5 ms·

Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked. 1. How am

Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked. 1. How am I supposed to know what these icons do? Why even title them? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.png https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.p... 2. Eight of the eleven icons in the dock have significant title clipping. Did no one notice this? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw7u3qf3gwmuhxaug28p5mr.png https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw7u3qf3gwmuhxaug28p5mr.p... Usability isn't minimalism. It isn't translucent windows, rounded corners, or stark blacks and gradients. It's these details, and about a hundred others that I'll run into while using your software. These details can either add friction to whatever problem I'm trying to solve (and therefore add marginally to my bad mood), or they can remove it. If you don't ask these questions, you aren't even giving your users a chance.

acabal 16y ago
People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its problems too, but it's clear to me that the changes Gnome 3 is bringing are nothing more than what some out-of-touch developers think is what users want, without having actually asked users. Maybe I'm wrong on that assertion but that sure is the feeling I'm getting from this project. Gnome 3 would have benefited greatly from a series of focus groups before development started or from snagging a high-profile UI expert to rap them on the knuckles whenever they had a bright idea like using 12 different font colors, sizes, and styles on the already-overwhelming dashboard screen.
- cturner 16y ago
  I think there's no substitute for clued-in developers. Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process. I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document and the dropdown menu headings.
  - unconed 16y ago
    The problem with the fonts is more than just aesthetics. It's about gamma correction. For various reasons, the brightness of an RGB color value is not linear. This means that a checkerboard of white/black pixels will not look the same from afar as solid 50% gray. The correct shade is something like ~75%. When anti-aliasing crisp details such as letters, this is incredibly important. Without gamma correction, there will be a noticeable change in brightness when a shape lies between pixels vs when it is pixel-aligned. I think this is why Linux geeks tend to be vehemently opposed to anti-aliasing; they don't realize the rendering method they're using is crap.
  - yesimahuman 16y ago
    > but much yet less usable in the process Based on what metrics and evidence? I think it does a good job making me more efficient.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers You do realize you are criticizing the topmost user interface details of a theme of an extensively themable early release. I think those "spare-time developers" have been focusing their attention on the API changes that the Gnome 2 to 3 transition impose and the new concepts introduced by the shell. The core seems very good. What you complain about is usually addressed in the configuration files for the theme and the names of the shortcuts. Multi-lingual support will bring some additional problems that should be addressed in the coming weeks. There are many dozen different themes that are compatible with Gnome. All those will have to be tweaked to look right. Have a little more faith, for just about every computer that is responsible for your internet access runs on top of software written by people you would call "part-time programmers". I'd trust their work over the one from Microsoft's full-time employees anytime.
  - acabal 16y ago
    If they didn't want to invite criticism, they shouldn't have release screenshots of a product they don't want criticism of, complete with breathless captions about "beauty" and "usability." Furthermore, I have better things to do with my time than spend time mucking around with configuration files and theme settings. Back in high school I had the time and inclination, and in fact I did so; now that I run a business, I'd rather spend that time doing actual development. Not to mention the moms and grandmas of the world who don't even know what a theme is. I, and they, need a UI that just works out of the box. And finally, just about every computer that is responsible for my internet access runs on top of software written by large corporations who have hired people to develop for open source bodies. Let's not forget that it's for-profit companies with full-time programmers like Red Hat, Canonical, IBM, Intel, etc. that are more than partly responsible for the relatively wide enterprise (and desktop!) adoption of Linux today. I'm not out to bash Gnome, Linux, or open source; I use Ubuntu on my work laptop every day. I criticize out of the desire to see the open source movement develop something better, and that means not patting everyone on the back just for "working hard." It's precisely that kind of "gold star for effort" attitude that lets crappy software exist.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
- sciurus 16y ago
  One interesting thing about the Gnome Shell design process is that it has been very open and responsive. Although there was a heavy focus on creating design principles up front, the actual design has evolved a lot over the few years that the project has been active. The overview of the current design at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design has many relevant links that you can explore if you're interested. I know there are plans for usability testing, but I don't know how they have progressed since this blog post http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/gnome-shell-usability-test-plan/ http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/gnome-shell-usability...
  - acabal 16y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know about that. One thing that concerns me is that they only decided to do usability testing in Feb 2010, but according to the Wiki page Gnome 3 has been in development since Jul 2008. Shouldn't a huge UI overhaul receive incremental user testing to stamp out bad ideas before significant dev time is invested? After an alpha is delivered, does anyone really think that if one of their big paradigm changes is found to be disliked, that they will go in and remove or significantly change it? Maybe Gnome would, I don't know--but from my experience, once code is delivered in a semi-functioning state, it's very hard to overcome that inertia to make huge directional changes. (And perhaps no big change is needed--but from these screenshots I can say that so far I personally don't like the new direction.)
    - jamesgeck0 16y ago
      A significant amount of Gnome 3 development time has been spent on things which will be mostly invisible to the user; overhauling libraries and such. It looks like Gnome Shell has been in development since late 2008, but only got to a state where it was very usable in late 2009. http://gnomejournal.org/article/85/easy-breezy-beautiful-gnome-shell http://gnomejournal.org/article/85/easy-breezy-beautiful-gno...
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I think what's most unfortunate is that Linux desktop people follow MS' approach of integrating the windows managers and the graphic shell ever more closely. This approach seems to requires a monolithic application. I would imagine it could be more open-source-appropriate to separate out the Windows manager (in charge of the details of font and icons) and the shell (the taskbar, start-menu, explorer-type-application etc). Caveat: I'm working on a shell-like project myself. I suppose I might feel some satisfaction to see Gnome get it wrong but I don't want to see a monolithic system that freezes out alternatives.
  - Nick_C 16y ago
    Is that a valid criticism though? I don't run a desktop, just a window manager (scrotwm), and I can still run KDE apps without having to load the entire KDE desktop environment. (Gnome I don't know about, as Slackware doesn't provide Gnome.) Also, does 'shell' mean something specific to desktop people? What you detail as being the shell, I would call 'desktop'. But I could very well be out of touch with the current lingo.
j_baker 16y ago
I'd like to point out that the images are marked as being of an alpha version. These complaints are fair, but they can be forgiven for not having all the details under control at this point. I personally am reserving judgement until I have an actual, finished product to test out.
ra 16y ago
It does say "alpha version". The concepts look good, lets hope they sort out these details.
sciurus 16y ago
I think the clipping might be fixed. I don't see any in the dash (GNOME's term for the dock) or the application picker in the screenshot at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=app-picker.png http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design?action=AttachFile&#3...

acabal 16y ago

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups. Windows 7 has its problems too, but it's clear to me that the changes Gnome 3 is bringing are nothing more than what some out-of-touch developers think is what users want, without having actually asked users. Maybe I'm wrong on that assertion but that sure is the feeling I'm getting from this project. Gnome 3 would have benefited greatly from a series of focus groups before development started or from snagging a high-profile UI expert to rap them on the knuckles whenever they had a bright idea like using 12 different font colors, sizes, and styles on the already-overwhelming dashboard screen.

cturner 16y ago
I think there's no substitute for clued-in developers. Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process. I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document and the dropdown menu headings.
- unconed 16y ago
  The problem with the fonts is more than just aesthetics. It's about gamma correction. For various reasons, the brightness of an RGB color value is not linear. This means that a checkerboard of white/black pixels will not look the same from afar as solid 50% gray. The correct shade is something like ~75%. When anti-aliasing crisp details such as letters, this is incredibly important. Without gamma correction, there will be a noticeable change in brightness when a shape lies between pixels vs when it is pixel-aligned. I think this is why Linux geeks tend to be vehemently opposed to anti-aliasing; they don't realize the rendering method they're using is crap.
- yesimahuman 16y ago
  > but much yet less usable in the process Based on what metrics and evidence? I think it does a good job making me more efficient.
rbanffy 16y ago
> Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers You do realize you are criticizing the topmost user interface details of a theme of an extensively themable early release. I think those "spare-time developers" have been focusing their attention on the API changes that the Gnome 2 to 3 transition impose and the new concepts introduced by the shell. The core seems very good. What you complain about is usually addressed in the configuration files for the theme and the names of the shortcuts. Multi-lingual support will bring some additional problems that should be addressed in the coming weeks. There are many dozen different themes that are compatible with Gnome. All those will have to be tweaked to look right. Have a little more faith, for just about every computer that is responsible for your internet access runs on top of software written by people you would call "part-time programmers". I'd trust their work over the one from Microsoft's full-time employees anytime.
- acabal 16y ago
  If they didn't want to invite criticism, they shouldn't have release screenshots of a product they don't want criticism of, complete with breathless captions about "beauty" and "usability." Furthermore, I have better things to do with my time than spend time mucking around with configuration files and theme settings. Back in high school I had the time and inclination, and in fact I did so; now that I run a business, I'd rather spend that time doing actual development. Not to mention the moms and grandmas of the world who don't even know what a theme is. I, and they, need a UI that just works out of the box. And finally, just about every computer that is responsible for my internet access runs on top of software written by large corporations who have hired people to develop for open source bodies. Let's not forget that it's for-profit companies with full-time programmers like Red Hat, Canonical, IBM, Intel, etc. that are more than partly responsible for the relatively wide enterprise (and desktop!) adoption of Linux today. I'm not out to bash Gnome, Linux, or open source; I use Ubuntu on my work laptop every day. I criticize out of the desire to see the open source movement develop something better, and that means not patting everyone on the back just for "working hard." It's precisely that kind of "gold star for effort" attitude that lets crappy software exist.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
sciurus 16y ago
One interesting thing about the Gnome Shell design process is that it has been very open and responsive. Although there was a heavy focus on creating design principles up front, the actual design has evolved a lot over the few years that the project has been active. The overview of the current design at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design has many relevant links that you can explore if you're interested. I know there are plans for usability testing, but I don't know how they have progressed since this blog post http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/gnome-shell-usability-test-plan/ http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/gnome-shell-usability...
- acabal 16y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know about that. One thing that concerns me is that they only decided to do usability testing in Feb 2010, but according to the Wiki page Gnome 3 has been in development since Jul 2008. Shouldn't a huge UI overhaul receive incremental user testing to stamp out bad ideas before significant dev time is invested? After an alpha is delivered, does anyone really think that if one of their big paradigm changes is found to be disliked, that they will go in and remove or significantly change it? Maybe Gnome would, I don't know--but from my experience, once code is delivered in a semi-functioning state, it's very hard to overcome that inertia to make huge directional changes. (And perhaps no big change is needed--but from these screenshots I can say that so far I personally don't like the new direction.)
  - jamesgeck0 16y ago
    A significant amount of Gnome 3 development time has been spent on things which will be mostly invisible to the user; overhauling libraries and such. It looks like Gnome Shell has been in development since late 2008, but only got to a state where it was very usable in late 2009. http://gnomejournal.org/article/85/easy-breezy-beautiful-gnome-shell http://gnomejournal.org/article/85/easy-breezy-beautiful-gno...
joe_the_user 16y ago
I think what's most unfortunate is that Linux desktop people follow MS' approach of integrating the windows managers and the graphic shell ever more closely. This approach seems to requires a monolithic application. I would imagine it could be more open-source-appropriate to separate out the Windows manager (in charge of the details of font and icons) and the shell (the taskbar, start-menu, explorer-type-application etc). Caveat: I'm working on a shell-like project myself. I suppose I might feel some satisfaction to see Gnome get it wrong but I don't want to see a monolithic system that freezes out alternatives.
- Nick_C 16y ago
  Is that a valid criticism though? I don't run a desktop, just a window manager (scrotwm), and I can still run KDE apps without having to load the entire KDE desktop environment. (Gnome I don't know about, as Slackware doesn't provide Gnome.) Also, does 'shell' mean something specific to desktop people? What you detail as being the shell, I would call 'desktop'. But I could very well be out of touch with the current lingo.

j_baker 16y ago

I'd like to point out that the images are marked as being of an alpha version. These complaints are fair, but they can be forgiven for not having all the details under control at this point. I personally am reserving judgement until I have an actual, finished product to test out.

ra 16y ago

It does say "alpha version". The concepts look good, lets hope they sort out these details.

sciurus 16y ago

I think the clipping might be fixed. I don't see any in the dash (GNOME's term for the dock) or the application picker in the screenshot at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=app-picker.png http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design?action=AttachFile&#3...