The latest beta of Red Hat 8, named “null”, released a couple of days ago, includes some UI changes, mostly new icons, showing the clear wish of Red Hat to enter the corporate desktop market. Texstar from PCLinuxOnline posted some screenshots of his Null beta, so you can see the UI changes for yourself. I took the time this afternoon to try and suggest ways to clean up the new Red Hat UI even more (particularly, the menu). See the original shot, and the modified one. Our previous article, based on a random shot of Red Hat’s older UI can be found here.
Red Hat “Null” Beta Includes Many UI Changes
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The new UI does look nice and is a marked improvement on previous editions.
As Eugenia has (quite rightly) pointed out, there are some more changes that can still be made. Including some sanity in the icon sizing!
A nice GUI will help users transition, but other aspects still need tidying up. I will be impressed when, and only when, Gnome or KDE can run smoothly on older hardware. I want less bloat, damnit!
Until then, I’ll stick with IceWM for something quick and clean, thanks…
Eugenia,
If you have some time, why not do a full photoshop mock-up of the menu system you would have on a desktop?
I’ve been using NULL for two days, and it the limbo dream continues! Thank you, redhat, for making this possible.
That said, I think the menu is still very crowded, and not half-as-logical/organised as it should be. Menu icons are too close to each other, and many of them are unnecessarily repeated.
I would also change/improve some of the icons. The cdwriter icon, for instance, is butt ugly!! The upward pointing arrow on the “start” menu doesn’t fit. And yes, mozilla requires a new icons, but no, the new mozilla icon doesn’t cut it. It looks too amateurish.
And hey, is it my mind or did the speed/desktop response just get slower? Limbo 2 was faster for me. Please do whatever you can to improve speed. SPEED, SPEED, and MORE SPEED!!!!
> As Eugenia has (quite rightly) pointed out, there are some more changes that can still be made.
Yup, the new beta looks very promising. But it is still away from a nice smooth-looking desktop. More changes have to be made. But it is on a good track now.
> Including some sanity in the icon sizing!
Yup. Or at least some spacing between them (in which case the fonts will look bad because they will be too far apart, so the logical thing to do is redesign the icons as smaller)
> Gnome or KDE can run smoothly on older hardware
I run Mandrake Cooker and Gentoo. Gentoo supposedly is the fastest distro around because of its kernel patches. However, the new Cooker is faster than Gentoo on both gnome and KDE because Cooker is using gcc 3.2. I haven’t upgraded Gentoo to gcc 3.2 yet. So, a newer gcc will help.
> If you have some time, why not do a full photoshop mock-up of the menu system you would have on a desktop?
That’s on a future article…
Expect surprises. 😉
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A JOB AT REDHAT OR SOMETHING?
Looks like best default configuration so far.
Now, would be nice to have better drivers.
BTW, OSX style animated icons would not either, but that is a little more difficult than simply changing config file.
Still a good job by Redhat people.
No, I do not look for a job. OSNews is a hobby, but it still takes most of my time everyday. It is fun.
However, I would GLADLY work even for FREE if necessary, for Red Hat or *any* other Linux distro that **REALLY** wants to make a difference on the desktop. But the deal is that they would have to listen. They will have to want the “desktop” badly.
If the distro’s developers don’t listen to the UI designers (me or others working on such a field), I would flame them, I would get nasty and then go away. I get nasty even to executives, I don’t discriminate people based on their rank if they act stupidly on something.
And that’s the whole deal. I mean business.
I actually like the RedHat default menu better for a number of reasons. First, I find the zsnake distracting and haven’t seen any research to show it being effective. Second, the font of the tooltip is way too small now (at 1600×1200). Which reminds me, next time can you make the text explaining the image normal HTML so that it is readable from more than 5 inches from the monitor?
On the other hand, the one pixel off looks better and I think that the normal menu font looks better.
> I find the zsnake distracting
I used Z-Snake on the unreleased BeOS version, and it was the coolest new/refreshing/clever widget I used the last 5 years.
> Second, the font of the tooltip is way too small now (at 1600×1200).
I just switched my monitor to 1600x1200x75 Hz (19″ monitor, better used at 1280), and the tooltip is perfectly readable here. Maybe because I used too much AA is the reason that is not so clear. I applied that font with PSP, so it applies much AA on it, more than it would normally have under Red Hat.
> That’s on a future article…
> Expect surprises. 😉
Hey, when??
Redhat 8 is almost ready!! You want to make your input at a stage when it can influence something 
The changes I want to see take more than 1 month to program, which is the timeframe for the new RH 8 release. I want to suggest a way that completely overhauls the way today’s program menus work under any OS.
I don’t work for debian, but they will take your
free work, and it will matter. You can patch the default installer cd w/ your own desktop for the desktop of your choice and distribute it. I’d definately download it and try it out as you definately have a lot of good ideas and care about your desktop. Thanks. OS news is great.
I second that! (I am a Debian user) 🙂
Is it just me or does RH8 look like an imitation (a damn ‘different in a good way’ imitation) of WinXP? Everything looks more… smooth. I’m not a Windows fanboy by any means but this does look waaay better than the previous cluttered RH7.x desktop.
And oh, OSnews is cool
I like the changes though, especially that of the little arrow over the hat (nice detail). However this is all very minor UI stuff, give me nice readable fonts everywhere and a better open dialog window.
Two things that really score in this Null beta, are the dropping of Nestcape as announced, and the RPM support in Nautilus:
http://www.daa.com.au/~james/images/nautilus-rpm/rpm-view-3.png
I can’t deny Nautilus is now snappier, but sooner or later (better sooner) RedHat is going to have to really look for an X alternative as the next UI big step for desktop systems.
GTK+ for the Linux Framebuffer, this RedHat white paper looks at the GtkFB, but only recommends it for embedded systems:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:YnRt-m_-I-QC:www.redhat.com/de…
gtkfb-whitepaper/gtkfb.pdf&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
>>
Of course GtkFB has limitations too. The main limitation is the single-process model. All code in the system must be in the same binary and run in the same process. This means you can’t use processes to separate and protect different parts of the system from each other. It also makes it harder to design larger systems.
Another problem is that some GTK+ programs make direct X calls when using X features that are not supported in Gdk. These programs cannot be used with GtkFB without change. The GNOME libraries make some direct X calls, so running GNOME programs on the framebuffer may need some work.
X has mature and broad driver support with very good hardware acceleration. GtkFB can support acceleration, but none is currently written, and writing acceleration code
can be difficult. This means that GtkFB can be a lot slower, especially on large screens.
Some other interesting X features are not supported by framebuffer, such as nenetwork transparency, DGA, multiple screen and visual support, Xv extension, and Xrender
extension.
…
Does GtkFB Replace X on the Desktop?
Many people think GtkFB will or should replace X on the desktop. This is a misunderstanding; GtkFB is not really meant to run on the desktop (except for specific cases like distribution installers). For quite a few reasons outlined in the Limitations section above, GtkFB is inferior to X on a typical desktop.
A possible cause of this thinking is the common misunderstanding that the X Window System is a big, bloated, slow program that doesn’t do much good. The truth of the matter is that X servers often look huge when you see them in top, but this is due to the fact that they have mmap’ed the whole graphics card memory, and they keep
a lot of pixmap data that really belongs to other processes. Because X is network independent, it can never be as efficient as an optimal non-network independent,
windowing system, but the performance loss is actually very small, and the gains are tremendous. The current problems with X (font handling, no Anti Aliasing, bad 3D hardware support, no video support), are currently being fixed by X extensions.
>>
BECAUSE X IS NETWORK INDEPENDENT, IT CAN NEVER BE AS EFFICIENT AS AN OPTIMAL NON-NETWORK INDEPENDENT, WINDOWING SYSTEM. I guess only time will tell if Linux will finally have a windowing system for a desktop system. X is not the only way to achieve the all praised network transparency, and it would be great being able to choose it. At least, there is a big Linux company like RedHat formally discussing the X issue.
Ive loved the ZSnake from teh Dano shots but I find it kind of odd how depth is provided through overlapping of the menus. I have been thinking abotu this just now and thought of two ideas.
They both use menu shadowing for the whole menu.
The first sint a Zsnake but it is to raise every parent of a menu like WinXP does for the first parent menu of application menu bars,
The second approach is to use the ZSnake and shadow it to show all of the respective depths. The ZSnake is the same depth of the active menu (not sure what the best terms are).
I guess a thrid to work without the shadow is to bevel it out more to apear to be popping out.
I jsut would liek soemthing to fix the lack of correct depth feel
Sorry, it has to be a desktop-interested organization or company. I want to do something that will be used and appreciated by desktop users. I want to suggest changes and see the changes being made and released to the public.
By joining Debian, they wouldn’t care less if that pref panel looks better or worse than the previous one. Debian does not modify Gnome or KDE desktops. At least not in such a level.
Red Hat would be an interesting ride, Lycoris too (but Lycoris would need more coders to be able to keep up with the changes to be made – they only have 5 employees not all coders), Mandrake, SuSE, KDE and Gnome Projects would be interesting too.
Here are some screenshots of the KDE 3.1 alpha, it uses Keramik as the default theme.
http://static.kdenews.org/mirrors/qwertz/kde31alpha/
Here is a ZSnake screenshot, originating from that unreleased BeOS:
http://www.osnews.com/img/632/zsnake.png
> Here are some screenshots of the KDE 3.1 alpha, it uses Keramik as the default theme.
Yes, we know. We have linked it from osnews. And I had to comment to the keramik dev about the changes they have to make to Keramik to make it look better and not so alien. Many agreed in the Usability KDE list, but the main developer never replied and he beforehand said that he lost some bitmaps and that he does not know if he will be modifying anything. That sucks for KDE if you ask me. >:(
Check it out here: http://www.eugenia.co.uk/images/keramik.png
This html doc is clearer than the google text I just posted:
http://www.redhat.com/devnet/articles/gtkfb-whitepaper/index.html
or pdf (http://www.redhat.com/devnet/articles/gtkfb-whitepaper/gtkfb.pdf)
GtkFB running on matroxfb in 800×600 16 bit:
http://people.redhat.com/~alexl/gtkfbscreenshots.html
What GTKfb has to do with the RH Null desktop and its UI changes? Please do not post off topic comments and links all over the place.
Check this one:
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/scre…
This is the KDE desktop from Red Hat 8 Null beta. Please notice that the menu icons are smaller than the equivelant Gnome desktop on the same distro, the text is more spaced out from their icons, and the font menu looks better overall.
It seems that KDE has it more right in this respect than Gnome. Now, Red Hat has to dive in the code and fix these issues for Gnome too.
Why won’t Redhat make KDE the Default. Things work in KDE. Nautilus is terrible. You should be able to double click on a .tar.gz file and have it just open the correct viewer. I have no idea why that has never been fixed. The only thing good about Gnome is that the icons look good. Why can’t developers standardize on QT and KDE and forget this patchwork GTK and Gnome deal.
I applaud Redhat for there work though making the Desktop great. Mandrake is good, but they have made no improvements to the user experience in 9.0 apart from compiling apps. They could at least ship liquid, Keramik or something that looks decent as the default. The menus are attrocious. I mean everything is all over the place.
RedHat please change to KDE!!!!!!!!!!!!
This beta looks good. One thing that I love about Gnome is it’s sense of proportion (something, IMO, lacking in Windows and KDE).
I think the curves in the BeOS snake menu are what make it so easy for the eye to follow down. Sharp corners because of 90 degree turns aren’t so easy. It needs a 3-5 pixel corner on each of them, I think. Maybe even more on the outside of the turn.
Making ‘system settings’, ‘server settings’ and ‘preferences’ distinct menus seems kind of strange. ‘Extras’ is a tad vague, as is “accessories”. I don’t know if ‘Control Center’ wouldn’t just repeat all the options currently shown expanded in the preferences menu.
Good show though, certainly the best redhat desktop yet.
> Making ‘system settings’, ‘server settings’ and ‘preferences’ distinct menus seems kind of strange. ‘Extras’ is a tad vague, as is “accessories”. I don’t know if ‘Control Center’ wouldn’t just repeat all the options currently shown expanded in the preferences menu.
Very good catches Another Matthew.
it can never be as efficient as an optimal non-network independent, windowing system
>>>
That’s a fallacy these days. First, the only way to get any faster than a client/server setup is to put the graphics hardware and the application in the same address space, thus removing any protection mechanisms. Once this protection is put into place, then making the system network transparent has zero overhead making it local-only. With today’s hardware, even the protection doesn’t cost much. In theory, the fastest way to drive a graphics card would be to directly bang its registers. These days, however, the latency of the AGP bus is so much higher than that of the memory bus, that it is almost as cheap to pack the calls into data structures and send them to the graphics card in one bulk transfer. Since this method also has the benifet of protecting multiple clients from each other (since only the drive has to directly access the card, to set up the data transfers), almost all consumer graphics cards these days are optimized for that kind of usage. And once you are packing up the data at one point (ie. you’ve added one level of indirection) you can insert any number of possible intermediate steps (such as shipping the data over a network) without incurring any further performance overhead in the local case.
> Why can’t developers standardize on QT and KDE and forget
> this patchwork GTK and Gnome deal.
The are a number of reasons that I can think of off the top of my head. Firstly, QT isn’t truly open source, even yet. Secondly, QT is *slow* — it doesn’t come close to matching the speed or performance GTK delivers. Furthermore, KDE applications depend heavily on tons of KDE processes — which is fine if you’re running the KDE desktop, but for all those people who don’t want or need a bloated environment, it means that a huge chunk of resources gets allocated and a platheora of new threads pop up when you start a KDE application. That’s not the case with Gnome-based applications, in general, and certainly not the case with GTK-based apps.
Really, why force everyone to use one library? Freenix is all about *choice*. You might as well be an MS drone if you want everyone to use the same libraries, the same desktop, the same window manager, et cetera.
> Secondly, QT is *slow* — it doesn’t come close to matching the speed or performance GTK delivers
GTK+ 2 is much slower than 1.x too, despite what ‘they’ tell you. The addition of AA and other stuff, made the same apps ported to the GTK+ 2.x API MUCH slower. For example GEdit is MANY times slower than its previous version.
So, don’t talk too much about how much GTK+ is now faster than Qt… Times change for everyone.
Ask the Gentoo file manager guy about his benchmarks and tests about GTK+ 2 against GTK+ 1.x and why he does not want to port his file manager over to the updated API…
<double clicking on tar.gz in Nautilus>
Hmm…works fine here. Perhaps you did not install file-roller2?
Eugenia, the default icons in Gnome _are_ small. I don’t know why RedHat made them bigger but they don’t need to fix Gnome issues as those are RedHat issues. I don’t like the spacing at all. The narrow menus are one of the reasons why I love Gtk2 so much. Maybe it’s a matter of taste, but it definetly has usability advantages as you have to travel less with your mouse from your current position. I agree that they should use smaller icons, the current ones look to packed.
About your other changes:
3. Agreed. Not a big issue though, both look ok, yours looks slightly better.
4. Taste… I like the crisp and sharp edges of Bluecurve (that’s how they call their style). I’m using it on my Gentoo box.
5. Reducing the size of tooltips? Hm. Maybe. Not sure what the official position about different font sizes is. What happens if someone chooses such a small font for all of her GUI? The tooltips will become unreadable small then.
6. Right and could easily be fixed. I guess someone just needs to file a bug.
7. Yes… Embrace and extend.
It’s a nice feature though.
8. Please not this again.
We can’t change the font as there is no better one yet. Bummer. Everyone wants new fonts and we need some. But it’s sooo difficult. Maybe you can donate a few million dollar so it gets done faster. 
9. Hmm, maybe this is a sideeffect of the large icons. It’s correct for me. Should be fixed by just using smaller icons.
10. The control center basically just shows all those items in a nice shell (a Nautilus window). Maybe they should place a spacer below the control center item. Someone should file this.
11. Embrace and extend…
Why not.
Now who is going to file those enhancement bugs?
I’ll leave you guys ranting about GTK/QT toolits, Gentoo boys and speed issues (as long as Eugenia wishes).
Back to RH ‘Null’ GUI changes, this is one I don’t like, I believe it has something to do with usability also. Ok, this is a beta, not anything definitive, and here is a…usability ‘bug’???: in the new GNOME2 theme from RH, the new home icon on the desktop is different from the home icon on the filemanager (Nautilus)toolbar. Compare before and after:
before (GNOME2 standard)
http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/csm-desktop.png
after (RH Null)
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/scre…
and Frankenstein’s home icon
http://spud.osnews.com/osnews/img/1492/xandros.jpg
This is about details, and the design of the same home icon on the filemanager and desktop (not exactly the same one, that’s another good point: considering sizes), well that detail is a very good one in the GNOME2 standard theme, if RH is to change that theme I wish they change it completely (details also).
> Now who is going to file those enhancement bugs?
You do please. I don’t have accounts for the redhat and gnome bugzillas. Please link to the articles and modified shots please.
“if RH is to change that theme I wish they change it completely (details also).”
In the discussion about the new icons they stated that they want to replace _all_ the icons, this just takes a while. They want to get a completely unified look across GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, etc.
“You do please. I don’t have accounts for the redhat and gnome bugzillas.”
Hmm, I wouldn’t know which of them would be a GNOME enhancement (maybe the smaller tooltips but this should rather be discussed first) and I don’t have this RedHat beta nor an account at RedHat’s Bugzilla. I think it would be better if someone testing this Beta would file them. Like Linuxbaby.
Are they gonna keep filling up the UI with UNIX jargon? UNIX is dead. Let’s make sure the excess crap from it dies too.
In the morning, I ride in a human mobile transportation vehicule. Guess what it is: a bus, car or a simple bike?
I asked a couple of people at the office what was a Mail Transport Agent. They told me that it was an email protocol, email application or email server.
Keep going Linux. You’ll get there… Eventually!
I don’t think that they are refering to any app, but to the sendmail protocol. You have made a point regarding that as something a desktop OS user *normally* would not want to touch.
In any case there is a lack of definition on that preference menu: “z switcher is something that switches z”, oh, really?
That is an old dialog. The Ok and Cancel buttons are switched and there is a missing padding. Maybe even still Gtk1. I expect them to still rework this one or maybe it won’t even be included at least for the desktop installation. It’s pretty pointless anyway. The Desktop Switcher thing also looks horrible, I’m really really sure it’s just something old that wasn’t reworked yet.
Jojo: Is it just me or does RH8 look like an imitation (a damn ‘different in a good way’ imitation) of WinXP? Everything looks more… smooth. I’m not a Windows fanboy by any means but this does look waaay better than the previous cluttered RH7.x desktop.
Oh no no, you are looking at Lycoris’s icons. The colours and shapes are different from Xp’s, but the style is about the same. But the RH’s icons have less shadows.
m: Two things that really score in this Null beta, are the dropping of Nestcape as announced
They shouldn’t have dropped Netscape. Netscape is more known to customers than Mozilla. Plus Mozilla has features that may confuse the average Joe employee (the corporate desktop, remember?). Either that or Red Hat rebrand Mozilla and polish it.
Andrew: Why won’t Redhat make KDE the Default.
The began to invest a lot of money into GNOME before QT had a GPLed version.
Andrew: Nautilus is terrible.
Your problem with Nautilus is a case of personal preferences. But make a Bugzilla report, they might fix it. Besides, for browsing files, I rather use Nautilus to Konqueror because it thumbnail pictures faster than Konqueror. But then again, I normally switch that off…
Firstly, QT isn’t truly open source, even yet.
GPL is an OSI-approved license. Same with QPL.
emagius: Secondly, QT is *slow*
Your entire comment is about how *KDE* is slow, not QT. GTK+ is slow then, because GNOME is slow. But then XFce is fast, and GTK+ based. Imagine if we had a QT-based XFce….
Also, another thing is that KDE is no slower than GNOME if you have 256mb of RAM and above (come one, all new computers come with that amount). Plus, in many cases KDE is even faster than GNOME (GNOME 2.0, not 1.4.1).
My, how haven’t Eugenia spoted this one for UI tweaking? I was reading the gnome.org news list when I found this link about a new GTK file selection dialog by [email protected] :
http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/gtk/
And this is the “Electric Eyes’ subclassed version of the dialog box”:
http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/gtk/2000_07_25_124125_shot.png
IMHO this last one should look more or less like the new file selection dialog, shared among all apps, not just for EE. An embedded previsualization is a must. I miss in that design an ’embedded’ Nautilus filemanager also (similar to what Konqueror and Explorer offer), otherwise the file selection feels constrained, too limited.
Will a new GTK file selection dialog make it for RH8????? Go for it RH8!!! I want to buy you.
no comments
Actually, now that I think about it, the ‘System Tools’ menu is also redundant alongside system/server/tools/settings. I mean, I assume it contains filesystem maintenance and server configuration tools. If I can configure my network proxy from preferences it sounds like this is all related and could be under the same menu.
OMG these are the worst open dialogs I ever saw! Too many controls to play with. I want to open a file not to tidy up someone’s hard drive. It’s too much in one place. It’s like they are desperatly try to add full terminal functionality on to a dialog! Don’t duplicate stuff. This is all Nautilus/Konqueror’s job.
But then again it’s all UNIX stuff. It’s meant to look confusing to the average joe. That’s how they make money!
Eek, don’t confuse people please… That’s definetly _not_ how the new file dialogs will look. Because they will actually look good and functional. File opening should really be very similar to a Nautilus view. Maybe “Nautilus light”. And a file save dialog should look more like the one of Mac OS X. Simple and without too much clutter. Also it is planned to have a draggable icon there so you don’t actually need to select a folder but can just drag and drop the file whereever you want to have it (including another app).
I also hope that this makes it for the next RedHat, it’s really one of the last major missing pieces of the GNOME base.
New stuff like a mediaplayer and ports of Evolution, Galeon, etc are better things to delay.
I just wonder what those <a NAME=””> tags are
for. It’s very unusual to have a DOM tree with
<a> tags inside an <a> tag.
Just curious,
Jens
Dont. I’ve been trying woody for 2 weeks now, Debian is the utterly worst distro I’ve ever tried. Nothing is slick and smooth. Most things seems the need to be done by hand, that is if you can get around all the small bugs and other annoying debianism.
Why on earth should we ditch X ? Its great. The performance you are talking about does not come from X. In 3D apps, the framebuffer will make a diffrence, in desktop apps? I think not. Before even thinking about ditching X, atleast try improving the toolkits an Xfree86 (look at the accerlated X server from Xi, X can be faster than the Xfree implementation).
And anyway, the day X is ditched, I’m off to one of the *BSDs that hopefully doesnt follow such brain damage.
Jojo: Is it just me or does RH8 look like an imitation (a damn ‘different in a good way’ imitation) of WinXP? Everything looks more… smooth. I’m not a Windows fanboy by any means but this does look waaay better than the previous cluttered RH7.x desktop.
Rajan R: Oh no no, you are looking at Lycoris’s icons. The colours and shapes are different from Xp’s, but the style is about the same. But the RH’s icons have less shadows.
Jojo: I was talking about the feel, not the icons. Lycoris does truly ‘look’ like windows but it sure doesnt feel like it. This one gives me deja vu, so to say.
Cheers.
Am I really the only one to have an issue with that, still, rather high contrast background?
Photographs, in perticular, sucks as backgrounds.
Anon: Why on earth should we ditch X ?
Just a few reasons
– Doesn’t have features like alpha blending built into this. No, this isn’t just for eye candy. Office for example used a lot of Quartz alpha blending features to draw semi-opaque pies and charts. The same is done on the Windows version.
– It’s font support is terrible (compared to Windows and Mac OS). It doesn’t support AA, doesn’t have proper font management etc.
– User interface inconsistency: every TK has it’s own look and feel. Fresco for example plans to have the base APIs for the UI (and nothing else), so that TKs can layer on it. That means forever, the look between applications would be the same, regardless of what TK they use.
– X Protocol may be sufficient right now, but as we progress to higher and higher resolutions, this could be a very big bottleneck.
– And much much more.
Hopefully you would move to BSDs :-p. But even if most Linux distros dump X, you could still use X, like in Mac OS X. (And yes, I know the first two are fixed by XFree86, but it is as nonstandard components. The X Consortium could may as well be dead).
Jojo: I was talking about the feel, not the icons. Lycoris does truly ‘look’ like windows but it sure doesnt feel like it. This one gives me deja vu, so to say.
I never tried Null, but Limbo 2… it didn’t feel like Windows XP. Plus, Red Hat had said ( http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938700.html ) “The key to open-source software success on the desktop is to outflank Microsoft, not to clone Microsoft’s Windows and Office, Szulik said.”
m: My, how haven’t Eugenia spoted this one for UI tweaking? I was reading the gnome.org news list when I found this link about a new GTK file selection dialog by [email protected] :
http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/gtk/
Firstly, the bottom buttons “MkDir”, “Delete”, and “Rename” shouldn’t be buttons, but rather icons. Plus, “New Directory” is much better than “MkDir”.
Then “Directories” and “Files” should be combined. Each file/directory should be represented with an icon. Plus, there should be a thumbnail tab. (e.g. to check out images/documents before opening).
I thing a good model for the file dialogs is Mac OS X’s one. Windows XP’s one is good, but not the best. :-p. But the dialog have to potential to confuse new users.
I love what RH have done – it looks great IMHO….
I understand what many people have been saying about the ‘look and feel’, and the usability of the menus, but I am still incredibly impressed by the change from 7.2 (my last RH encounter).
Have RH re-done icons for the bundled apps aswell – like OpenOffice.org and mozilla to give the desktop ‘suite’ a uniform feel?
I can see it now….my RH7.4/8 desktop running Opera v7….can’t wait!
The past year or so has seen many exciting initiatives for linux – it’s going from strength to strength on the desktop…
I actually rather like the background, but according to a post from Havoc on the limbo mailing list, the highly colourful backgrounds (such as the dragonfly) are only for the beta versions. For the final they’ll switch to something more sedate, conservative and corporate friendly.
…a post install package handler – a major plus. Unless it’s purely for use with redhat update or up2date which require registering.
I presume most of what can be seen here is a customization of GNOME2 – so how does it compare to Ximians offering?
Eugenia, if you don’t have it already, I recommend getting _Designing Visual Interfaces_ by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0133033899/
it’s a bit expensive for its size but it covers all the visual aspects of UI design.
>Just a few reasons
>- Doesn’t have features like alpha blending built into >
>this. No, this isn’t just for eye candy. Office for
>example used a lot of Quartz alpha blending features to >
>draw semi-opaque pies and charts. The same is done on the >Windows version.
Work is underway. For hacks, try Liquid for KDE.
>- It’s font support is terrible (compared to Windows and
>Mac OS). It doesn’t support AA, doesn’t have proper font >
>management etc.
It supports AA, but needs a small help from the toolkit.
I recently recompiled freetype, and moved over all fonts
from my windows installation. They look just the same under windows as under linux(GTK/Qt). Font managment? Well, good support is there, just write a nice user frontend to it.
>- User interface inconsistency: every TK has it’s own look >and feel. Fresco for example plans to have the base APIs >
> for the UI (and nothing else), so that TKs can layer on
> it. That means forever, the look between applications
> would be the same, regardless of what TK they use.
Ok. I also dont like the diffrences in N diffrent toolkits,
there is no need to ditch/blame X for this. Even if you try to
enforce a certain style, one can still make a diffrent looking toolkit(one can still draw on the screen, and thus draw e.g. buttons in any fashion).
>X Protocol may be sufficient right now, but as we progress >to higher and higher resolutions, this could be a very big >bottleneck.
Possibly. DRM drivers do help though.
(And yes, I know the first two are fixed by XFree86, but it is as nonstandard components. The X Consortium could may as well be dead).
As it should be. Probably the single biggest thing holding X back for the last 10 years or so has been the designed-by-committee approach of X.org. It has resulted in stodgy, slow code, pointless extensions that X vendors have been forced to support (XIE, LBX, PEX?), stagnation of the core protocol, and total ignorance of functionality that X users and developers have been crying out for for years.
I’m very very glad that XFree86 has decided in the last year or two to take the bull by the horns and start modernizing X on their own. These days XFree86 is the only version of X that matters anyway, its installed base absolutely dwarfs that of anyone else. If other X vendors don’t want to play along with this, then that’s their tough luck – XFree86 shouldn’t be held back by their indecision and squabbling. XFree86’s code is still licensed the same as the X.org code, so there’s absolutely nothing stopping the commercial X vendors from basing their X servers on it.
X.org should have been killed off a long time ago.
Firstly, the bottom buttons “MkDir”, “Delete”, and “Rename” shouldn’t be buttons, but rather icons. Plus, “New Directory” is much better than “MkDir”.
>>>>>>>>>
I don’t know if its just me, but I *like* the text there. It may not be as spiffy looking as some nice icons, but text conveys something to most people much more quickly than a 16×16 icon ever could. Especiall for abstract concepts like “Create New Directory.” Also, you’ll notice that in Windows XP, Microsoft is increasingly starting to use text (in the back, favorites, and media buttons in IE for example) in addition to icons.
Microsoft is increasingly starting to use text (in the back, favorites, and media buttons in IE for example) in addition to icons
That option has always been there – through the configuration of the toolbar….
I think those dialogs are ugly as hell, but then I have yet to see one which I look at and think ‘oh, thats nice’ – even MS’ ones have their usability problems…..
X is what will make Linux a standard, widely used desktop, in corporations, schools, government. KDE / Gnome / OpenOffice – all important, but X is the key.
Some of you know why already – because it runs remotely, and all you need to do is set a dumb terminal in front of a worker for less than $500, and have the desktop run off the server. In one swoop, maintenance, backups, upgrades, expensive machinery costs, go out the window. See the Linux Terminal Project, http://www.ltsp.org, and how they do it, or http://www.k12ltsp.org for a grade school version.
An example: my client has hundreds of offices nationwide. This month, they are spending over $150,000 to have 2 people travel around the country loading 1 upgrade of VIRUS SOFTWARE to all these offices – going from computer to computer. Just 1 piece of software. Insanity. And there is a “Project Manager” having to coordinate all this, hotels to stay in, flights to purchase, and they want me to write an ASP web app so the updaters can log to a web site and say which machines have been upgraded. Insanity. They do this all the time.
Using a remote X terminal, it would cost them under $1000 – log into the main servers nationwide, and dump the upgrade onto it, and everyone uses it. DONE.
That is why X gives Linux the advantage. For MOST desktop workers – in the office – a remote terminal will cover everything they need. EASILY. And now that Borland ported Delphi and C++ Builder to Linux, you can make all the DB Business apps you need, with an easy install.
A full blown computer sitting at each desk is overkill, and is maintenance hell. Costs can be massively reduced with X, and that’s why desktop Linux use will explode.
Schools are the first, because funds are desperate. But soon, gov’ts and businesses will start moving. Especially with money tight, and the economy moving to the implosion stage…
– Doesn’t have features like alpha blending built into this. No, this isn’t just for eye candy. Office for example used a lot of Quartz alpha blending features to draw semi-opaque pies and charts. The same is done on the Windows version.
Hardly a show stopper. And RENDER does have alpha blending support. The one thing that is still missing is Quartz like windows translucancy, but people are working on that.
– It’s font support is terrible (compared to Windows and Mac OS). It doesn’t support AA, doesn’t have proper font management etc.
Yep, RENDER supports that too. My desktop is fully AA and all the windows font work too. In fact, the windows font directory on my wife’s computer is accessed (via SAMBA) by my X server, no need to keep 2 copies of the same fonts. So, this point it moot too I guess.
– User interface inconsistency: every TK has it’s own look and feel. Fresco for example plans to have the base APIs for the UI (and nothing else), so that TKs can layer on it. That means forever, the look between applications would be the same, regardless of what TK they use.
If this is a problem for you just stick with applications written in one toolkit e.g. don’t mix GNOME/GTK+ and KDE/Qt applications. A lot of folks don’t see this as a problem though so don’t expect any Toolkit fascism anytime soon.
– X Protocol may be sufficient right now, but as we progress to higher and higher resolutions, this could be a very big bottleneck.
Hmm, do you even know how the X protocol works? Higher resolution doesn’t necesserilly mean more bandwidth needs. And do you really think that bandwidth availibilty won’t grow with higher resolutions? I think you just ran out of points and forced a non-issue.
– And much much more.
Ah indeed, looks like you DID run out of points to make 🙂
Now let me list some point on why I will not be dropping X anytime soon:
– It is fast! Yes, I do have NVIDIA hardware, and to get full support you do have to pick your videocard carefully. Luckily the big three are well supported (NVidia, ATI, Matrox). And with support I mean 2D, 3D (OpenGL) and hardware accelleration of video (Xv).
– It is network transparent from the ground up! I can run apps from home just as easy as I could sitting at my workstation at University, that is just sweet. I can even remote manage server with graphical tools (Redhat up2date, monitoring tools, SMS software). Hell, even 3D OpenGL applications are network transparent (not as fast as native,
so no high FPS games
. And with LBX (Low Bandwidth X) you can even get decent performance on very slow (56K) lines.
– It is actively being developed. Just check the X mailing lists and the CVS repository.
– It does everything I want, today.
– Class A X applications, Mozilla, Pan, VMWare, etc. etc..
Nuff said.
-fooks
It’s funny to see people criticizing icon size, when icons in Nautilus are SVG and are completely resizeable.
I’ve been using Null and I’m loving it, while people are complaining about menu items being to close together and icons being to big. All I have to say is find something better to argue about these things are not big issues and most of them are fixed through options.
This is just my opinion, but I don’t like the redesigned icons. I understand RedHat’s motivation to unify the look of Gnome/GTK, KDE/Qt, OpenOffice, and Mozilla, but I think the way they are going about it is flawed.
Gnome and KDE are two separate, competing Linux desktop/application frameworks. If the Gnome and KDE projects had decided to unify their look, that would be one thing, but I don’t think RedHat is the right company/entity to try to unify them. Right now, there are Gnome users and KDE users across various Linux and Unix platforms. If every Linux and Unix vendor comes up with their own “unified” look and feel for Gnome and KDE, the consistency currently provided by both Gnome and KDE will be lost. System will now look different on RedHat, Mandrake, SUSE, Sun, etc.
It is strange that right when Gnome releases the User Interface Guidelines 1.0 which specifies a Gnome icon palette, the largest linux vendor releases a beta Gnome desktop that flagrantly violates those standards. I hope Sun doesn’t do the same thing.
I think it would have been better to provide KDE-like themes for Gnome, OpenOffice, and Mozilla and a set of Gnome-like themes for KDE, OpenOffice (like Evolved OpenOffice), and Mozilla (though Galeon does a better job anyway). This way, KDE users would be presented with a consistent KDE experience and Gnome users are presented with a consistent Gnome experience.
>>>
Now let me list some point on why I will not be dropping X anytime soon:
– It is fast! Yes, I do have NVIDIA hardware, and to get full support you do have to pick your videocard carefully. Luckily the big three are well supported (NVidia, ATI, Matrox). And with support I mean 2D, 3D (OpenGL) and hardware accelleration of video (Xv).
– It is network transparent from the ground up! I can run apps from home just as easy as I could sitting at my workstation at University, that is just sweet. I can even remote manage server with graphical tools (Redhat up2date, monitoring tools, SMS software). Hell, even 3D OpenGL applications are network transparent (not as fast as native,
so no high FPS games
. And with LBX (Low Bandwidth X) you can even get decent performance on very slow (56K) lines.
– It is actively being developed. Just check the X mailing lists and the CVS repository.
– It does everything I want, today.
– Class A X applications, Mozilla, Pan, VMWare, etc. etc..
<<<
I can’t say any better than that. X is awesome.
—
Quang
> Gnome and KDE are two separate, competing Linux desktop/application frameworks.
Yes, and that is a big pain in the ass issue for Linux.
> If the Gnome and KDE projects had decided to unify their look, that would be one thing, but I don’t think RedHat is the right company/entity to try to unify them.
Red Hat has every right to do whatever they want with it, and if they are clued that in order to conquer the desktop makret YOU HAVE to be unified, MORE POWER TO THEM for taking the initiative to do it. My (red) hat off to them for starting this! It is a good thing for the Unix desktop.
And stop talking about X please. It is off topic here. We are talking about UIs here, no windowing systems. Stop talking about X11, or ALL of these comments will be MODED DOWN.
Kinda offtopic but i need to ask! While browsing screenshots i found this one:
http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screensh…
Which theme is it? which icons. please tell me!
It is called Aqua Fusion:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=2556
And it is absolutely terrible. Very “monotonic”.
I’m looking at that list of comments that was done from that screenshot. And I’m still trying to figure out what the f*** you are talking about. Spacing out the icons on the task bar would make it more ugly then the icons being “too close”, give me a break. To tell you the truth it annoys the hell out of me in older versions of Gnome and in KDE how the menu icons are small and ugly and sometimes unrecognizable, the larger icons and spaced out text, make it easier for me to recognize programs and properly click on my selection without hitting another unwanted program.
People that are anti red hat are just hurting themselves, the minute we start to bash an open source project is the time that the open source community falls apart.
>Red Hat has every right to do whatever they want with it, >and if they are clued that in order to conquer the desktop >makret YOU HAVE to be unified, MORE POWER TO THEM for >taking the initiative to do it. My (red) hat off to them >for starting this! It is a good thing for the Unix >desktop.
I agree that RedHat has the right to do what they want, I just question whether or not this will be a good thing in the long run. If the KDE and Gnome projects decide after seeing RedHat’s redesign that they both should adopt it as a standard, great! However, I doubt this is going to happen. I expect the Linux world will have 3 separate standard looks (KDE, Gnome, RedHat “Unified”) rather than two. I think this is a bad and weakens both KDE and Gnome. This could get even worse if other vendors (SUSE, Sun) decide to specify their own “standards”. The KDE and Gnome project have put a lot of effort into creating consistent looks (in their respective projects, not with each other). I just hate to see RedHat throw all of that effort away.
We already have a plethora of different icon sets, just another one will really not kill us. =)
If RedHat is working on more integration between GNOME and KDE and it works out, maybe the desktop developers start working on a unified icon theme? This way everyone could just install the icon theme of his choice and would get a unified looking desktops. Also corporate entities like RedHat or Ximian or SUN could easily provide their own “branding”. And it would just be another step to make users life more convenient.
IMHO there is nothing worse than having icons for some items and not for others. Makes the whole UI look spotty and incomplete. I am talking about the missing Screensaver icon on the original screenshot.
Can’t Login Photo, About Myself and Password be all a part of the same prefference applet? Same goes for background and screensaver.
Make the mouse icon cordless for God’s sakes. After all nobody uses a picture of a punch card as an icon for a permanent storage device.
Eugenia, your UI looks much more polished than the original. You certanly got a good eye/taste for those things. Great work and hopefully it will end up being implemented.
I’m not against RedHat providing alternate icon sets. What I dislike is that they’ve set their alternate icon set as the default. As I’ve seen stated here many times, defaults are important. Most average computer users (currently using Windows or Mac) do not customize their desktop. Allowing for alternate icon sets is fine (just like allowing alternate themes is fine), but part of why I like Gnome and KDE is that they provide the ability for at least some level of standardization among distributions. By providing a default Gnome desktop that breaks from the Gnome User Interface Guidelines, it seems like RedHat is leading us down the path of fragmentation.
>What I dislike is that they’ve set their alternate icon set as the default.
I do not think that icons can fragment anything.
What I do believe is that Red Hat tries to make a difference and differntiate themselves from the other distros. This is a good thing for their business, and ultimately for the Linux business.
Even if Red Hat changes a lot of *code* there (which is what can really fragment things), as long as they make this code available back to the cvs, things are still ok.
>As I’ve seen stated here many times, defaults are important.
Correct.
>Most average computer users (currently using Windows or Mac) do not customize their desktop.
Correct again.
It’s funny to see people criticizing icon size, when icons in Nautilus are SVG and are completely resizeable.
They can be SVG, here they aren’t, and defaults matter.
What Redhat is doing is trying to bring together KDE and GNOME, not trying to create fragmentation on the desktop. This is so a user logging into KDE can easily navigate around GNOME without having to learn too much about GNOME’s abstract icon types.
This is, IMHO, a very good thing, and something that the KDE and GNOME groups should have done a long time ago. Richard Stallman had suggested unified themes for KDE and GNOME, and while a whole lot of people thought this was a good idea, Redhat is the only company really doing anything about it.
RH Limbo1
http://goober.osnews.com/img/1365/limbo2.jpg
RH Limbo2
http://spud.osnews.com/osnews/img/1489/limbo1.png
RH Null
http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screensh…
Gnome2
http://spud.osnews.com/osnews/img/1489/limbo2.png
Gnome2
http://www.daa.com.au/~james/images/nautilus-rpm/rpm-view-3.png
My favorite decor so far is the GNOME2 showing the rpm integration (http://www.daa.com.au/~james/images/nautilus-rpm/rpmdb-vfs-1.png), because of its quick&clear visualization, clean light design that doesn’t attract your attention, its simplicity and neutral colors. The only faults I find in that decor are the too darkish grey color (I’d set it to the Null lighter grey), the toolbar separators filled with points (I’d take Null also for that detail), and maybe the X sign being too thin in comparison with the other two signs (minimize and restore).
Of course, decors are more subtle to different tastes than other GUI elements, and ultimately if you don’t like it, stop whining and make one yourself
This is what happens when RedHat spoils us with so many GUI changes. I wonder how do they choose wich one is going to be the default one in RH8. How about a poll?
Personally, I love this one:
http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screensh…
However, the non-focused version of the above wm really needs more work. It should still have a lighter color of the master blue color, instead of being greyed out this way and look like it has nothing to do with the focused version.
Two more changes I would make to it, is add 2-3 more pixels to make it a bit more fatter (XP comes with a whopping 25 pixel height, which is indeed too much – but this one is too thin on the other hand).
The second change I would do is put the window label in the center.
Also, there is a UI bug there too. The word “texstar” is not vertically centered correctly to the decoration. It is 1-2 pixels more towards the bottom that it should have been.
These four changes to that decorations would really make my day.
Anyone from Red Hat listens?
Most of those shots actually don’t show the default theme. AFAICT the RedHat default theme is Bluecurve aka Wonderland. It’s the one you see in the “Null” Screenshot.
The screenshot of the limbo 1 shows “Metabox” which is a Metacity default theme and the limbo 2 shot shows “Gorilla” which is some Ximian theme.
Your first shot of Gnome2 shows Crux which was supposed to be the default theme of Eazel but now it isn’t any default anymore. Your second Gnome2 shot (the one you like most) shows Atlanta which is the Metacity default theme (not sure if it still is).
So you can be sure that the default will look like the Null shot (even KDE will most probably look like this or similar) but you will be able to choose most or all of the other ones if you want to.
About Stallman’s unified theme: http://mpt.phrasewise.com/discuss/msgReader$133
Yes, mpt is correct. It takes more than a theme to unify and make them behave equally the gtk and qt apps.
“I would make to it, is add 2-3 more pixels to make it a bit more fatter”
I was about to agree with you but just figured that the theme scales with font size. Just increase the font size and you get a thicker windowborder.
Very nice.
I certainly do not think this is “very nice”. This is incosistent, and exactly because I think that this was the right font-size for the header, but I still want the window manager to be fatter, I believe that this “feature” is really-really bad, UI-wise. If they want to have variable size for the wm, there should be a pref panel for it where you can modify the decor, as there is one for Windows. Changing the wm size when someone changes the font, is completely and utterly stupid.
What I mean is that there should be a limit on the font size on the header anyway. Trust me, you don’t want users to play with your UI and create atrocities and then publish them online.
He isn’t quite correct, as clipboard doesn’t behave differently anymore (and it did only before because of a bug in Qt). As for a layout, this could be mostly solved by a common HIG.
I have Qt 3.04 and GTK+ 2.06, and apps compiled for them, and I still can’t get copy/paste corectly. Try it.
>Changing the wm size when someone changes the font, is completely and utterly stupid.
I was not so clear about it. Of course, when someone is choosing a stupidly big font, the wm should resize. However, a stupidly big font should not be allowed to be chosen, and also only resize the wm if the font really does not look right after a particular font size. Also, a seperate decor pref panel to set your own size of the wm is a good idea too, so you are not restricted by the font size/wm size ratio.
Of all the screens, the texstar one (http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screensh…) certainly looks very appealing, kind of a fresh and modern GUI look for Gnome. However I’ve found that at the end of the day too much GUI eye candy will get in my way.
For example, the minimize restore and close buttoned signs (and the stick sign, I guess that’s the other one), they are too visual, they have a metallic color, not the neutral grey of the rest of the decoration. That is the kind of KDE-look-at-me style that I hate in a GUI.
The text tittle bar has lines, why? Remember that wise GNOME human interface guideline: KEEP IT SIMPLE and PRETTY. There comes a time when the more you retouch a drawing and beguin to ass cute things here and there, the worse it gets, just leave it simple.
Yes, yes, yes. I could manually easily change most of the things I’m pointing out here. Most of this GUI beef, is that as AnotherMathew said, “defaults matter”, a lot.
Finally, eyecandy sells, so let it be, what the heck.
“add cute…” not “ass”, sorry 😐
I beg to differ. The minimize, restore and close buttoned signs are really nicely done and simple and sharp.
As for the lines, they do not appear where there is text, only in the non-used space of the wm.
>not the neutral grey of the rest of the decoration
there are important buttons and they should stand out from the rest of the design.
I like that decor, I would only see fixed the four above points. Otherwise, it is good for me.
I kind like it. Maybe the icons should scale as well though.
http://server204.serverflex.de/download/atrocity.png
As for copy&paste, what exactly doesn’t work for you? No problems here.
Hey Spark, which dictionary app with Webster’s is that?
I have a printed Appleton’s 1966 dictionary that I stole from the High School library sometime ago, and would like to e-replace it.
Check out how badly looks that metallic gradient color on the buttons at that size —> unavoidable. See also how sleek and smooth continue looking the nongradient colors in the window decor.
>I kind like it.
Check that the text is not correctly vertically centered inside the wm.
>As for copy&paste, what exactly doesn’t work for you? No problems here.
Can’t remember now, I haven’t rebooted to my Linux for many days now. I remember issues with konqueror and gedit for example.
Also, Drag n drop does not work yet either. Why not to be ablet to drop a file from konqueror to evolution or any other gnome app?
“Hey Spark, which dictionary app with Webster’s is that?”
It’s the “GNOME Dictionary” which comes with a GNOME 2 base installation.
“Check out how badly looks that metallic gradient color on the buttons at that size”
I’m also not a big fan of those gradients, but they are ok…
“Can’t remember now, I haven’t rebooted to my Linux for many days now. I remember issues with konqueror and gedit for example.”
Whatever I try, it all works. If there is some specific quirk anywhere, it has to be a bug.
“Also, Drag n drop does not work yet either. Why not to be ablet to drop a file from konqueror to evolution or any other gnome app?”
Well, it works just not in every case… Dragging from Nautilus to KDE applications seems to work mostly but not from Konqueror to GNOME applications. Hm.
Four or five more tweaks added. Let me see if I’m missing anyone.
1/ 16×16 or 20×20 icons (instead of 24×24) on the menu.
2/ More space between the menu icons and text.
3/ New sleeker arrow over the red hat that opens the menu. And have the arrow centered.
4/ One pixel off.
5/ Smaller yellow popup tip window.
(I would rather have white tool tips, I guess this may be ultra-ranting)
6/ More space between the RedHat icon and the spaceship .
(nice retro Sputnik look, but how about a Challenger spaceship icon instead?, or the Laika spacedog)
7/ Lighter gray behind the icons.
(this has become Eugenia’s ‘signature’)
8/ Get rid of that oh-so-ugly Nimbus font
(abuse Microsoft’s?)
9/ Rearrange namings on the menu, in a more clear, rational, UI senseful way
(control center go away)
10/ Dano’s legacy: .-.-.***THE Z-SNAKE***.-.-.zzzZS=
(that crazy blue stripe on the menu that follows the mouse)
AND…
11/ A 2-3 more pixels fatter window.
(All the window or just the tittle bar?)
12/ Put the window label in the center.
13/ Have the tittle bar text vertically centered to the decoration.
14/ The non-focused version of the window should still have a lighter color of the master blue color.
15/ I would add that the new home icon on the desktop is different from the home icon on the file manager (Nautilus) toolbar. They should have a similar design, like in the GNOME2 standard theme. Spark said that the whole icon set is going through changes because of the KDE/GNOME theme unification by RedHat.
Other than those 15 UI wonderchanges, the issues left are:
-Default matters? Why YES!
-RedHat provides an alternate default icon set <—– Icon Chaos or Distro Trademark???????
-The All Unix/QT/GTK UNIFIED THEME. And consistency beyond GUI themes.
mpt’s take
>>
The clipboard works differently, the controls work in subtly different ways, and the layout of controls is different in dialogs and windows.
>>
http://mpt.phrasewise.com/discuss/msgReader$133
His GNU Higness, Richard Stallman’s take:
QT IS NO LONGER UNDER ATTACK. JOINT PROJECT. SUGGEST.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-February/msg000…
Stallman
Ok, I just spoted Jeroen’s new font preferences window screenshot in RH Null. About the only change I notice is that Nimbus fonts are not selected:
Application font Sans 10
Desktop font Sans 12
Window title font Sans 12
Terminal font Monospace 10
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeroen/screenshots/font-properties.png
The previous setting in RH Limbo2 was:
Application font Sans 10
Desktop font Nimbus Sans L 10
Window title font Nimbus Sans L 11
Terminal font Monospace 10
http://goober.osnews.com/img/1495/original.png
Also, this time he has chosen the Best shapes font rendering instead of Subpixel Smoothing. The previous setting, Subpixel Smoothing, looks less blurred to me, though a bit blurry too (no AA for small normal fonts is better).
Of all Eugenia’s suggestions on that fonts dialog(http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1495), I think I would welcome most centering the combo/drop down boxes.
“Sans” is actually just an alias for another font, in this case most probably Nimbus Sans.
I suspected that (Comic Sans, MS Sans, Lucida Sans) but no Nimbus on it, maybe … ;D
I just sent in around 10 bug reports on issues that I had with the new Rehat ‘null’ interface and most of them were assigned to developers. Rather than complaining, do something about it – the people at RH really do listen to the end-users and are open to feedback.
As a developer myself, I know that it is hard sometimes to look at something I wrote and find problems, just based on the fact that I know how to use the application. Getting feedback from users is a great way for me to look at the applcation from another person’s point of view.