The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 4 release, “Thank You”, is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure. It is available for immediate download. The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class
internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME’s user interface.
GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 4 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Screenshots here:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/
I wish the developers would focus on the code and leave the art work to an artist!
erm… what do you mean? I looked at some of the screen shots, and they’re the “normal” Gnome looking things?
“I wish the developers would focus on the code and leave the art work to an artist!”
Artists shouldn’t ever be allowed to design user interfaces. They are usually more concerned over the “coolness factor” rather than usability. Besides, the look of gtk can be changed with themes :-D.
Those screenshots are from an earlier beta (beta 2?). Gnome’s main visual changes in Beta 2 are the font rendering and the icons [ http://primates.ximian.com/~tigert/new_stock_project/ ]. The SVG icons should make it interesting too.
But mostly it’s an architectural change.
I see from the above screenshots that they’re still sporting Nautilus, which means that Gnome 2 is probably going to suck. The GTK crap is still ugly as hell also.
well I think KDE has won.. (in the meantime I’ll continue to use blackbox 😛 )
GNOME 2 Beta 4 is quite good, while I’m in love with KDE 3.0, GNOME 2.0 is so much more better than 1.4.1. GNOME 2 can only mean one thing for a KDE diehard – more competition resulting in a better KDE.
“well I think KDE has won.. (in the meantime I’ll continue to use blackbox 😛 )”
What exactly have they won?
Count how many applications that you use that use the gtk tookit versus the qt toolkit.
“I see from the above screenshots that they’re still sporting Nautilus, which means that Gnome 2 is probably going to suck. The GTK crap is still ugly as hell also.”
Gtk is ugly? The stock gtk theme is okay, but I wouldn’t say it was ugly. The fact that you can pretty much make it look however you want makes that claim null. Hell I have it looking exactly like Win2k right now.
Nautilus? Well, I like it, but nothing is forcing you to use it if you don’t like it. Use midnight commander if you like.
seen those screenshots somewhere before methinks, i am not a great fan of KDE or QT, and so i hope GNOME 2 can apear in time to compete before all the main distro’s Get bored of packaging Gnome 1.4 alongside the Brand new shiny KDE3.
I see from the above screenshots that they’re still sporting Nautilus, which means that Gnome 2 is probably going to suck.
Nautilus in GNOME 1.4 was largely unoptimised and was released primarily to allow people to buy Eazel Services (which are now defunct). Nautilus in GNOME 2 is much faster than its predecessor, and it is better integrated with the rest of the environment. How can you judge something that you haven’t even tried yet?
The GTK crap is still ugly as hell also.
The screenshots are more proof-of-concept than anything else. They use the default theme, which is designed to be equally offensive to everyone
This intention isn’t any different from the default themes of KDE or even Windows. As with GTK+ 1.x, GTK+ 2.0 allows full theming, including the use of independent theme engines.
Nautilus in GNOME 2 is much faster than its predecessor
That is actually an understatement. The difference between Nautilus 1.0.x (Gnome 1.4, GTK+ 1.2) and Nautilus 1.1.x (Gnome 2, GTK+ 2.0) is like night and day. It’s wicked fast… but still lacking a lot of functionality when compared to Konq.
Damnit, if any more of my text is made blurry by well meaning but apparently half-blind GUI developers I’m going to scream.
Yeah, I know I can go and turn this off when apt get or up2date install GNOME 2 on my desktop box for me but this means yet more people are going to be pretending that the world is supposed to look as though you’ve had too much to drink, or are wearing someone else’s glasses.
10% of me is even willing to buy the idea that this is a conspiracy from people too stupid to use PNG for screenshots, because blurry “anti-aliased” text looks better in JPEG that its sharp and clearly defined ancestor.