4 ms·

The point stands. Explorer.exe 11 is nearly two decades ahead of GTK / Gnome. And MacOS is even worse. I just bought my daughter a MacBook and sat down with a

The point stands. Explorer.exe 11 is nearly two decades ahead of GTK / Gnome. And MacOS is even worse. I just bought my daughter a MacBook and sat down with a Mac for the first time since 86. My expectations were high. I thought I was going to see a Unix GUI done right. Instead it’s nearly as clunky as CDE. MS may deserve grief about some things, but dang, Windows is about as polished as a product can get.

sho_hn 4y ago
> The point stands. Explorer.exe 11 is nearly two decades ahead of GTK / Gnome. No, it doesn't. Explorer is the file manager application on Windows. The file manager application on Gnome is called Nautilus, and Nautilus has had thumbnail support for a very long time. This is about the file picker dialog, which both on Windows and on Gnome/GTK+ is not coming from the file manager. You can say that dialog should have had for thumbnail support for longer, sure. It's also correct that Windows added thumbnail support to its file picker dialogs earlier. But Win98 did not have this, either, and Windows at least for some time did not have parity between the file manager and the file picker dialog.
- Laaas 4y ago
  Do you have any idea why Nautilus isn't also the file picker?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    No, no idea. It's surprisingly common for DEs across different operating systems to have several independent implementations of file lists/icon views between the file manager, the desktop background and the file picker dialogs. I think across Win, Mac, Gnome, KDE this actually describes most of these systems for most of their history. You sometimes do find code reuse or even sharing a process between the file manager and the desktop background. Windows has done this, and Gnome also had a phase like this. KDE recently unified the view code for the file manager (Dolphin) and the file dialogs, but the desktop background has distinct UI code (with the same directory model backend, and shared code for thumbnailing, context menus and other bits). In that case the reason is different UI frameworks (Qt widgets vs. QML).
  - type0 4y ago
    Because, GTK, that's why https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/1bdb78a215f5e119c487b1cc1dbb8d54ed0913b3 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/1bdb78a215f5e119... https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      I love how android solves such problems. Instead of making the decision of whether a file manager must somehow be able to handle file picking, every application is allowed to choose whether it can do file picking. For a file manager it would probably be trivial, but the wonderful thing about this design is that it is very flexible
Laaas 4y ago
> Windows is about as polished as a product can get Windows still delegates to legacy Vista(XP?)-era UIs for certain settings.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  In the ODBC dialog you can find a Windows 3.1 style file picker still out there. They've stopped supporting the Windows 1.0 feature of clicking the window icon for the window menu though (and broke the "double click the top left icon to close" workflow in their weird new app designs, sadly).
- seritools 4y ago
  And ironically, these are the _more_ polished pieces of UI in modern Windows
soulofmischief 4y ago
Windows 11 is the furthest thing from what I'd describe as a "polished experience". It too has suffered from braindead reversal of UX norms in the last decade.

sho_hn 4y ago

> The point stands. Explorer.exe 11 is nearly two decades ahead of GTK / Gnome. No, it doesn't. Explorer is the file manager application on Windows. The file manager application on Gnome is called Nautilus, and Nautilus has had thumbnail support for a very long time. This is about the file picker dialog, which both on Windows and on Gnome/GTK+ is not coming from the file manager. You can say that dialog should have had for thumbnail support for longer, sure. It's also correct that Windows added thumbnail support to its file picker dialogs earlier. But Win98 did not have this, either, and Windows at least for some time did not have parity between the file manager and the file picker dialog.

Laaas 4y ago
Do you have any idea why Nautilus isn't also the file picker?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sho_hn 4y ago
  No, no idea. It's surprisingly common for DEs across different operating systems to have several independent implementations of file lists/icon views between the file manager, the desktop background and the file picker dialogs. I think across Win, Mac, Gnome, KDE this actually describes most of these systems for most of their history. You sometimes do find code reuse or even sharing a process between the file manager and the desktop background. Windows has done this, and Gnome also had a phase like this. KDE recently unified the view code for the file manager (Dolphin) and the file dialogs, but the desktop background has distinct UI code (with the same directory model backend, and shared code for thumbnailing, context menus and other bits). In that case the reason is different UI frameworks (Qt widgets vs. QML).
- type0 4y ago
  Because, GTK, that's why https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/1bdb78a215f5e119c487b1cc1dbb8d54ed0913b3 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/1bdb78a215f5e119... https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    I love how android solves such problems. Instead of making the decision of whether a file manager must somehow be able to handle file picking, every application is allowed to choose whether it can do file picking. For a file manager it would probably be trivial, but the wonderful thing about this design is that it is very flexible

Laaas 4y ago

> Windows is about as polished as a product can get Windows still delegates to legacy Vista(XP?)-era UIs for certain settings.

jeroenhd 4y ago
In the ODBC dialog you can find a Windows 3.1 style file picker still out there. They've stopped supporting the Windows 1.0 feature of clicking the window icon for the window menu though (and broke the "double click the top left icon to close" workflow in their weird new app designs, sadly).
seritools 4y ago
And ironically, these are the _more_ polished pieces of UI in modern Windows

soulofmischief 4y ago

Windows 11 is the furthest thing from what I'd describe as a "polished experience". It too has suffered from braindead reversal of UX norms in the last decade.