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Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

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Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#61

Post by worble »

fracus wrote: post #52

One thing I can't stand with Ubuntu is the panel position at the top. 90% of users will be browsing the web. If I'm on reddit for example, I will literally have at minimum 3 browser bars (tabs, toolbar, reddit enhancement suite) but also the panel. Consider we read top to bottom, the panel shouldn't be at top since it is almost never being used or read. It should default to the bottom but at the very least you should…

As consider that because monitors are typically 16:9 there is so much extra horizontal space compared to vertical. Personally on KDE I have my app panel on the right then hide browser tabs with some css and have Tree Style Tabs on the right as well. It frees up so much of the limited vertical space, it's refreshing.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#62

Post by toberoni »

manmal wrote: post #59

As someone totally out of the loop, what’s the status of font rendering in Gnome? The screenshots don’t look any better than 20 years ago, a jarring difference to what I‘m used to from macOS.

I use Gnome on multiple PCs and my first thought was they use a bitmap font or a 720p screen because everything looks off. The screenshots are not representative of how Gnome's font rendering looks like with a font like Inter & HiDPI.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#63

Post by n3storm »

Maybe the arrogance is the worst feature of GNOME approach. They make this studies and constantly repeat how focused are they on usability that when an individual finds it not usable (not in that words) it's double frustating cause is like GNOME saying: "our average users are happy so you must to be handicaped"

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#64

Post by continuational »

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…

> The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C...

It does break with standard shortcuts. And worse, there's absolutely no consistency between terminal applications on which shortcuts to use. It's a mess, and complaints are warrented.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#65

Post by jiehong »

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/showthread.php?t=1150025

[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/3445

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#66

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

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/…

I often try to open a new Terminal window in my current folder like that. Which often is impossible for the same reason. So I navigate up, until I find a folder that is not full, open the Terminal there, and ‚cd‘ down to the folder i wanted…

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#67

Post by josephg »

savolai wrote: post #60
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…

The basics: you are not your users. Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for others. That is the entire basis of usability work. I cannot believe how resistant the tech community, like above, is to the very basics of human cognition. It’s your comment that’s the rant. OP has actual data from decades of research they are applying. Quoting myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387

Thankyou. I’ve been using computers for 35 years (I grew up using xtree to navigate folders on DOS). It would never have occurred to me that both sides of that view options dropdown do different things. Perhaps it’s intuitive for others, but I’ve never seen that before in my life.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that I hate almost all novel interaction patterns in user interfaces. UI components and flows should stick as close to common patterns / system defaults as possible - and no, your app, whatever it is, is not an exception

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#68

Post by flohofwoe »

rtpg wrote: post #34

Always 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-fa…

> 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 were great - most notably the OSX Finder).

But yeah, on my Linux laptop I switched to KDE a couple of months ago and it's great. Also much snappier than Gnome.

Re: Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

#70

Post by dxroshan »

nextos wrote: 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.

Yes! Gnome 2 was great. I miss those days. The whole Gnome is a disappointment now. The GTK-4 doesn't even have the traditional menu and menubar widgets. I don't know what the Gimp people and the Inkscape people are going to do.
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