective areas and which don't really fit in the modern Gnome framework. As a desktop environment, however, I feel KDE is…

You and the previous poster are talking about different things.

Gnome has consistent UI. Every app looks the same.

KDE has consistent UX. Every app works the same.

If users can learn a paradigm once and apply it everywhere, your paradigm can be more complicated as the payoff is also larger.

But if every app is different, users won't spend any amount of time to learn how it works. Every possible option needs to be obvious immediately.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#203

Post by kuschku »

3np wrote: post #10

As someone who can't cope with Gnome Files, I've been pleased with worker as desktop file manager recently. http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/worker/ https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/worker Still on the lookout for a reasonable FileChooserDialog replacement... Easily the worst part of GTK and a great candidate for its own dedicated article (hint hint :)). Supposedly it takes some LD_PRELOAD fudging to override it…

It used to be relatively easy to override the filechooser by forcing portal mode, but Gnome actually disabled that because people aren't supposed to use it.

(See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4829 and related discussions)

But while they did remove that option, they didn't implement an option to do it properly. So now even though I use KDE, Firefox drops me in the shitty Gnome filechooser which is entirely useless.

(Luckily firefox ended up making that an option on their side instead: widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker)

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#204

Post by dylan-m »

ruuda wrote: post #143

I switched to Nemo after I got tired of Nautilus moving all the buttons for no particular reason every Gnome release, but a few versions ago they had a pattern that was genuinely good: a dropdown next to the current directory in the navigation bar, with everything you can do in the current directory (paste, create directory, open terminal, etc.). This was really neat, traditionally you have to access those by right-c…

> This was really neat, traditionally you have to access those by right-clicking some whitespace in the list/grid view, but in the list view there is only a narrow band of empty space to right-click, usually you accidentally click a file. So this was a genuine innovation in UI design. Unfortunately they since removed it again.

Wait, no? It hasn’t. I’m looking at a fresh build from the main branch right now. The menu doesn’t have Paste in it in this version, which might be what you’re referring to, but I don’t think it was ever there. (Alas, copy and paste UIs are sad). But otherwise it is very much there. And arguably better because the other big menu has moved somewhere else :) If you’re finding it’s completely gone, um, what distro are you using so I can quietly judge them?

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#205

Post by kuschku »

criticalfault wrote: post #191
tmtvl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gnome has better Multimedia Tools I dunno, I really like Cantata (which integrates perfectly with MPD, which has possibly the best music organisation) and Clementine, more than any other music player I've tried. For video I'm very fond of SMPlayer, which is a featureful frontend for MPV. Kdenlive is also really nice (although Davinci Resolve is better, to be fair). > The only thing/app kde has better is krita. Real…

In another comment I also remembered kdenlive. Not even sure what gnome has since I don't edit video. Gedit (or now gnome-text) is more equivalent of kwrite. Gnome doesn't have an equivalent to kate, me thinks. Umbrello: https://github.com/gaphor/gaphor I use smplayer on windows, this is a good app. Does it run on Wayland? And does it have hardware acceleration for decoding? I had issues on Wayland (gnome) with it. C…

> One exception: in dolphin you cannot open files directly from smb:// shares

??? Of course you can.

Your comments sound like you installed KDE ontop of a distro that uses gnome by default, missing half the packages.

KIO exposes pretty much every possible protocol (including smb, dav, ftp/sftp/ssh, etc) to every KDE app, including Dolphin, Kate, Gwenview, Krita, Okular, etc.

If you're trying to open SMB files in Gnome apps, ofc, that's not gonna work.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#206

Post by washadjeffmad »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #194

I think a salient point is the reduction in hackability in modern open source interfaces, driven by reductive centralized developer-centric consolidation. There's no right design ontology. Each user's need is unique, and the utter abandonment of principle over the past decade (I use GNOME 3 as the turning point) has been deleterious to the ethos that once defined Linux as the platform for those who prize ownership of…

Perhaps someone could share how else the diversity of features of 2.32 vs 3 is a non-explanation after more than a decade, despite a pluritude of bug reports and feature requests for functionality that hasn't been replaced?

This isn't reddit. It's safe to express yourself here.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#207

Post by mixmastamyk »

yoavm wrote: post #114

this is anecdotal, but I just asked three non-techie friends who never seen GNOME before to change my Nautilus app to list view. Neither of them needed more than 5 seconds to do it.

Non-disabled folks can hit all toolbar buttons sequentially in under five seconds. The point are the hieroglyphics and misleading clues.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#208

Post by mixmastamyk »

skriticos2 wrote: post #159

As a GNOME user, I kinda understand what they want to achieve, but they are seriously short on resources, so there is really little substance to all the rosy aspirations. They are also very oppinionated, which then turns away a lot of liberal developers that just want to scratch their own itches. As for file manager usability, I grew up with Norton commander and pretty much gave up on ever seeing power user addressed…

CADT strikes again. With so few resources they’d have been much better served refining gnome2 than bulldozing it.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#209

Post by criticalfault »

kuschku wrote: post #205
criticalfault wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another comment I also remembered kdenlive. Not even sure what gnome has since I don't edit video. Gedit (or now gnome-text) is more equivalent of kwrite. Gnome doesn't have an equivalent to kate, me thinks. Umbrello: https://github.com/gaphor/gaphor I use smplayer on windows, this is a good app. Does it run on Wayland? And does it have hardware acceleration for decoding? I had issues on Wayland (gnome) with it. C…

> One exception: in dolphin you cannot open files directly from smb:// shares ??? Of course you can. Your comments sound like you installed KDE ontop of a distro that uses gnome by default, missing half the packages. KIO exposes pretty much every possible protocol (including smb, dav, ftp/sftp/ssh, etc) to every KDE app, including Dolphin, Kate, Gwenview, Krita, Okular, etc. If you're trying to open SMB files in Gnom…

Nope, it was laptop (bare metal), kubuntu or fedora KDE Spin.

Player might have been installed via flatpak though. But I don't remember anymore.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#210

Post by gawa »

rav wrote: post #163
gawa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always had the same issue, even with the file explorer that I'm using currently (Thunar, XFCE's file browser). I never really looked for a solution, I kept changing the view (go from list view to to icons view) in order to find some empty space to right-click on. Your comment and seeing that there are bug reports about it prompted me to think more than 5 seconds about this usability annoyance. I found a cool shortc…

Can't you use ctrl-left click to deselect the selected file before using ctrl-right click to get the context menu?

Yes, sure. Although if multiple files or folders are selected, it's probably easier to just press the Escape key once instead of searching for each selected objects in the folder to unselect them one by one. What I was looking for was a reproducible way to make this right click menu appear. The sequence Escape+ctrl+righclick is a way to do that, it always work, wherever the cursor is, and no matter if the folder has many files or not. No need to look actively for a couple of empty pixels anymore or to think "What do I have to unselect before I can right-click to get a different contextual menu?".
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