8 ms·

I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from? Humans naturally read from top to bottom. It natur

by Svip 4y ago

I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from? Humans naturally read from top to bottom. It naturally follows that the final action in any UI should be at the bottom. I find these buttons at the top extremely confusing, as I often - from my experience with reading - after I've dealt with the subject at hand (in this case, picking a file), assume the natural place to confirm my choice would be after it (i.e. below it). What are the UX arguments for placing the confirm buttons at the top of a dialog?

HeckFeck 4y ago
They give us what we wanted after years of pleading, but we pay dearly and mercilessly in other ways. Truly Faustian.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I wonder how feasible would it be to support a fork that added that feature. It seems self-contained enough to not require any public API changes. Just building the GTK source with some flag would turn on that feature, and dynamically linking against that GTK lib.so would make the thumbnails view accessible to the user. Did anybody care enough to try? (I personally don't; I use the file manager for any views I want, and drag the files from it onto an app, or onto a file chooser dialog. That feature, which is also present in macOS, was very much worth reproducing.)
  - traverseda 4y ago
    Gtk-mushrooms was one such fork, but I think gnome will make it pretty hard to maintain a fork if one starts getting popular.
richajak 4y ago
As I use XFCE as my daily driver, I never understand why the buttons in file dialog located as such. Is it decision from GTK or XFCE team ? I almost put the blame on XFCE team for this, :-( Can app devs who use GTK library overwrite this style?
znpy 4y ago
> I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from? it comes from gnome developers wanting to do things different for difference's sake. it makes no sense and brings no advantage. truly an unnecessary change.
- bonzini 4y ago
  I think it comes from Apple and Android actually.
yoavm 4y ago
It takes less vertical space because it reuses the (mostly empty) title bar.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  I loathe applications that put controls all over the title bar. The title bar is supposed to be a mostly empty expanse that you can grab with a mouse. Now it's littered with controls, and I can hardly bring windows to focus or move them around without accidentally searching something or confirming something.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    +100 couldn't agree more. And it's not a rational decision, it's a UI trend.
  - sovnade 4y ago
    Agreed - especially if I'm remoted into a box and not necessarily running a full-resolution screen. Bad UI design is magnified when you're at 1024x768.
    - aragilar 4y ago
      I find it somewhat ironic given current GNOME that when I was choosing between GNOME 2 or KDE 3 back in the day, GNOME 2 won as bits wouldn't float off my screen...
  - davet91 4y ago
    With GTK you can at least drag the window by grabbing controls in the titlebar.
  - drdo 4y ago
    At least on gnome you can drag or resize a window from anywhere by holding Super.
    - nine_k 4y ago
andrepd 4y ago
>Humans naturally read from top to bottom. It naturally follows that the final action in any UI should be at the bottom. Pretty bold of you to assume such thought process occurred at any point during design. Someone just thought "this looks good", where good may mean "modern-looking", "trendy", or "looks great on a screenshot for a product page", and slapped the button there.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  I call this dribbble-driven design. Looks good on a heavy photoshopped screenshot, ship it
butz 4y ago
You forgot to mention, that filename entry field is also in the middle of titlebar. While that might help to defend placing "Save" button next to it on the right, but now all primary save dialog functionality is contained in titlebar. Folder selection is clearly separated and made secondary action. It would be interesting to see usage statistics, how many users save files without selecting folder first.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Sadly there would be no stats for people screaming obscenities to authors of this... dialog, because they tried to move the dialog but instead got to the filename editbox.
323 4y ago
> I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from Original small screen iPhone, where it's easier to reach the top than the bottom, and it's less likely to be an accidental touch. But now it's cargo-culted everywhere.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I wish Gnome did not try so hard to be macOS. If I wanted to use macOS, I'd get me a Mac. But I see that the other Unix machine most Gnome developers use is a Macbook, so they try to make things familiar, because they sort of like that UI. (Those who don't but still want a coherent desktop can pick KDE.)
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    It's not even macOS; it's iOS. It's a GUI for phablets and phones. Fortunately, I think more projects are abandoning GTK than onboarding it thanks to GTK's horrible documentation, instability, opinionatedness, and simply how much better Qt is to develop for[0], which I can only hope will gradually de-throne GNOME as "the default DE". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism
    - nine_k 4y ago
      GTK is pure C, while Qt is C++. It's both a blessing, and a curse. E.g. I did not write, but just looked through the hoops PyQt has to jump to interface with Qt nicely. Quite impressive.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        Qt being a pain to bind (and thus having few high quality bindings) is definitely a big reason why I’ve avoided it. I don’t really want to be writing UI in C++.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        In my opinion not using managed languages is a huge hindrance to these platforms.
mattkevan 4y ago
As a ux designer, putting the confirm button at the top right is madness. I can’t comprehend the thought process that led to it being put where the close action usually goes. I’d love to watch an eye tracking study of it in use.
dig1 4y ago
When Windows 95 came, (if I'm not wrong), it had an accompanying HIG book backed by actual research - I think their main inspiration was book pages, but I can't be 100% sure. OK (Confirmation) intentionally was on the left side, far away from accidental click, assuming this is a destructive, irreversible operation. "Cancel/Close" on the other hand, is closer for most users (right side), and it will just close the window. Making Confirm/Cancel buttons this way makes no sense. I'll assume they added this just because it looks cool, as someone mentioned as well.
layer8 4y ago
I wonder if this is designed by primarily laptop users. They may conceivably prefer buttons at the top because it’s closer to the center of their field of view. Of course, laptops used with their builtin display and keyboard are a usability disaster already, so that shouldn’t be a criterion.
- kaba0 4y ago
  For what it worth, gnome is very good to use with a trackpad, swiping left-right to switch between desktops is very smooth, probably the best laptop experience out of any OS/DE.

by Svip 4y ago

HeckFeck 4y ago

They give us what we wanted after years of pleading, but we pay dearly and mercilessly in other ways. Truly Faustian.

nine_k 4y ago
I wonder how feasible would it be to support a fork that added that feature. It seems self-contained enough to not require any public API changes. Just building the GTK source with some flag would turn on that feature, and dynamically linking against that GTK lib.so would make the thumbnails view accessible to the user. Did anybody care enough to try? (I personally don't; I use the file manager for any views I want, and drag the files from it onto an app, or onto a file chooser dialog. That feature, which is also present in macOS, was very much worth reproducing.)
- traverseda 4y ago
  Gtk-mushrooms was one such fork, but I think gnome will make it pretty hard to maintain a fork if one starts getting popular.

richajak 4y ago

As I use XFCE as my daily driver, I never understand why the buttons in file dialog located as such. Is it decision from GTK or XFCE team ? I almost put the blame on XFCE team for this, :-( Can app devs who use GTK library overwrite this style?

znpy 4y ago

> I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from? it comes from gnome developers wanting to do things different for difference's sake. it makes no sense and brings no advantage. truly an unnecessary change.

bonzini 4y ago
I think it comes from Apple and Android actually.

yoavm 4y ago

It takes less vertical space because it reuses the (mostly empty) title bar.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I loathe applications that put controls all over the title bar. The title bar is supposed to be a mostly empty expanse that you can grab with a mouse. Now it's littered with controls, and I can hardly bring windows to focus or move them around without accidentally searching something or confirming something.
- phkahler 4y ago
  +100 couldn't agree more. And it's not a rational decision, it's a UI trend.
- sovnade 4y ago
  Agreed - especially if I'm remoted into a box and not necessarily running a full-resolution screen. Bad UI design is magnified when you're at 1024x768.
  - aragilar 4y ago
    I find it somewhat ironic given current GNOME that when I was choosing between GNOME 2 or KDE 3 back in the day, GNOME 2 won as bits wouldn't float off my screen...
- davet91 4y ago
  With GTK you can at least drag the window by grabbing controls in the titlebar.
- drdo 4y ago
  At least on gnome you can drag or resize a window from anywhere by holding Super.
  - nine_k 4y ago

andrepd 4y ago

>Humans naturally read from top to bottom. It naturally follows that the final action in any UI should be at the bottom. Pretty bold of you to assume such thought process occurred at any point during design. Someone just thought "this looks good", where good may mean "modern-looking", "trendy", or "looks great on a screenshot for a product page", and slapped the button there.

dmitriid 4y ago
I call this dribbble-driven design. Looks good on a heavy photoshopped screenshot, ship it

butz 4y ago

You forgot to mention, that filename entry field is also in the middle of titlebar. While that might help to defend placing "Save" button next to it on the right, but now all primary save dialog functionality is contained in titlebar. Folder selection is clearly separated and made secondary action. It would be interesting to see usage statistics, how many users save files without selecting folder first.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
Sadly there would be no stats for people screaming obscenities to authors of this... dialog, because they tried to move the dialog but instead got to the filename editbox.

323 4y ago

> I wonder where this trend - fortunately a limited one - with putting confirm buttons at the top comes from Original small screen iPhone, where it's easier to reach the top than the bottom, and it's less likely to be an accidental touch. But now it's cargo-culted everywhere.

nine_k 4y ago
I wish Gnome did not try so hard to be macOS. If I wanted to use macOS, I'd get me a Mac. But I see that the other Unix machine most Gnome developers use is a Macbook, so they try to make things familiar, because they sort of like that UI. (Those who don't but still want a coherent desktop can pick KDE.)
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  It's not even macOS; it's iOS. It's a GUI for phablets and phones. Fortunately, I think more projects are abandoning GTK than onboarding it thanks to GTK's horrible documentation, instability, opinionatedness, and simply how much better Qt is to develop for[0], which I can only hope will gradually de-throne GNOME as "the default DE". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism
  - nine_k 4y ago
    GTK is pure C, while Qt is C++. It's both a blessing, and a curse. E.g. I did not write, but just looked through the hoops PyQt has to jump to interface with Qt nicely. Quite impressive.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      Qt being a pain to bind (and thus having few high quality bindings) is definitely a big reason why I’ve avoided it. I don’t really want to be writing UI in C++.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      In my opinion not using managed languages is a huge hindrance to these platforms.

mattkevan 4y ago

As a ux designer, putting the confirm button at the top right is madness. I can’t comprehend the thought process that led to it being put where the close action usually goes. I’d love to watch an eye tracking study of it in use.

dig1 4y ago

When Windows 95 came, (if I'm not wrong), it had an accompanying HIG book backed by actual research - I think their main inspiration was book pages, but I can't be 100% sure. OK (Confirmation) intentionally was on the left side, far away from accidental click, assuming this is a destructive, irreversible operation. "Cancel/Close" on the other hand, is closer for most users (right side), and it will just close the window. Making Confirm/Cancel buttons this way makes no sense. I'll assume they added this just because it looks cool, as someone mentioned as well.

layer8 4y ago

I wonder if this is designed by primarily laptop users. They may conceivably prefer buttons at the top because it’s closer to the center of their field of view. Of course, laptops used with their builtin display and keyboard are a usability disaster already, so that shouldn’t be a criterion.

kaba0 4y ago
For what it worth, gnome is very good to use with a trackpad, swiping left-right to switch between desktops is very smooth, probably the best laptop experience out of any OS/DE.