A common complaint about GNOME is that it has a certain fetish for icons. Menu entries, buttons - everything has an icon attached to it which often wastes space needlessly by making buttons larger than they need to be, as well as menus wider than they need to be. The good news (for me, at least) is that the next GNOME release will have all these icons removed.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-09-10
Being one of the guys referring to KDE twice in this thread let me just point out that I didn't talk about the UI in general. I don't think GNOME should be like KDE - what would be the point?
We are talking about a very specific element (among several dozens) of the desktop. I'll recap for you:
GNOME currently has icons on buttons (and menus). Problem: they unnecessarily enlarge the widgets (both vertically and horizontally) taking up screen real estate. GNOME's solution: remove them altogether, possibly without a straightforward way to change it back. Some people like the idea, others don't.
Let's assume that icons on buttons are the cake they gonna eat by the next release. Question: is it possible to have the cake and eat it too? KDE is just an example that shows that yes, it's possible. There may be several others. This has nothing to do with the general UI.
Another question: is it possible that they are looking at the problem in a wrong way? Again, the answer is yes if you look at both the link I posted from the discussion (text+icons=good study) and the link to the design principles behind oxygen. As it currently stands, the gnome icons don't scale well, they are monotone (forgive me the pun) - the same pastellish palette for all icons - hence they are not as valuable as visual cues as they could be. Another solution would be to look at better ways to implement the widgets. Or just come up with a better default widget style. Instead, they decided to remove the icons as a "solution." In this respect - and this respect only - isn't the KDE implementation a good example? How would more scalable widgets/icons make GNOME more KDEish?
Member since:2005-07-14
molnarcs&soulblender: the question is if devs will have that option to show them or not or just remove them. It seems to be still in the air.
But I also disagree with two assumptions: there is a problem of space and and gnome pastel colors are too subtle.
- problem of space is - I guess - for small screens, aka netbooks and co. On regular desktop not so much. I don't want to waste space and the option to design themes with tight UI elements is fine. But just that an option. Not the norm.
- pastel colors: I guess another fundamental matter of taste. In the image you link molnarcs, some of the icons used primal colors (brigth red). I like clean icons and colored one but I do prefer a pastel colors theme to primal color theme.
Member since:
2005-07-14
I know UI are a matter of taste, but please stop referring to KDE as the model to follow... I cannot stand KDE UI. No offense to its followers but not everybody has same taste.
And on matter of icons - I am puzzled. I always found the small icon next to the menu extremely convenient... so I am not too happy about that move to remove them.