I wish folks critiquing GNOME would go after any app other than Nautilus. It's just not a great showcase of the best they have to offer. I would certainly hope no one judges the macOS desktop by Finder because the review probably wouldn't be favorable. If you're going to judge the design system Text Editor, Terminal, Videos, Epiphany, Music would all be better choices. I can't say I know anyone who likes GNOME who would recommend Nautilus anything but the most basic usage.
Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
31–40 of 293 posts
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#32[flagged]
Have you ever actually looked to see how many file managers there are? Writing a new one is pointless; you can almost always find one that isn’t terrible. Personally I prefer Nemo to GNOME Files.
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#33Decent critique, but it mixes together two things: the design language, and UI papercuts showing a lack of attention to detail. Consider the current macOS Finder: https://a.qoid.us/20240907-finder.png Finder's design is extremely similar to GNOME Files! And so the inherent downsides of the design language are present in Finder too, such as it being harder to drag windows around or click to activate windows. But macOS…
And macOS finder has one of the pathetic designs in similar to Apple simplicity but its supposed to be used for other way. Taking inspiration from that design is shooting yourself and half baking it is like making sure you screw in both ways
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#34Always a reminder for people who are frustrated with the state of Gnome... I've found KDE to be _very good_ for people who want to see options up and center. In a way KDE is definitely more Windows-like and Gnome more Mac-like in its approaches, and you can see this very directly with the screenshotter tools packed into the various environments.
Definitely worth it for people frustrated at Gnome's cleanliness-to-a-fault.
(Full disclosure: I donate to both and apprecaite them both existing)
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#35> It's worth mentioning that I agree that the modern design paradigm probably is friendly to beginner users in many ways. But at some point, people stop being beginners. People who use computers several hours per day, performing a wide variety of tasks in many different programs, should also be taken in to account when designing software. As such, my critique comes from the point of what's usually called a "power user". It's also worth considering that the more an interface hides, the less it offers by way of opportunities for a user to grow and learn.
After that I find it a bit rich to complain that one has to use a keyboard shortcut (even as others have said that's even incorrect), especially for a function that requires using the keyboard anyway.
I also find the arguments about no up button and the list view unconvincing. The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot (and I don't use gnome or any filemanager) and I actually appreciate a window that does not put lost of buttons that present duplicate functionality everywhere (and it's harder to hit? What argument is that, by his own admission he's been using computers for 35 years, but can't use a mouse to hit a path?).
This really just reads like one of the typical rants where someone become somewhat proficient with some system, now considers themselves a "power user" and expects everything else to work exactly the same. The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C...
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#36I 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.
It's funny to hear that now.
Most people I knew back then used Linux on desktop. When Gnome 3 started to be a thing, I don't recall anyone that even had access to a touchscreen device.
And suddenly you had to use touch gestures with mouse, your plugins were gone, menu items were almost gone, you lost possibility to have ANY way to display status. They did all-in on notifications instead. So if you got new mail there was a brief notification and puff... Any indication of pending tasks were gone. No plugin with animation, no tray icon that changed color. No way of telling that your jabber client has something new.
I clearly recall how weird it was to forget to reply because for a second you were focused on writing in another window.
Who could, did migrate to anything else before any workarounds to those issues popped up (like unofficial tray, MATE).
It felt so out of touch back then. The only time I felt that confused were later on windows server when they decided in some editions to cut almost all UI and you had to do that swipe gesture from edge of the screen to show app list. Good luck on multimonitor setup, with a mouse, on RDP connection.
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#37Was 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.
For context "old" here is within the last 6 months.
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#38Decent critique, but it mixes together two things: the design language, and UI papercuts showing a lack of attention to detail. Consider the current macOS Finder: https://a.qoid.us/20240907-finder.png Finder's design is extremely similar to GNOME Files! And so the inherent downsides of the design language are present in Finder too, such as it being harder to drag windows around or click to activate windows. But macOS…
The current version of Finder is a massive regression from what it used to be.
If you don’t believe me, fire up https://macos9.app on a machine with a mouse, and try organizing / browsing some files.
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#39Glad 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
But hard to figure out
Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination
#40Have they fixed the save dialog box yet?
If I type -s filename , then I expect the current file to be saved with filename (perhaps with an extension appended).
The gtk-2 behavior was to start searching the list of files/directories when you type filename, then select whatever is highlighted when you press enter.
Anyway, I’m not going to install gnome to find out.
It’s not surprising the file browser is as bad as described in the article. After all, jwz’s cadt (cascade of attention deficit teenagers) model of software engineering was meant to explain the behavior of the gnome project.