4 ms·

I agree with the general sentiment of what you're saying. If I had to narrow it down to something more specific: * The UI seems very compact, the buttons/widg

I agree with the general sentiment of what you're saying. If I had to narrow it down to something more specific: * The UI seems very compact, the buttons/widgets are no larger than they need to be, as compared to Windows 10 and GNOME 3. I would say modern macOS also does a decent job here. The compactness is valuable for small screens for obvious reasons, and is also valuable for large screens since you can fit a lot more stuff on them. And it sounds like with this release, you can set different scaling factors, so everyone can be happy. * The intractable widgets are clearly demarcated from the rest. As you point out in many modern UIs, it's very difficult to tell what is a button and what isn't. I actually think GNOME 3's Adwaita (as much as I like to rip on GNOME for what I consider to be good reasons) does a good job in that department. In the final screenshot in your comment, it is very clear even without being familiar with the specific programs what can be clicked on, and you have a good expectation of what's going to happen. With Windows 10 and modern macOS, it's only clear if you are familiar with the specific programs being shown. I also like macOS 8 and 9 a lot from a UI design perspective, though I have read enough about their underlying architecture to know that maybe I wouldn't want to actually use them. Context: I'm just starting out as a graduate student. My first PC ran Vista, then I went to Windows 7, 8, then to Linux, a brief stint on macOS, and I've been bouncing between Linux and BSD since then. I've tried about every "modern" UI under the sun and most of them suck.

zozbot234 6y ago
The GNOME3 philosophy is that applications should be touch ready, without the developer having to do anything special to ensure this. When you are aware of this, the "oversized" widgets and header bars actually make a ton of sense. It would be nice to have a "compact" mode for the benefit of sophisticated users running on a non-touch platform, but it should always be under user control and 100% optional.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  The thing is that at this point few people use Linux on an actually touch first device at this point although more may do so in the future. Of interest I suppose are the pinephone, https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ coming pinetab https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ and of course the Librem 5 Here is a video of gnome + pinetab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao Window management seems usable. You can see the utility of a whole screen launcher and targets are big enough to hit and indeed it does look usable but it still looks like its mostly using your finger as a not that great mouse as opposed to being touch first. It also looks like it wouldn't work if it were shrunk down much smaller than the 10" here. Another issue I see where for example windows handles the case a LOT better is automatically popping up a virtual keyboard when input is expected. I believe this is supposed to work with gnome apps when run under gnome but a pervasive standard solution would be welcome as well as a better on screen keyboard on par with something like swiftkey.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    GNOME does pop up a virtual keyboard when needed. You're not seeing it here because a physical keyboard is attached. The video is actually quite compelling, the actions only look unnatural because of how they're being demonstrated. To me at least, this is what "touch first" should look like.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Didn't seem to work with say firefox when I tried in on my convertable laptop. Maybe it doesn't work because the keyboard exists even though its disabled?
- charlesdaniels 6y ago
  Who wants to use GNOME applications on a touchscreen? On what hardware? Aside from that, I think it’s a pipe dream for anything but the simplest applications to have one single UI implementation that works well for both touch and non touch. It didn’t work well for Windows. It’s not working well for GNOME. I think the needs of touch vs non touch users are just too different, and considerable developer time is being wasted trying to magically support both with a unified front end. Of course other people are free to spend their time on whatever they want, whether it’s useful or not. But I haven’t seen a single application come out of GNOME’s efforts to unify desktop and mobile that I would actively prefer to the alternative. So yes, I guess they “make a ton of sense” if you want to support a use case nobody has, on hardware that doesn't exist, and end up with an inferior experience for either or both sets of users for your trouble.
  - madhadron 6y ago
    My wife and kids are all using Microsoft Surfaces, and switch back and forth from using them as tablets (often using them a video cameras, cameras, sketchpads, dictaphones with speech to text conversion, and video chat terminals put in a stand) and using them as computers with keyboard and a USB mouse. For the kids especially it's interesting to watch them, because when they're actually trying to interact with what's on the screen precisely, they reach straight for the mouse and touch unless it would involve completely breaking what they're doing to go find the mouse. Before I had them on Surface Go's, I had them on cheaper, very underpowered Evoo 2-in-1's, which were horribly slow under Windows, but ran beautifully under Fedora...including all the touch screen, rotation stuff. > So yes, I guess they “make a ton of sense” if you want to support a use case nobody has, on hardware that doesn't exist For programmers, no, we want the older UIs because the keyboard and mouse are the best input devices for what we do. But there is a lot of hardware out there used by a lot of people that does switch back and forth. It's not only the Surfaces. It's iPads with the more and more ubiquitous keyboards. It's all the other 2-in-1's that are being sold. And they're actually really handy machines and fit into far more niches and enable far more interesting behaviors than straight laptop.
    - alxlaz 6y ago

zozbot234 6y ago

The GNOME3 philosophy is that applications should be touch ready, without the developer having to do anything special to ensure this. When you are aware of this, the "oversized" widgets and header bars actually make a ton of sense. It would be nice to have a "compact" mode for the benefit of sophisticated users running on a non-touch platform, but it should always be under user control and 100% optional.

michaelmrose 6y ago
The thing is that at this point few people use Linux on an actually touch first device at this point although more may do so in the future. Of interest I suppose are the pinephone, https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ coming pinetab https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ and of course the Librem 5 Here is a video of gnome + pinetab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao Window management seems usable. You can see the utility of a whole screen launcher and targets are big enough to hit and indeed it does look usable but it still looks like its mostly using your finger as a not that great mouse as opposed to being touch first. It also looks like it wouldn't work if it were shrunk down much smaller than the 10" here. Another issue I see where for example windows handles the case a LOT better is automatically popping up a virtual keyboard when input is expected. I believe this is supposed to work with gnome apps when run under gnome but a pervasive standard solution would be welcome as well as a better on screen keyboard on par with something like swiftkey.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  GNOME does pop up a virtual keyboard when needed. You're not seeing it here because a physical keyboard is attached. The video is actually quite compelling, the actions only look unnatural because of how they're being demonstrated. To me at least, this is what "touch first" should look like.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Didn't seem to work with say firefox when I tried in on my convertable laptop. Maybe it doesn't work because the keyboard exists even though its disabled?
charlesdaniels 6y ago
Who wants to use GNOME applications on a touchscreen? On what hardware? Aside from that, I think it’s a pipe dream for anything but the simplest applications to have one single UI implementation that works well for both touch and non touch. It didn’t work well for Windows. It’s not working well for GNOME. I think the needs of touch vs non touch users are just too different, and considerable developer time is being wasted trying to magically support both with a unified front end. Of course other people are free to spend their time on whatever they want, whether it’s useful or not. But I haven’t seen a single application come out of GNOME’s efforts to unify desktop and mobile that I would actively prefer to the alternative. So yes, I guess they “make a ton of sense” if you want to support a use case nobody has, on hardware that doesn't exist, and end up with an inferior experience for either or both sets of users for your trouble.
- madhadron 6y ago
  My wife and kids are all using Microsoft Surfaces, and switch back and forth from using them as tablets (often using them a video cameras, cameras, sketchpads, dictaphones with speech to text conversion, and video chat terminals put in a stand) and using them as computers with keyboard and a USB mouse. For the kids especially it's interesting to watch them, because when they're actually trying to interact with what's on the screen precisely, they reach straight for the mouse and touch unless it would involve completely breaking what they're doing to go find the mouse. Before I had them on Surface Go's, I had them on cheaper, very underpowered Evoo 2-in-1's, which were horribly slow under Windows, but ran beautifully under Fedora...including all the touch screen, rotation stuff. > So yes, I guess they “make a ton of sense” if you want to support a use case nobody has, on hardware that doesn't exist For programmers, no, we want the older UIs because the keyboard and mouse are the best input devices for what we do. But there is a lot of hardware out there used by a lot of people that does switch back and forth. It's not only the Surfaces. It's iPads with the more and more ubiquitous keyboards. It's all the other 2-in-1's that are being sold. And they're actually really handy machines and fit into far more niches and enable far more interesting behaviors than straight laptop.
  - alxlaz 6y ago