5 ms·
NsCDE is worth a look at for those who want the look and feel of CDE, but implemented with some more up-to-date tech. https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://gi
by ch_123 5y ago
NsCDE is worth a look at for those who want the look and feel of CDE, but implemented with some more up-to-date tech.
https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
- formerly_proven 5y agoDo people like the "look and feel" of CDE, Motif et al?
- ipython 5y agoHonestly- at least with Motif you knew what is a clickable button and what isn’t. That’s more than what you can say with “modern” flat toolkits
- drivers99 5y agoSame idea: And you can tell where the window borders are, unlike a modern dark gray rectangle on top of another dark gray rectangle.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoAnd a slight barely-noticeable drop shadow and some transparency with blur effect just light enough not to notice it but still put a big load on your GPU :)
- pcwalton 5y agoA modern composited UI with GPU rendering including such effects is far more efficient than a traditional CPU rendered desktop, especially with HiDPI.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoTrue but it does need the GPU. I had some issues with my dual-GPU (intel integrated + nVidia) MacBook Pro. Whenever I would start up the desktop it would fire up the external GPU. But my point is that the effects are often so subtle they can't even be noticed. I'm not against them per se. I have most of them on now in KDE in fact but boosted up a bit which I think looks nicer. But you're right, it's not a 'big load' like I said, a modern GPU can handle this with 2 fingers up its nose.
- hulitu 5y agoYou can change the thickness of the shadow. Try to do that in other GUI.
- CRConrad 5y agoWindows had that well into W 7, individually for inner and outer bevel IIRC. The only thing that went away from the Control Panel was the adjustment of the actual Border Width, between the bevels, below 1. Previously you could set it down to zero, butting the bevels directly against each other (a look I preferred). For a while afterwards, you could hack it via the Registry Editor, but a little later they broke that, too. Or did you mean the actual drop shadow, outside the window proper?
- formerly_proven 5y agoHonestly in CDE/Motif/classic Tk styles I actually have a little bit of trouble telling stuff apart, because everything has the same background color. We just retired an app that often had like a dozen or so dropdowns and edit fields on top of each other and it was kinda hard to tell where a box was, because all those lines are kinda just noise in a dense interface. The same interface even in Gtk, where widgets have a simpler outline, but utilize colors, is much easier to use. You also can't easily tell read-only widgets apart, because everything is the same color and look (might be a Tk defect though). I suspect CDE was designed to still work on monochrome displays, but color is imho very important for effective interfaces and CDE doesn't use it at all.
- hulitu 5y agoYou shall try Teams on windows over another window. The cream of GUI design. Good luck telling which window is active and which GUI element belongs to which window.
- formerly_proven 5y agoTeams certainly set a new benchmark for dumpster fires.
- Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago> I suspect CDE was designed to still work on monochrome displays, but color is imho very important for effective interfaces and CDE doesn't use it at all. To say something like this is a bit funny in the world where "light" and "dark" are theme choices. If anything has tried to use colorful desktop, it is VUE, CDE, today NsCDE etc.
- bm3719 5y agoI'd say Motif, and my favorite, Xaw3d, are two of the nicer UI toolkits out there. At least, that's true from the perspective of a user, having never programmed against their APIs. There's a lot to be said for distinctive, beveled buttons for quick visual acquisition of interactive UI widgets. Modern fashion trends make them look dated, but I'd be willing to put money on them being quicker for new users of an application getting oriented and doing things.
- toyg 5y agoI think is a usability vs aesthetic scale. The likes of CDE score high in usability and low in aesthetic; the various "material" toolkits score high in aesthetic and low in usability.
- hulitu 5y agoYour aesthetic is not mine. I find "material" toolkits to be masochistic at least if not worse.
- Hegel3DReloaded 5y ago> Your aesthetic is not mine. I find "material" toolkits to be masochistic at least if not worse. Right to the point. A pure visual and usability masochism. I live for the day when our buttons, menus, scrollbars and such will one again have topShadowColor and bottomShadowColor, inverted on click to have nice fat juicy feeling that something has beed clicked actually.
- pjmlp 5y agoTheir APIs make Win32 feel nice experience, hence why you only need Petzold's book, while O'Reilley had like 10 book series on X Windows programming.
- formerly_proven 5y agoI remember when I went from Win32 with Petzold to Qt and was flabbergasted: "GUIs can be this easy?!"
- mixmastamyk 5y agoIt's not horrible in that more polished version, but SGI, Next, and Windows95+ did the classic look better.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoHell yes. It's extremely obvious what everything does. Buttons look like buttons. Tabs look like tabs. Draggable things look draggable. The loss of "chrome" in today's modern UIs makes undiscoverability a huge problem.
- Hegel3DReloaded 5y agoMaybe it is hard to someone to imagine, but yes. There are some of as who like 3D borders, brutalist semi-modern, semi-retro look dancing on the border of ugly and beautiful. This is what I look just now on my screen, as well as for many years ago. I had to learn that people exits who like flat gray on dark gray non-intuitive, sick and depressively looking "modern" interfaces with huge visual and thematic choices: usually called "light" and "dark" - all this wierdness in 2021. So yes, we can try to exterminate each other, or learn to live with this fact about differencies, and let other live. De gustibus non est disputandum.