GNOME June 2024: C'mon you can do better

Chef6652 , 6 days ago

I hope they continue learning lessons from other OSes.

I’m feeling like you are wrong about them outright copying. Some good things can be taken from macOS and Windows. But a lot of bad things too, which is why they are thinking it through.

Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it… Apple doesn’t own modals or modal design.

Here there are not 20 ways of putting 3 buttons in a modal. They just happen to choose a way that will also work on mobile I guess.

Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.

I don’t like everything Gnome has been doing, especially with the lack of customization or the status bar. But Gnome has been my go to for 7+ years and I like where it is going. Extensions are pretty fly too 👌

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it…

Well, it’s insulting for people to lose their work because someone did a lousy UX job. :)

Cloning macOS should not be views as something “bad” because for what’s worth we all know Apple spends a LOT in usability research (they’re not as good as they used to be, but still better than the rest).

Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.

That’s the thing, I’ve basic design / UX training and all the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add a margin. Any design undergraduate should also be able to notice that life saver as well… however the GNOME team totally missed it.

This isn’t the first time them failing at basic UX and they don’t like when people try to suggest improvements nor when they later on criticize them.

KindaABigDyl , 6 days ago

Having used OS X, there is no way they’ve done usability testing. Doing basically everything is hard on OS X

gianni , 6 days ago

This is an insane take based on absolutely nothing.

GravitySpoiled , 6 days ago

Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple. And microsoft also does a couple of things better than apple. Apple isn’t perfect and microsoft isn’t all bad

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple.

Yes, so let’s copy Apple and keep the few things GNOME does well.

Routhinator , 6 days ago

Sometimes when you get UI experts and users and engineers in the same room they iterate to similar outcomes because its the logical conclusion. Apples design in this case isn’t ground breaking or even original.

If multiple species of jumping spider can independently evolve the ability to see red from different branches of their family tree, multiple dev teams can come to the same conclusion about what is more comfortable for reaching with consideration for left and right handed people on various types of screens.

The problem is so scoped these days, its fairly logical for UIs to come to the same outcome.

pmk , 6 days ago

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 , 6 days ago

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

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

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

That’s definitely interesting.

Hjalamanger , 6 days ago

I find that “carefully included extra margin” outrageously ugly

GolfNovemberUniform , 6 days ago

Same

Deckweiss , 6 days ago

It’s ugly, but useful.

(unlike me, I am ugly and useless /s)

jeremias , 6 days ago

I have no idea about apple design guidelines and am not a UX designer, but wouldn’t a horizontal seperator look better? In gtk i would add one here, gives some extra space and more visual seperation.

Dremor , 6 days ago

Looks alright to me.

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

I don’t completely disagree with you, however the cost of losing an important document because you clicked on the wrong thing is way higher than having to look at the extra space every day.

NOOBMASTER , 6 days ago

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

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

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…

sedot , 6 days ago

They should simply find the courage to implement Apples Human Interface Guidelines. It wont hurt and they are almost there anyway.

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

That’s my point. :)

However for this they would need to admit to themselves that they’re essentially a copy of macOS.

sedot , 6 days ago

I totally agree - Apple invested alot of cash and time into this, just take it and make it better here and there. Just a few steps left :)

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

just take it and make it better here and there. Just a few steps left :)

You mean, copy it and make it open :P I guess something along the lines of github.com/CuarzoSoftware/Louvre

@ehopperdietzel is working on that it seems.

sedot , 6 days ago

Thank you, bookmarked. Never heard of this yet. :)

Krafting , 6 days ago

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!