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Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

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Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#41

Post by Y_Y »

teekert wrote: post #33
culebron21 wrote: post #24

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

If it's a fast, Rust written, modern, Wayland native DE with quarter tiling I am already happy. Let it grow from there.

Much as those things sound nice, I feel like the GP in that a DE is very much a user-focused tool, knowing it has nice developer-friendly internals is a distant second to having a good interface.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#43

Post by mwidell »

Look at how the icons at the bottom have almost zero margin to the overly rounded sides.

Why is it so hard for anyone outside of Apple to make a visually appealing GUI? It just requires a little bit of taste and sense of aesthetics. I am baffled that this hasn't happened yet. The closest thing so far is probably ElementaryOS.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#44

Post by jklinger410 »

culebron21 wrote: post #24

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

> I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment

You should look harder.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#46

Post by danielvaughn »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #39
culebron21 wrote: post #24

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

I think people learned the wrong lessons from Apple. They thought that Mac products were successful because of their aesthetics, but in reality it's because they were the only products that tried to be usable.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#47

Post by Nevermark »

diggan wrote: post #14
hexomancer wrote: post #7

[flagged]

What is more likely to turn out "one decent desktop environment"? 1) Take all developers interested in desktop environments, ask them to collaborate and come up with one (1) desktop environment that suits everybody's need 2) Let developers who want to experiment with their own desktop environment, do so, with the hope that at least one experiment results in a decent desktop environment. The ones that want to collabor…

Or ...

(3) Take all developers interested in desktop environments, ask them to collaborate and come up with one (1) modular desktop environment that allows everyone to develop/choose the basic modules they want. For workspaces, windows, docks, and any other window arrangement and quick access features.

I would love being able to select different window managers, different docks, etc., for different workspaces. The best arrangements for each task.

--

Thinking bigger, I want persistent named "worksets" of workspaces, that can be arranged, closed, reopened together. One workset at a time, or multiple.

It would help to be able to have the same docs and tools open in multiple windows, with different placements and sizes. Think the same Word doc open and editable in two different workspaces but with different window sizes and placement.

I would optimize worksets for every crafting area, development projects, and work task, etc.

I expect I would end up with dozens of worksets. So the workset opener should be allow for hierarchical organization.

Yup. That's it. That is what I want!

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#48

Post by jklinger410 »

mwidell wrote: post #43

Look at how the icons at the bottom have almost zero margin to the overly rounded sides. Why is it so hard for anyone outside of Apple to make a visually appealing GUI? It just requires a little bit of taste and sense of aesthetics. I am baffled that this hasn't happened yet. The closest thing so far is probably ElementaryOS.

My whole issue with the COSMIC thing has been that it seems to be designed by developers. Not designers. At every corner they make baffling choices. The speed and functionality are great. The design not so much.

I'm hoping this UI matures and allows for customization so that I can get it where I want it.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#49

Post by mistrial9 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #39
culebron21 wrote: post #24

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

a classic market irony example is keyboards.. Every single user here has a keyboard, yet keyboards on a mass scale are cheap and badly designed, with no end in sight.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#50

Post by ibash »

mwidell wrote: post #43

Look at how the icons at the bottom have almost zero margin to the overly rounded sides. Why is it so hard for anyone outside of Apple to make a visually appealing GUI? It just requires a little bit of taste and sense of aesthetics. I am baffled that this hasn't happened yet. The closest thing so far is probably ElementaryOS.

Care and craft. A lot of software engineers think that “done” means functional. And not “feels right”.

That and unless a software engineer has specifically practiced implementing pixel perfect designs from a great designer, then they don’t spot the errors. The design will feel wrong but they don’t know why.

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