6 ms·

This started out as an overview of a new desktop bundle and quickly turned into a rant about why gnome shouldn't change your favorite feature..

by g5095 8y ago

dbcurtis 8y ago
Yes, indeed, and Balkan's favorite feature is my personal most hated feature. To each his own, I guess... Menu's belong on the app window.
- inamberclad 8y ago
  I just want that quarter inch of screen retail. Why can't they do the Unity desktop thing and merge the top bar together?
  - devxpy 8y ago
    unity was almost perfect. And then ... :(
  - de_watcher 8y ago
    But there is a buggy extension just for that.
- ovao 8y ago
  Whether you agree with him or not, he made several arguments for disconnected menu bars. What are your arguments for having menu bars on windows?
  - AaronFriel 8y ago
    It increases the cost of all menu interactions with non-focused app by one click. I'm not sure if gnome 3 duplicates that menu bar on each monitor, but if it doesn't then it means significantly more steps (strictly speaking) to locate the app, locate the menu bar, return to the app. It also encourages a poor menu paradigm (imo) of nested menus. Iconography, ribbons, searchable action bars, and other innovations are more often found on OSes where the choice isn't made for the user. It seems really silly with how UIs have evolved to use a Mac at work, with half of the menus in the app and a seemingly random other half in a disconnected set of nested menus. That's my experience at least.
  - flukus 8y ago
    For a UI consistency is better than dynamic elements. In fairness this can be used as an argument in favor of the global menu too, depending on exactly what you want to be consistent. Linux desktops are usually "focus follows mouse" (because the scrollwheel is part of the mouse not the keyboard), so in the second screenshot with two apps side by side and the right one in focus, moving the mouse to the menu will result in the active application and menu changing.
  - claudius 8y ago
    Focus follows mouse breaks if you need to move the mouse away from the window over other windows to the top bar. Focus follows mouse is an extremely useful feature which allows you to move focus without changing the relative arrangement of windows to each other (whereas Alt+Tab or relatives would bring the selected window to the front). Additionally, a top-level menu bar is always there and requires a horizontal layout (I think?). In a window, each application can decide to hide the menu bar at will with only a vertical panel being visible at all time in all apps.
- danieldk 8y ago
  Regardless, GNOME is going to do something which is many times more terrible than having a global or local application menu. They are going to put everything into hamburger menus: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Whiteboards/AppMenuMigration https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Whiteboards/AppMenuMigration I can see why the hamburger menu works for a constrained space (such as a smartphone), but for a laptop or desktop, it is absolutely terrible: place for less menu items, another layer of navigation (since you cannot cram everything in one menu), and in the GNOME case typically no visible keyboard shortcuts. The Xerox Star had hamburger menus, but Apple Lisa and the Macintosh moved away from hamburger menus because regular menus had better discoverability and required less clicking accuracy [1]. We are moving backwards when it comes to user interfaces. Luckily, it seems that this disease hasn't really spread to KDE or macOS yet. Unfortunately, in GNOME, the application menu was already pretty useless, because it had many items already moved to the hamburger menu or simply removed. [1] https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-usability-part-1-5fa0fb369b42 https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-u...
  - alxlaz 8y ago
    > Regardless, GNOME is going to do something which is many times more terrible than having a global or local application menu. They are going to put everything into hamburger menus: It's amazing how even the mockups on that page are obviously for phones or tablets. On the one hand, I while I don't use it anymore, I do wish desktops were more of a first-class citizen for Gnome, since it's the default environment on many distributions. On the other hand though, I really wish designers involved in Linux FOSS projects would stop shoving designs made with smartphones in mind on the desktop. Running Gnome on a 27" screen -- and Gnome applications -- is a really confusing (and, at times, outright hilarious) experience, it's like I'm moving iPads around on my screen. Maybe this is a step in the right direction.
  - mongol 8y ago
    How are such decisions made in Gnome? Who decides and how do they enforce it? Will it be salaried developers that adjust the applications?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  RISCOS made a pretty compelling argument, I think, that all menus should be context menus. I'm not sure I agree, since it reduces discoverability, but I do think it otherwise had all the Fitts's law advantages of a global menu bar while still making the association between the menu and the application obvious.
anthonybennis 8y ago
Exactly. The article went off point very quickly, in my humble opinion.
rauhl 8y ago
Oh, no worries there: if it’s your favourite feature, I can pretty much guarantee that GNOME will remove it someday. It’s what, a decade now, and we still don’t have screensavers back, let alone configurable screensavers.

This started out as an overview of a new desktop bundle and quickly turned into a rant about why gnome shouldn't change your favorite feature..

by g5095 8y ago

This started out as an overview of a new desktop bundle and quickly turned into a rant about why gnome shouldn't change your favorite feature..

dbcurtis 8y ago

Yes, indeed, and Balkan's favorite feature is my personal most hated feature. To each his own, I guess... Menu's belong on the app window.

inamberclad 8y ago
I just want that quarter inch of screen retail. Why can't they do the Unity desktop thing and merge the top bar together?
- devxpy 8y ago
  unity was almost perfect. And then ... :(
- de_watcher 8y ago
  But there is a buggy extension just for that.
ovao 8y ago
Whether you agree with him or not, he made several arguments for disconnected menu bars. What are your arguments for having menu bars on windows?
- AaronFriel 8y ago
  It increases the cost of all menu interactions with non-focused app by one click. I'm not sure if gnome 3 duplicates that menu bar on each monitor, but if it doesn't then it means significantly more steps (strictly speaking) to locate the app, locate the menu bar, return to the app. It also encourages a poor menu paradigm (imo) of nested menus. Iconography, ribbons, searchable action bars, and other innovations are more often found on OSes where the choice isn't made for the user. It seems really silly with how UIs have evolved to use a Mac at work, with half of the menus in the app and a seemingly random other half in a disconnected set of nested menus. That's my experience at least.
- flukus 8y ago
  For a UI consistency is better than dynamic elements. In fairness this can be used as an argument in favor of the global menu too, depending on exactly what you want to be consistent. Linux desktops are usually "focus follows mouse" (because the scrollwheel is part of the mouse not the keyboard), so in the second screenshot with two apps side by side and the right one in focus, moving the mouse to the menu will result in the active application and menu changing.
- claudius 8y ago
  Focus follows mouse breaks if you need to move the mouse away from the window over other windows to the top bar. Focus follows mouse is an extremely useful feature which allows you to move focus without changing the relative arrangement of windows to each other (whereas Alt+Tab or relatives would bring the selected window to the front). Additionally, a top-level menu bar is always there and requires a horizontal layout (I think?). In a window, each application can decide to hide the menu bar at will with only a vertical panel being visible at all time in all apps.
danieldk 8y ago
Regardless, GNOME is going to do something which is many times more terrible than having a global or local application menu. They are going to put everything into hamburger menus: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Whiteboards/AppMenuMigration https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Whiteboards/AppMenuMigration I can see why the hamburger menu works for a constrained space (such as a smartphone), but for a laptop or desktop, it is absolutely terrible: place for less menu items, another layer of navigation (since you cannot cram everything in one menu), and in the GNOME case typically no visible keyboard shortcuts. The Xerox Star had hamburger menus, but Apple Lisa and the Macintosh moved away from hamburger menus because regular menus had better discoverability and required less clicking accuracy [1]. We are moving backwards when it comes to user interfaces. Luckily, it seems that this disease hasn't really spread to KDE or macOS yet. Unfortunately, in GNOME, the application menu was already pretty useless, because it had many items already moved to the hamburger menu or simply removed. [1] https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-usability-part-1-5fa0fb369b42 https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-u...
- alxlaz 8y ago
  > Regardless, GNOME is going to do something which is many times more terrible than having a global or local application menu. They are going to put everything into hamburger menus: It's amazing how even the mockups on that page are obviously for phones or tablets. On the one hand, I while I don't use it anymore, I do wish desktops were more of a first-class citizen for Gnome, since it's the default environment on many distributions. On the other hand though, I really wish designers involved in Linux FOSS projects would stop shoving designs made with smartphones in mind on the desktop. Running Gnome on a 27" screen -- and Gnome applications -- is a really confusing (and, at times, outright hilarious) experience, it's like I'm moving iPads around on my screen. Maybe this is a step in the right direction.
- mongol 8y ago
  How are such decisions made in Gnome? Who decides and how do they enforce it? Will it be salaried developers that adjust the applications?
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
RISCOS made a pretty compelling argument, I think, that all menus should be context menus. I'm not sure I agree, since it reduces discoverability, but I do think it otherwise had all the Fitts's law advantages of a global menu bar while still making the association between the menu and the application obvious.

anthonybennis 8y ago

Exactly. The article went off point very quickly, in my humble opinion.

rauhl 8y ago

Oh, no worries there: if it’s your favourite feature, I can pretty much guarantee that GNOME will remove it someday. It’s what, a decade now, and we still don’t have screensavers back, let alone configurable screensavers.