The GNOME 2.4 Desktop & Developer Platform is the latest release of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment. GNOME 2.4 includes 11 new applications and more than 100 user-requested enhancements. You can use a script like Garnome, CVSGnome or (if on Slackware) Dropline to build. Update: Ximian releases beta of its upcoming Ximian Desktop 3 product, currently losely based on Gnome 2.4, but targeting 2.6 for its final release.
GNOME Desktop & Developer Platform 2.4 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I did not say the HIG automatically fixed everything, but that it is a start, and that it brought a level of consistency to GNOME which is missing in other OSS projects. The HIG is used as a very important part of decinding whether or not an app makes it into GNOME. So most/all apps in GNOME will be HIG compliant. HIG compliance is taken as a serious issue.
The issues you pointed out may not all have been fixed, but the fact that some were fixed should spe volumes about GNOME development. You cannot expect all your issues to be dealt with.
The thing about the GNOME HIG is that people actualyl DO CARE about it. A whole new browser was written by volunteeers with the express aim of being HIG compliant. Even people who make other apps not for inclusion in GNOME make their apps HIG compliant(GAIM). I think there is very little problem with people not wanting to follow the HIG. The HIG is a success.
Unfortunately, your claim of having what you refered to as “3 menus” (the top menu bar, the bottom task bar, and an application bar at the top of an application) is exactly what made it easier for people to use GNOME over KDE not to long ago in a usability test. The reason: the average user (which you make claim the GNOME setup will confuse) found that GNOME was more different from Windows, and thereby the user had less of an expectation of how something should work.
Also, in many posts, you waste bandwidth debating debate. You try to pin a few words as a contradiction. Do the world a favor, and stop acting the troll, and either leave, or provide constructive comments. Or just go back to your “First Post” Slashdot ritual.
“However, for beginners and for those with lower-res screens, menubar at the top is better. For smaller screens, it helps conserve real estate and for beginners it’s more convenient. KDE is smart enough to realize these two points. That’s why they allow you choose.”
Unfortunately, for the beginner, they don’t know better, and won’t choose. As I explained in the previous Gnome 2.4 thread, I am one of those “advanced users” people always say GNOME isn’t “designed” for, and yet, for some odd reasons, GNOME feels much easier than KDE.
Here is the post: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4500&offset=30&rows=45#142122
Basically, it comes down to this:
“A powerful desktop isn’t the one with the most options, but that is the most usable. And more options doesn’t mean it’s more usable.”
In general, in reviewing your posts, you come off as the “throw another option/configuration at it, and that will solve the problem” kinda developer. And those type of people don’t know good UI’s.
Seriously, you may *think* KDE is more usable for you because you have all those options. But while your over their playing around with your options, my desktop just works out of the box, and works well.
“As I wrote earlier the people working on GNOME’s usability stuff are more or less theoreticans who have read the one or other good book describing what a users should see, how an interface may look like and stuff like that (please read my context again before replying the next time). I doub that these people have a clear idea of what the real user likes because they only deal with immaginary people and theoretical concepts. ”
And with a huff, and a puff, he blows down the HCI house.
You might want to check people’s creds. before you start shouting “theoreticans”, else people might start inquiring about yours.
I am well aware of the things happening around GNOME your points are definately valid but you obviously didn’t spent any time reading the UI review which also covers some more issues about how things are being done in CVS. You totally skipped them. I’m working myself on a bunch of GNOME related things one of them is even announced in the Topic of this Thread called ‘CVSGnome’ (thanks for mentioning it Eugenia) and ‘Atlantis’ (also on my homepage). I also DO know the people working on Epiphany or Galeon. Mostly because I am sitting in their channels and see them having conversation all the time. Year in, Year out.
Maybe I describe it differently. The HIG may be an importand thing, following it may be a good idea but the things written in the HIG are not being implemented the way you describe it here. It’s naive to say that ‘The HIG is a big importance of people deciding what makes it into GNOME and what not and that aesthetics adopted by the HIG is being followed strictly’. This is NOT the case and the Webbrowser you are refering to is one of the best examples where peoples eyes are being cheated. The UI around Epiphany may be strictly HIG compliant but the rendering engine IS NOT. It’s cluttered with XUL, dependency of another browsers core and many more (and getting more technical and burst more bubbles) people are talking since years that Mozilla will abstract it’s UI from the rendering library and some already refer to GRE as the ultimate solution while they ignore that getting the GRE means that you still need to compile the libraries from the entire Mozilla source.
You are only repeating stuff you have read from various baggy articles. What and how much do you know about the things that really happening ? I mean I am getting the stuff day in day out on their MailingLists, their IRC channel, by talking with the developers and so on. How more life can it be ? There is no need to try to explain the big great benefits of GNOME to someone NEW to GNOME (which I am not).
Let’s get back to implementations of the HIG, what’s written on the paper and how it’s being integrated in GNOME cvs.
Example:
User X shows up, sitting at home drinking coffee and decided, let’s higify some stuff. He sees a dialog that looks ugly, researches 5 mins in the written HIG and tries to fix the stuff and submits his changes to bugzilla.
User Z shows up, says “hum why did User X change my dialog and trashed the consistency, he used 8 pixel padding while the HIG clearly states to use 10 pixels” he emails that guy, pisses him off write a patch and committs it to CVS.
5 days later User T shows up and says “hum my definition of the HIG is a different one, wouldn’t it look better that way ?” he then sits down write a new HIG (his own interpretation) sents it to bugzilla and the developer or maintainer simply takes it and committs it to CVS because he like to have as many as possible bugs closed.
That’s how the reality in GNOME CVS looks. If you want to have a strict HIG then create a team of trustable people, teach them what to do and tell them to exactly do it that way and not interpret their own stuff into it. Look at Evolution for example. It’s a total HIG disaster it’s not even following it for one button (OK it’s said they do but look at the Toolbar, the menu entries and so on) even the Entourage fake is a HIG disaster and thus the HIG is being made worthless again because then sentences are raised that describe that the HIG lacks exactly these things and sentences like Ximian is doing a new innovation of Usability.
Now which Usability is right if you cheat it all the time and betray yourself ? If we want to go one roadmap (regardless of right or wrong) then please let us all go the same way, exactly, detailed and correct. At the end we all benefit from it.
That’s how I see things and how the practice usually looks.
Call me a luddite, but I like the menu bar at the top because I always know where it is. I also like a single button mouse and actively dislike two or three button mouses and scroll things. And when I want to open something, I like to double click on it. I did use Windows for years (much to my regret — I wasted so much time trying to get things to work and/or recovering from crashes) I greatly prefer
the menu in the same place for every application,
one button and
double click.
Regards,
Mark Wilson
I thought HIG was about the UI. And that XUL is not used by Epiphany. To me its like saying xine-libs is not HIG compliant.
Yes, Gecko has not been separated from Mozilla, but that is coming. It is a huge task to write a browsing widget as KDE knows too well. Reuse when the best is available. Like it is Gecko.
You are not the only one on mailing lists. I also visit the forums which talk about development, in addition to the mailing lists.
Evolution is NOT part of GNOME, although is seems to be the default mail client. The HIG is a guideline, it does not have to be followed 100%. Evolution’s UI was made before the HIG and it has not changed much since, even after moving to GTK+2. And the mockups are not a final design, so it is really not yet time to start criticising them before it is penned off as final.
Single click probably is more user friendly to new users, but double click is ingrained into ever GUI OS since Xerox, including every version of MacOS and Windows. I think that if you want to try to convert everyone to single click as the one true click selection technique than making it default with an option to use double-click instead is a reasonable idea. Yes, I too am an advocate of fewer options, better defaults but I think an aspect as important as this is worthy of an option. I have dealt with many a user being confused with double-click, and see it as a design fault, but, it may now be too late. I don’t think Eugenia is a hipocrit either.
On the issue of single application menu bar vs per window application bar, I think it is a wash. Both have their strengths and flaws and it is impossible to declare either one better. I think that per windows application bars are fine, since they are compatable with Windows and pretty much every non-Apple OS ever made.
While I prefer GNOME, I think KDE and GNOME are both wonderful desktops and I am glad that they both exist and are both different. Their is room for two desktops on Linux.
Skipp
Well its great that your desktop works for you out of box. For me, I have to dig into GConf and change all sorts of stuff. I like my GUI finely tuned to how I work, and I have to spend pretty much the same amount of time tweeking KDE, Windows (especially Windows, since you need a lot of third party tools like Cygwin to get a decent setup), or GNOME. If I’m going to spend all that time anyway, I might as well do it in KDE, because, thanks to its power, the end result is closest to what I want.
Now, this is not to say that KDE doesn’t need to be better out of box. It needs to work on stuff like toolbar clutter and context menu clutter, not because its confusing or whatever for a new user, but because it leads to cognitive overload that makes it slower for experienced users as well. It also needs to come with sane defaults for new users (it doesn’t). However, there is a great difference between menu clutter and option clutter. Menu clutter is in the “hot path.” You have to deal with it everytime you try to use an option. Configuration clutter is not. You configure your system once and are done with it. In the minds of most KDE users, more clutter in the “cold path” are a worthwhile tradeoff for increased power.
PS> Obviously, the KDE people don’t agree with the GNOME people about how many options are needed. If KDE people wanted to use a DE with minimal options, mainly sticking with the out-of-box install, they’d use GNOME. The fact that they don’t, even though switching is just an “apt-get gnome” away, says volumes about the preferences of these users.
I think that you are missing Bob’s point. He seems to be reiterating the point raised by Mosfet and others that having good defaults matters far more for the beginner than restricting her ability to change things. Most users have no desire at all to change anything other than the background. That’s why it doesn’t really matter if there are many options since the beginner will never encounter them. Having fewer options doesn’t really matter to the beginner and there’s no reason to ignore the other users.
I have to agree with his single-click theory. I remember back in the days of Windows 3.0 that it took some getting used to double-click. And it is contradictory to double-click Web stuff but not file icons. It’s just as dumb as making double-click close a window. KDE and Gnome were smart enough to take this out. Windows leaves it in.
> Yes, Gecko has not been separated from Mozilla, but that is coming.
Do you belive it’s coming or do you KNOW it’s coming ? What is the Mozilla development crew thinking about this and how does it separate XUL from the rendering widget ? Epiphany probably still renders XUL elements such as the pusbutton below with the label ‘Submit comment’ or the JavaScript Shell or when going to Freshmeat with all the buttons on the right.
> Evolution is NOT part of GNOME.
So is Mozilla, now how do you render in Epiphany ? Mozilla is no part of GNOME. You are trying to itch with the needle now while I only refer to whats realy going on in the CVS. I for my own leave the church in the town. Please try to see the things in a whole and don’t ignore 90% of the real facts I brough up. While I am trying to explain you how the reality of implementation of HIG inside the GNOME cvs looks, you gonna tell me things like ‘Evolution is NOT part of GNOME’ as it isn’t obvious or new to me.
You should read what I write, it can’t be that hard to understand. In case you don’t get it or do not want to get it then no problem, let me know.. A different reader may understand my raised points.
The main reason that Gnome apps are less consistent is that it’s harder to reuse code in my experience. Too many things have to be made from scratch. This makes things inconsistent since not everyone uses the same environment. KDE, otoh is very modular and lots of code can be reused, which helps create consistency. Maybe this has changed since Gtk 2.x I haven’t used it since KDE went to Qt 3.
You also miss the point that too many options are necessarily bad. The keywords here are ‘too many’. I could have a whole page of options for metacity, configuring everything from the colors, to focus options, to what ever else. Its not right. It also has the effect of hiding ‘more important’ options inside tree of options.
Case in point. What do people use browsers for, mostly. Web browsing, unless its Konqueror or IE(Explorer), which doubles as the file manager. Have you ever opened Konqueror’s options page. Its pretty daunting. Open Epiphany’s. There is much less there. Yes, you can’t change this options and that, but at the end of the day, Epiphany makes sense. Mozilla Firebird also took this route. Preferences are axcuses for not providing solution a lot of the times. Some preferences should not even be there. Besides, GNOME is about providing a consistent desktop. If users(power users) have special needs, they should not ruin the desktop experience for the 95% of normal users.
One of the biggest focuses in Gnome right now is on shared libraries so applications don’t have to rewrite everything from scratch. This is why gstreamer is so talked about because it will allow easy access to multimedai functions.
@oGALAXYo
Comparing the fact that Mozilla is used as the rendering engine with Evolution doesn’t work. You’re arguing about UI, but a rendering engine has nothing to do with the UI (at least past those few XML rendered buttons but how do they have anything to do with the HIG?).
Has anybody ever used a Microsoft app around here? MS Word has more options than all of KDE put together! How about Visual Studio? Its got so many options it has several options menus (And options menu, a customization menu). And MS options menus aren’t very well organized or very well written. I often find myself having to click through every tab in a configuration panel because the tab names are so vague. Also, configuration tabs in MS apps tend to be implemented as multi-layer tabviews (as opposed to MacOS and KDE, where they are usually vertical labeled along one side of the form). These tabviews really suck because if you click on a tab in a deeper layer, that layer comes to the front, so the tabs don’t stay in the same places.
MacOS does the right thing with respect to configuration. It has a decent amount of configurability (more than GNOME!) but stuff is well organized and well labeled. This goes a long way in striking a balance between usability and configurability.
>Has anybody ever used a Microsoft app around here? MS Word has more options than all of KDE put together!
And so does Eclipse. What is your point? We are talking about DEs here, not about pro applications that it is part of their imperative feature-set to have many options.
There is a lot of sanctimonious bullshit on this board. Let’s not talk about “usability.” What’s usable for you is not usable for me. GNOME is unusable for me because I can’t make it work exactly like I want. Also, “too many options” are *not* “necessarily bad.” It might be bad for you, and the type of user you want to cater to, but there are a whole lot of users who don’t think that. I can’t stand people who think they know what I want better than I do. The fact that PowerTools exits for Windows, and all a manner of customization tools exist for MacOS is proof that the “too many options are bad” argument cannot be consistently applied.
@mkone: The mention of IE is precious. Have you ever opened IE’s configuration dialog? It has way more configuration options than Konqueror. Worst of all, most of those configuration options are buried in a giant list of checkboxes. You have to go through each item in that list trying to find the one you want. I’d be perfectly happy if a KDE HIG made a rule “thou shalt not have more configuration options than IE or MS Word.” That should cover pretty much every option a KDE user could possibly want
So a user can deal with tons of options in several of the important apps they use every day (IE, MS Office — neither of which qualifies as a “pro application”) but not one more set for their desktop?
I didn’t forget that, he simply babbles on and on about other cruft that his main point gets lost. Frankly, it pisses me off. When KDE makes a new release, I don’t come over and start complaining about theoretical things with desktops I don’t use. The defaults the GNOME has in place works. Yes, there is still room for improvement. But the Bob’s of this world act as if their desktop is the Holy Grail, and drone on and on about their inability to comprehend that someone might not actually be contradicting themselves. Simply put, while Bob’s original point might have been all fine and dandy, his posts in general are flat out annoying and useless.
“I have to agree with his single-click theory. I remember back in the days of Windows 3.0 that it took some getting used to double-click. And it is contradictory to double-click Web stuff but not file icons. It’s just as dumb as making double-click close a window. KDE and Gnome were smart enough to take this out. Windows leaves it in.”
But that’s just the problem. I’ve seen more people have problems with the KDE single click environment. Even when I have to use it, selecting an icon becomes impossible. The problem with single v.s. double click isn’t the number of clicks involved. What people actually found out is that the number of clicks, 1 or 2, isn’t important. A user will click on something multiple times until it responds, regardless of how many clicks it should take.
The problem people (user inteface people more intelligent in this area than I would imagine most of us are) is the timing between clicks. We’ve all seen our grandmothers struggle with the quick double-click. This is where the UI needs to be intelligent about the clicks. Was that a slow double click, or two seperate clicks? Setting a time isn’t all that is needed. Rather, a threshold for different elements is needed.
The desktop should take care of these things. If a user double clicks a link, the browser (being an application in the DE) should realize “Hey, they really only meant one click.”, but on the desktop with an icon, the DE would say “Dude, that was a double-click.”
Treating everything has a single click causes problems, and not just with training people. I click on an icon in KDE, how does the desktop know whether I want to run the application, or simply select the icon? The number of clicks should only be party indicative of what to do with something, but unfortunately, most DE rely on this mechanism solely.
The problem with UI design is that it’s not easy. People have a tendancy (like in most things) to say “A is a problem, so to solve the problem, we get rid of A.” Unfortunately, they never looked at why A was a problem, and thereforme, never see that the problem isn’t “A”, but rather “B.”
Sorry, heard it enough in school, heh.
“So a user can deal with tons of options in several of the important apps they use every day (IE, MS Office — neither of which qualifies as a “pro application”) but not one more set for their desktop?”
But that’s just it. A user can’t deal with the tons of options. I guarantee that I could walk in to my office tomorrow, turn on the option to show the formatting symbols in Word on all the windows machines, and I will be called in to fix it in no time. I could do that…if I could find the bloody option. =)
…cos I love both desktop environments!!! Tho, XFCE has found a place in my heart too
My comment was a specific response to Eugenia, who claimed its okay for MS Word to have too many options, but not the DE in general. Besides, why would you change an option like that? Between proper defaults and desktop lockdown, a beginning user should never need to look at the options menu. The truely sheeplike users won’t understand the options menu anyway, no matter how simple you make it. I’d argue (though I’d be guessing) that there is a very narrow range of users who would be able to handle your scenario (accidental change of an option) with a simple options menu but not a complex one. You’re likely to get a support call no matter what.
Remember that Linux is a networking OS with many different desktop environments, as opposed to the Mac (under OSX) which has just one. How would you display an “application menu” on a local or remote desktop that’s not necessarily running the DE the app was written for? ALL of the DEs would have to be re-written to accomodate it. The DEs have already standardized on the current method, which is good.
The advantage of double-clicking is that it seperates the idea of selecting from the idea of opening/activating. This distinction is useful in a file manager because it lets you select multiple files before applying an action (such as delete) to them. The distinction is not so useful in a web browser, so there the default behavior is different.
And that was my 2 cents.
I understand your objection to single click with selecting. However, when dealing with word processors or web browsers, single-clicking on a word does not select or activate a word. In order to select, you must drag the mouse cursor around the word you want. It is the same as in KDE. Just make a box around it. Or you can set it to do what Windoze does and automatically select the icon for you after one second or so.
The only time that I ever select an icon is if I want to change the properties of a single file. The best way to do that is by right-clicking on it.
like this one?
http://www.linuxkungfu.org/images/fun/?image=15
Talking about fonts, someone can point me what font is this?
http://ximian.dulug.duke.edu/screenshots/large/iain.png
It’s one of the GNOME 2.4 User Screenshots. I know Iain uses it a very long time, but I never found what the font he uses…
I think thats the font “Fudd”, its included with Mandrake, i’ve also stuck it on my server:
http://rtsbasic.homeunix.net/fudd.zip
You still can’t close all when you have programs grouped on the task bar. In KDE or XP if I have 5 text editors open I can right click on the grouped apps in the task bar and simply close all of them at once.
Maybe I am missing how to do it in Gnome, if I am someone please correct me.
Thanks,
T
Please don’t use MS Word as an example of a useable program. It is a bloated mess, the epitomy of an all-in-one program (write letters, build web pages, draw pictures, write small programs, fly a plane – oops, that was Excel). Normal users survive using it by restricting their usage to a bare minimum of features, even when more advanced features make sense. The advanced features are not accessible to the average user.
Everyone uses it because everyone else uses it. Its dominance has very little to do with its quality (more due to good marketing, a long feature list, product tying, and good timing – beat WordPerfect to Windows). If it weren’t for the compatibility issue most users would be better served by a much simpler word processor.
“Mandrake better wait and package GNOME 2.4, KDE 3.1.4, OpenOffice 1.1, Abiword, GIMP 2and GNUMERIC 1.2 at the very least.”
gnome2-2.4.0-2mdk
abiword-1.99.6-1mdk
gimp1_3-1.3.20-1mdk
gnumeric-1.1.90-1mdk
OpenOffice.org-1.1-0.rc3.2mdk
kdebase-3.1.3-74mdk (includes some backports from CVS)
all current packages in Cooker.
Please don’t use MS Word as an example of a useable program. It is a bloated mess, the epitomy of an all-in-one program (write letters, build web pages, draw pictures, write small programs, fly a plane – oops, that was Excel). Normal users survive using it by restricting their usage to a bare minimum of features, even when more advanced features make sense. The advanced features are not accessible to the average user.
Everyone uses it because everyone else uses it. Its dominance has very little to do with its quality (more due to good marketing, a long feature list, product tying, and good timing – beat WordPerfect to Windows). If it weren’t for the compatibility issue most users would be better served by a much simpler word processor.
Well, unfortunately I need it for the VB stuff, however, if Corel offered Wordperfect Suite 200x for MacOS X, fully carbonised, I along with 7million other Mac users would be more than happy to buy it over MS Office.