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Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

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Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#41

Post by hedora »

cycomanic wrote: post #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 use…

I would have clicked the down arrow that’s attached to the list icon to get the list options.

It wouldn’t even occur to me that the icon could be a toggle (both because it is not rendered as one, and because I’d expect more than two view options).

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#42

Post by webkike »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #39
webkike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Have you tried the keyboard shortcut listed next to the Go -> Enclosing Folder menu item?

Wow… this sucks

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#43

Post by baybal2 »

cycomanic wrote: post #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 use…

[dead]

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#44

Post by gibbetsandcrows »

lol768 wrote: post #2

These complaints aren't invalid, but I do wonder how many users actually get tripped up on these things. If you want a list view, clicking on the icon that looks like a list isn't a crazy thing to do. I agree the dropdown behaviour is a bit strange. Equally, it's accepted that a bunch of today's Gnome apps have title bars with controls inside them. I don't think it's that jarring that if you don't click on a control…

The worst part about controls inside the titlebar is things like Firefox and Chromium which implement their own decorations and window design with the tabs ending up in 95% of your draggable titlebar area, so you often end up moving the tab instead of moving the window. I'm not sure who will blink first with the lousy design situation, but the users are paying the price. (Honestly browsers just need to change this...Gnome is most people's default and they've shown themselves to be pretty damned stubborn)

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#45

Post by troupo »

horsawlarway wrote: post #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 contra…

> List view and view options buttons, while combined,

That's it. You could've stopped here. They are combined. It's a button with a dropdown indicator. The user expects this to be a single control for a single set of features. Not two distinct controls for completely unrelated functionality that you have to pixel-hunt for

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#47

Post by derkades »

gibbetsandcrows wrote: post #44
lol768 wrote: post #2

These complaints aren't invalid, but I do wonder how many users actually get tripped up on these things. If you want a list view, clicking on the icon that looks like a list isn't a crazy thing to do. I agree the dropdown behaviour is a bit strange. Equally, it's accepted that a bunch of today's Gnome apps have title bars with controls inside them. I don't think it's that jarring that if you don't click on a control…

The worst part about controls inside the titlebar is things like Firefox and Chromium which implement their own decorations and window design with the tabs ending up in 95% of your draggable titlebar area, so you often end up moving the tab instead of moving the window. I'm not sure who will blink first with the lousy design situation, but the users are paying the price. (Honestly browsers just need to change this...…

In Firefox, you can choose whether to use the system titlebar it its own "merged" titlebar. I expected Chrime has a similar setting.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#48

Post by persnickety »

cycomanic wrote: post #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 use…

You don't need a keyboard to use a text field. You could be pasting a path.

Or using some assistive technology like dictation. Or be using a phone where there's a way to type but no way to press ctrl (althouth the UI on a phone should be judged along other lines).

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#49

Post by Kbelicius »

horsawlarway wrote: post #22
uniq7 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-alia…

> Clicking anywhere on the bar immediately turns on the edit for me (and has for years).

Either you aren't using gnome files or you somehow enabled that feature yourself because click to edit was released earlier this year.

EDIT: Click to edit mentioned as a new feature of gnome version released this year: https://release.gnome.org/46/

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#50

Post by exe34 »

gibbetsandcrows wrote: post #44
lol768 wrote: post #2

These complaints aren't invalid, but I do wonder how many users actually get tripped up on these things. If you want a list view, clicking on the icon that looks like a list isn't a crazy thing to do. I agree the dropdown behaviour is a bit strange. Equally, it's accepted that a bunch of today's Gnome apps have title bars with controls inside them. I don't think it's that jarring that if you don't click on a control…

The worst part about controls inside the titlebar is things like Firefox and Chromium which implement their own decorations and window design with the tabs ending up in 95% of your draggable titlebar area, so you often end up moving the tab instead of moving the window. I'm not sure who will blink first with the lousy design situation, but the users are paying the price. (Honestly browsers just need to change this...…

i gave up entirely and went with xmonad. normally window placement is automatic and predictable, but if I really want to resize something, it's Super+Right Drag.
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