4 ms·

Nothing made with GTK is beautiful or intuitive.

by nigrioid 4y ago

macco 4y ago
Incredible useless comment.
- zer0-c00l 4y ago
  true though
  - Gualdrapo 4y ago
    No, it's not true. On the top of my head there is Inkscape which truly is intuitive (despite GTK) and, arguably with their latest betas, beautiful. I wish we could have something like it with Qt/KDE. Calligra's Karbon once was a nice promise but it is now only a shadow of what it was meant to be and even living a slow death.
    - memorable 4y ago
      The OP is saying that the comment that says GTK is unintuitive is useless is true, and you are saying that GTK is beautiful and intuitive, which is just confirming the OP's comment. I think you miss the point here.
- n3storm 4y ago
  "nothing" may be too much. But if very basic components like file choose and file save dialog are incredibly painful to be used with buttons scattered through all window corners (fitts law anyone?) then "nothing" starts resounding in your mind. https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_images/filechooserdialog_example.png https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_imag... You can find another control at bottom left to choose file codification or whatever. Font select dialog: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/fontchooser.png https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/fontchooser.png Will gtk4 be any better? https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/fontchooser.png https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/fontchooser.png No, there is an extra settings button before select which looks to me totally secondary not to be present by the primary button. Primary actions should be together: - Choose letter - Choose size - Click select ...In a row or L movement We will get this extra UI darkening: now is not evident you can type font size numbers cause all controls are flat. In gtk3 at least inputs look like inputs and buttons look like buttons.
  - randomsearch 4y ago
    The non-standard and objectively poor positioning of the buttons is fascinating. What was the logic behind this? It seems to me that designers are much less likely to give their time for free to a software project than programmers. Is that why OSS suffers from problems like this? A junior UI designer would never make these kinds of decisions. I can understand why designers wouldn’t work for free. What I don’t understand is why an average coder couldn’t do some basic googling and learn the fundamentals. You can get a long way by imitating commercial work and following standard conventions. So is it lack of skill, or some sort of mistaken belief that the conventions established by the experts are wrong? I’m wondering here if the idea is to imitate a forward/back step from a wizard (albeit with the buttons in the “wrong” vertical position) Not a paradigm appropriate for repeated everyday interactions, mainly because wizards are not designed for efficiency.
    - nigrioid 4y ago
      I think it's deliberate sabotage to prevent the year of the Linux desktop.
    - macco 4y ago
      The positioning is not objectively wrong. Where do you get this from? Did you make tests with people who never used a PC before? Who are not biased? Or is this your opinion, which would be subjectively by definition. UI usage is mostly learned. Just to be clear, I don't think GTK is the perfect UI system. In my opinion, there is none.
      - randomsearch 4y ago
        > The positioning is not objectively wrong. Yes, it is. There are lots of UX rules backed by research. Fitts' Law in this case is just one reason why this is wrong.
      - TuringTest 4y ago
        Why should tests be done with people who never used a PC before? User expectations are a large part of usability. Moreover, which users who never used a PC before would be using Gnome?
squarefoot 4y ago
You chose the worst possible way to express a concept many of us could agree about; let me attempt to expand it a bit. GTK choice of putting everything, including buttons, on the windows title bar kills intuitiveness and slows down the workflow. When a window/dialog/whatever opens, I look at the title, then if necessary I move it to another place by grabbing that same title bar, which is immediate because that is where I was already looking to, then start reading its contents downwards. When finished I'd expect to see choice buttons just below the contents of that frame, I'm looking just there so that it would come very easy, but no, now I have to go back upwards and find the title bar to push a choice button. To me, this is against any interface writing logic; it trades usability for a dubious more modern appearance, and I would very much welcome a patch to correct it.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Is that an issue with GTK or the Gnome HIG?
  - petepete 4y ago
    Or the user? There's always a hypervocal minority in any a GNOME related thread claiming that GNOME 3 was a regression, it has too much padding, it's too slow, it takes too much memory, it doesn't allow you to configure something, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, every big distro chooses it and millions get on with it just fine.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      The button layout in GTK dialogs makes essentially no sense from a UX perspective, because, yes, people read things left-to-right (in LTR languages), top-to-bottom, and the program flow should reflect that. Apart from that problem, buttons on top makes little sense for other dialogs due to the awkward mouse movements it forces. Mouse moves down, selects a file, maybe picks the file type (do I want a jay-peg or a jif?) and then... has to move all the way up again? I'm mostly not in a direct line-of-fire for user complains due to Gtk/Gnome (but actually received some, mainly around, you guessed it, file dialogs), but the impact zone is basically next door. And it's not exactly happy noises and good smells coming out that door. This is from users who couldn't care less what the thingamajing is called and don't know or care if their Linux explorer is called Dolphin or Thunar. What they do notice is that they've got an OS upgrade from IT and now they're angry because two thirds of the UI are gone and the remainder makes less sense to them.
kaapipo 4y ago
I hate to agree on this one.

Nothing made with GTK is beautiful or intuitive.

macco 4y ago

Incredible useless comment.

zer0-c00l 4y ago
true though
- Gualdrapo 4y ago
  No, it's not true. On the top of my head there is Inkscape which truly is intuitive (despite GTK) and, arguably with their latest betas, beautiful. I wish we could have something like it with Qt/KDE. Calligra's Karbon once was a nice promise but it is now only a shadow of what it was meant to be and even living a slow death.
  - memorable 4y ago
    The OP is saying that the comment that says GTK is unintuitive is useless is true, and you are saying that GTK is beautiful and intuitive, which is just confirming the OP's comment. I think you miss the point here.
n3storm 4y ago
"nothing" may be too much. But if very basic components like file choose and file save dialog are incredibly painful to be used with buttons scattered through all window corners (fitts law anyone?) then "nothing" starts resounding in your mind. https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_images/filechooserdialog_example.png https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_imag... You can find another control at bottom left to choose file codification or whatever. Font select dialog: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/fontchooser.png https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/fontchooser.png Will gtk4 be any better? https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/fontchooser.png https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/fontchooser.png No, there is an extra settings button before select which looks to me totally secondary not to be present by the primary button. Primary actions should be together: - Choose letter - Choose size - Click select ...In a row or L movement We will get this extra UI darkening: now is not evident you can type font size numbers cause all controls are flat. In gtk3 at least inputs look like inputs and buttons look like buttons.
- randomsearch 4y ago
  The non-standard and objectively poor positioning of the buttons is fascinating. What was the logic behind this? It seems to me that designers are much less likely to give their time for free to a software project than programmers. Is that why OSS suffers from problems like this? A junior UI designer would never make these kinds of decisions. I can understand why designers wouldn’t work for free. What I don’t understand is why an average coder couldn’t do some basic googling and learn the fundamentals. You can get a long way by imitating commercial work and following standard conventions. So is it lack of skill, or some sort of mistaken belief that the conventions established by the experts are wrong? I’m wondering here if the idea is to imitate a forward/back step from a wizard (albeit with the buttons in the “wrong” vertical position) Not a paradigm appropriate for repeated everyday interactions, mainly because wizards are not designed for efficiency.
  - nigrioid 4y ago
    I think it's deliberate sabotage to prevent the year of the Linux desktop.
  - macco 4y ago
    The positioning is not objectively wrong. Where do you get this from? Did you make tests with people who never used a PC before? Who are not biased? Or is this your opinion, which would be subjectively by definition. UI usage is mostly learned. Just to be clear, I don't think GTK is the perfect UI system. In my opinion, there is none.
    - randomsearch 4y ago
      > The positioning is not objectively wrong. Yes, it is. There are lots of UX rules backed by research. Fitts' Law in this case is just one reason why this is wrong.
    - TuringTest 4y ago
      Why should tests be done with people who never used a PC before? User expectations are a large part of usability. Moreover, which users who never used a PC before would be using Gnome?

squarefoot 4y ago

You chose the worst possible way to express a concept many of us could agree about; let me attempt to expand it a bit. GTK choice of putting everything, including buttons, on the windows title bar kills intuitiveness and slows down the workflow. When a window/dialog/whatever opens, I look at the title, then if necessary I move it to another place by grabbing that same title bar, which is immediate because that is where I was already looking to, then start reading its contents downwards. When finished I'd expect to see choice buttons just below the contents of that frame, I'm looking just there so that it would come very easy, but no, now I have to go back upwards and find the title bar to push a choice button. To me, this is against any interface writing logic; it trades usability for a dubious more modern appearance, and I would very much welcome a patch to correct it.

rglullis 4y ago
Is that an issue with GTK or the Gnome HIG?
- petepete 4y ago
  Or the user? There's always a hypervocal minority in any a GNOME related thread claiming that GNOME 3 was a regression, it has too much padding, it's too slow, it takes too much memory, it doesn't allow you to configure something, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, every big distro chooses it and millions get on with it just fine.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    The button layout in GTK dialogs makes essentially no sense from a UX perspective, because, yes, people read things left-to-right (in LTR languages), top-to-bottom, and the program flow should reflect that. Apart from that problem, buttons on top makes little sense for other dialogs due to the awkward mouse movements it forces. Mouse moves down, selects a file, maybe picks the file type (do I want a jay-peg or a jif?) and then... has to move all the way up again? I'm mostly not in a direct line-of-fire for user complains due to Gtk/Gnome (but actually received some, mainly around, you guessed it, file dialogs), but the impact zone is basically next door. And it's not exactly happy noises and good smells coming out that door. This is from users who couldn't care less what the thingamajing is called and don't know or care if their Linux explorer is called Dolphin or Thunar. What they do notice is that they've got an OS upgrade from IT and now they're angry because two thirds of the UI are gone and the remainder makes less sense to them.

kaapipo 4y ago

I hate to agree on this one.