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GNOME June 2024: C'mon you can do better

New GNOME dialog on the right:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8d6ae1b8-566f-4773-80b1-de00c22b782f.jpeg

Apple’s dialog:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/62f4bf9d-b325-4941-98c9-c749445dd823.png

They say GNOME isn’t a copy of macOS but with time it has been getting really close. I don’t think this is a bad thing however they should just admit it and then put some real effort into cloning macOS instead of the crap they’re making right now.

Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.

So much for the GNOME, vision and their expert usability team :P

orca ,
@orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts avatar

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Your point being…?

Darkraisisi ,
@Darkraisisi@feddit.nl avatar

If it is standard design, it is not targeting iOS. That is his point.

AndrewZabar ,

His point is that you have no point.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

My point is: if you want to copy / be inspired by others at least do it right.

AndrewZabar ,

So, copying is making something identical. But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

Ever hear of two things just being similar? We are talking about a UI - these things have always followed patterns that change as usage patterns change in the industry. I think you must be young and/or inexperienced because this kind of trend goes back to the ‘80s.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

I would categorize it as poor copying because the copy doesn’t conform to the design / UX patterns that were present on the “original” work.

sunzu ,

Bro... There is but so many ways to effectively organize something basic like that jfc.

Best or standard practice, ever heard of the concept?

ProgrammingSocks ,

Who gives a shit. Use the desktop you like. Don’t post this /g/ tier bait.

Dariusmiles2123 ,

I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

Just because you aren’t used to the macOS workflow it doesn’t mean it is bad - that’s the same argument you GNOME fan boys do with Windows users ;)

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

Yes, it’s okay, and that was never an issue in this discussion. The issue is that they didn’t took enough inspiration on basic UX patterns.

Dariusmiles2123 ,

Well what I meant is that if Gnome was taking so much inspiration from MacOs, being a Gnome user, I wouldn’t have felt lost on MacOS.

I also don’t mind Gnome taking what’s great from every other OS, as it’d clearly be stupid not to if an idea is great.

I also think that people should be more open minded about what others are enjoying. I prefer Linux, but I can also understand that some people just want to have the most compatible OS with everything, aka Windows. Or the best ecosystem, aka Apple.

It is not my choice, and I’m trying to convince people to switch to something else, but just badmouthing their choice when it has objectively some advantages isn’t gonna help.

possiblylinux127 , (edited )

Gnome is so much better than Mac OS

Also it is kind of insulting to call gnome a clone of something else. It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

MonkderDritte ,

It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

There’s a lot of ideology at play here.

possiblylinux127 ,

Yeah you are right. It just annoys me when people call it a cheap knock off.

wolf ,

Wait - Gnome user here (heavily modified and with multiple extensions) …

macOS window management and trying to using it via keyboard is a totally miserable experience (forced to use it at work :-/ ) … at the same time, Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags. I still happily prefer Gnome over macOS on my desktop for literally everything, macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings, setup cannot be properly automated, the ‘auto features’ totally suck and do everything I do not want them to do and macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Gnome sucks, but it sucks less for me than all other alternatives on the desktop at the moment…

My biggest reason to stick with Gnome are Wayland, Evolution/Online Accounts and that I can automatically configure Gnome to something usable with dconf/gsettings. I am not holding my breath that KDE ever gets their KMail story under control, stability as in zero crashes and being fully configurable via Ansible. The very moment this happens, I’ll happily jump ship. (Of course also waiting for Wayland support for Xfce :-P)

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags

Isn’t this ironic? The DE with a user base that is way more tech savvy people thinks users can’t use tags.

macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings,

What are you talking about?? At least on macOS app icons are consistent not the crap they are on GNOME.

macOS (…) setup cannot be properly automated

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple makes automated setup even easier than it is on MS ecosystems, companies can literally buy a computer on the Apple Store and have it shipped to an employee with the companie’s profile pre-installed by Apple without even needing to touch or open the box. The employee get’s the computer, opens the box and just has to login with this corporate account.

You’ve Apple’s own MDM, Jamf, JumpCloud and so many others. Even Ansible can be used to configure, setup and automated macOS deployments.

macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Well at least it doesn’t like a 5 second pointless fade animation after every single click like GNOME does, nor does it bundle web technologies for theming that make the DE be as slow as it can get when it comes to rendering a new window.

wolf ,

I wish the thing about tags was ironic

Concerning the rest of your points: Icons are one of the few things I never had an issue with in Gnome. ;-)

Concerning automated setups, the only system I care fore is Linux and am forced to use macOS. For my use cases, I don’t care about the tooling/possibilities for companies to install crap on my machine (my company does that). Using Ansible to automate my setup for macOS is theoretically possible, but such a crappy experience compared to Linux, that I don’t bother. Not to mention no unified installation/update system on macOS and the shitty default apps like Finder, Window management etc. The solution which sucks the least for me is using macOS as dump VPN driver for my virtual Linux box, so I can get shit done.

… no need to argue about bad Gnome defaults, it is trivial to disable all animations and the shell is fast enough even on my netbook. :-)

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

it is trivial to disable all animations

Yeah you can go into settings and toggle of a switch, however they don’t disable everything. ~

Whenever you go into Settings > Accessibility > Enable Animations and disable it one would expect that ALL animations would be disabled while in fact they aren’t. It should behave like Xfce that is, click on something and get the instant result, no delay, no very small animation / fade like GNOME still does.

Bottom line: that option in GNOME is misleading and doesn’t do what it advertises.

vhstape ,
@vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I think that a lot of the recent GNOME design choices are merely because they’re trying to improve usability on mobile devices. It also just so happens that Apple is trying to make the macOS desktop closer to iOS to encourage people to move from Windows. They have similar goals, which leads to similar design choices. And all design is derivative, anyway. Who cares.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

You aren’t wrong, but that has nothing to do with he issue at hand. They should copy each other if a solution is good, and that’s the issue here, GNOME forgot to copy a good UX practice that Apple actually took the time to implement.

Sentau , (edited )

Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.

And gnome has those dialogs in a different colour to achieve easily noticable differentiation between the two options

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

The issue there isn’t only differentiation, that well done, the issue is that an user might miss click because both buttons are close to each other.

Sentau , (edited )

That same logic could be applied for the save and discard button. Should there be a bigger gap between them lest somebody misclick and discard things instead of saving them¿? Atleast in the case where they accidentally click cancel instead of discard, they are not losing any data.

Hell if this really about data safety, discard/don’t save should be the isolated button because it is the only destructive option

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

According to the UX experts you don’t need the space between the save and discard buttons as long as the “save” is the first one. Missclick are more prone to happen from top to bottom than the other way around, so if the user wanted to hit “save” it’s more likely he will click above the button than it is to click “discard”. Same logic applied down there, when the using is looking to cancel it’s easier to missclick and hit the “discard” button than anything else.

Sentau ,

Can you share any study for this. If this is true, it is fascinating and worth looking into in more depth

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

This is an application of Fitts’s law. I saw some paper referencing it to back that kind of margins on destructive actions but I don’t remember the title.

Sentau ,

Well fitts law doesnt mention anything about asymmetrical spacing anywhere. Infact going by fitts law, the new gnome design is great because the hitboxes are pretty large

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

That’s what the paper was about, the law also applies the in reverse, adding the space protects the user because it makes it harder to click on the hitbox.

MXX53 ,

I started on gnome. I love it at first, but as time has gone on my experience with gnome had gotten worse and worse, and my KDE experience keeps getting better. It’s a real shame because I actually tend to prefer the gnome look at feel, but KDE has been so much more usable for me in recent years.

unknowing8343 ,

It’s very easy to get a Gnome look and feel with Plasma nowadays.

I still don’t know why Gnome loves wasting 3 % of the screen on an empty black bar, tho.

secret300 ,

Yeah ngl I don’t get using the entire space fore almost nothing. I use a few extensions to fill it up and make it more useful

MXX53 ,

That is true. But I have an overall better experience getting KDE to look like gnome.

unknowing8343 ,

That’s what I said.

MXX53 ,

Lol that is what you said. My bad. Must have read it wrong. That’s on me.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I’m kind of on the same boat you’re… however KDE tends to have issues with visual proportions and margins everywhere.

ssm ,
@ssm@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

If you’re going to give GNOME shit, at least let it before how much they destroy portability of GTK, enabling cancer like Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.

Well I’ve complained about those a couple of time… but people always say that it’s their vision.

possiblylinux127 ,

They made GTK4 portable thanks to the gnome design being moved to Libadwaita.

pmk ,

The founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza, stopped using Linux in favor of macOS in 2014 iirc. That makes me guess that the macOS design was at least acceptable to him. Maybe the visions were similar enough.

MrAlagos ,

What does the founder of GNOME have to do with GNOME in 2022? He worked for Microsoft for 6 years.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html

That’s definitely interesting.

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

My only problem with both designs in your images is the colors. It’s a pretty standard part of UI design (in real life and on computers) that “red means cancel” and “green means continue.” Apple using blue is no big deal and I’m 90% sure they just use a user chosen “highlight color.” (Maybe Gnome as well?) But cancel or delete or similar things should probably be red or another color that signals “Stop.”

I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors. Red means danger. Light blue means info. Green means yes or success. Yellow means warning. Other buttons are a darker blue — basically the highlight color. (Not saying they chose the best version of those colors. Just that the general idea is consistency and what users most naturally expect.)

muhyb ,

It’s just an accent colour and can be changed.

sedot ,

Where can i change easily accent colors in Gnome without using extensions?

NekkoDroid ,
@NekkoDroid@programming.dev avatar

Accent colors are coming with GNOME 47.

sedot ,

Yup, i know, its just not possible atm. But thank you anyway :)

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors

Yes it does. Those guys did a really good job.

d_k_bo ,

The “Save” button uses the accent color which is blue by default. With configurable accent colors coming to GNOME 47 and GTK/Libadwaita, you can choose a red accent color.

See the original description of the screenshot:

It’s now using standard button styles, fixing the long-standing issue where suggested and destructive buttons would look the same when using red accent color

NOOBMASTER ,

Wtf… I like the layout of the old dialogue better. It is easier to read.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

The older one is actually properly executed, the first button is the “Cancel” one and that makes sense because people read from left to right and tend to click mindlessly / without reading on the first button. Not sure if they actually changed the position on right to left languages but they should have…

Krafting ,
@Krafting@lemmy.world avatar

I actually like it, margin is maybe a bit much. For the apple extra margin, gnome app can add any buttons they want on those dialog, it is up to app devs to add an extra margin between some button!

tigerjerusalem ,

Funny enough, I find Gnome to be more consistent and better thought than macOS… But that’s just me.

electro1 ,
@electro1@infosec.pub avatar

Not just you :)

warmaster ,

Indeed, I freaking love GNOME’s UX/UI. But I switched to KDE for Wayland gaming.

ProgrammingSocks ,

I’m using Gnome and VRR on Wayland with no issues. AMD 7800XT.

GravitySpoiled ,

It is better :)

KrapKake ,

As someone who tried out MacOS in a VM out of curiosity I don’t find gnome to be like MacOS at all in overall functionality. I think to most people it just looks like Mac because top bar, dock and some design choices. Really though gnome is much more like Android. MacOS felt extremely clunky to use vs gnome’s fluid workspace and app switching.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

it just looks like Mac because top bar, dock and some design choices

Top bar, dock, system settings, activities (somewhat e mix between Apple’s mission control and launchpad), now the modal buttons, accent colors… and so many other things.

MacOS felt extremely clunky to use vs gnome’s fluid workspace and app switching.

Maybe you were running it without proper GPU acceleration and without a keyboard with actual macOS shortcuts on the function keys? Virtualizing macOS is hard and it will give you a very poor experience.

Obviously macOS has it’s defects but at least you aren’t risking losing your work due to a misclick nor you are restricted from having desktop icons like you’re on GNOME :)

MrAlagos ,

dock

Not a permanent dock. Docks predate Apple any way.

activities (somewhat e mix between Apple’s mission control and launchpad

GNOME 3 was officially launched a few months after OS X Lion, but combined these things into one first.

XTL ,

NeXT is probably the pretty direct ancestor of osx dock. Only Apple turned it from good to bad by moving it to the bottom, where there is no space. And that only got worse as screens became wider, but not taller. And they made it overlap and obscure content and bounce around if you got near it making it extra obnoxious and hard to use.

Other docks existed even before, of course.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Not a permanent dock. Docks predate Apple any way.

The Dock comes from NeXTSTEP, the operating system Steve Jobs left Apple to develop back in 1986… GNOME was announced in 1997 so I don’t get your argument.

GravitySpoiled ,

I’ve never lost anything because I misclicked. Ctrl+s is your friend.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

See the problem there, regular users don’t Ctrl+s, they point and click.

KrapKake ,

No I did not have GPU accel. I’m curious what you are referring to losing work due to a misclick? Personally I don’t use desktop icons. I’m a previous i3 user so I am used to using my computer with a non traditional interface.

TCB13 OP ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I’m curious what you are referring to losing work due to a misclick?

If you place “Discard” and “Cancel” next to each other, without a margin in between, is easier a user looking to click on “Cancel” to click on “Discard” and lose a document. This is more common than people think and that’s why Apple added the margin there and also why any good UX manual tells you to add a margin for destructive operations like that one.

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