“Gnome Shell 2.91.90 was released yesterday getting some fine adjustments according to the release announcement: ‘This release just about concludes user interface changes anticipated before GNOME 3.0. The only significant change we expect after this release is to add a native network indicator based on NetworkManager 0.9.’ Gnome Shell 2.91.90 brings new automatic workspaces, removed minimize and maximize buttons from window titlebars, a PolicyKit authentication agent and more.”
Gnome Shell has come a LONG WAY!
I was concerned with some of the earlier screen shots, looked kind of fugly 6 mos ago, but this is nice. Clean, simple, functional. Finally looks like has drag and drop menu/dock. Window docking to left/right of screen could be useful.
This looks really impressive, lot nicer than Ubuntu’s Unity.
Oh Oh, here comes the flames: I said nice things about Gnome and not bowing at the QT alter.
Actually it is you who brings another topic to the table. Judging from your other posts where you mention Qt [1] it looks like you are trying to start a flame war. Again.
[1] Yeah it is _Qt_ not QT. QT could be taken as QuickTime.
Troll detected.
I dare you to attempt to defend GNOME’s UI choices on their merits. I will shred your arguments in to fine spaghetti and then feed it to you, one revolting bite at a time, while I enumerate GNOME’s failings memorably by punctuating each criticism with an evaluation of your intelligence calculated to be unflattering to you and amusing to the audience.
I’m not too fond of the “activities” menu and the way you browse applications. It look too much like mobile OS’s (iOS, Android).
I like the way Linux Mint does it. The GNOME developers should have a look at that.
….why did they have to remove the minimise and maximise buttons? Was that really necessary?
Please, Gnome devs, at least give users the *option* of having those buttons! That is all I ask.
Surely that is not too much to ask – those buttons are *control items*, not just fripperies.
I use Gnome now (on Ubuntu) and it took a while to get used to having the buttons at the top-left instead of the top-right, but at least that is *much* better than not having them at all……
Anyway, apart from this, the appearance is very nice!
WTF? This trend of not having a proper window list bugs me to no end. For this I simply loathe the Mac OS X dock and the default Win7 taskbar behavior. If that wasn’t enough, now Gnome has to join the “hip” party.
How am I suppose to work with two windows of the same application?
Tabs GranPa, Tabs. It’s time to say good by multiple windows of same programs.
+1. If only tabs were a standard feature of windows managers and graphics toolkits so that applications with multiple windows can be made to use a tabbed or docked layout easily…
You know, something like the tabbed windows of Safari 4 betas and recent releases of KDE, but in a much more polished way.
Fluxbox, KDE and Awesome (to some hacky extent) does that that ability
+1 for tabs, but not all applications support tabs.
Another problem might be if you have multiple activities using the same application (for example let’s say that in my browser I have 5 tabs for one project and 5 for another). You can solve this using Tab Groups in Firefox 4 or Linux’s virtual desktops (not the half-assed implementation Apple calls Spaces).
Also tabs should be provided by the OS in an unified way, not by every app in its own unique way.
Until all this is supported … I think it’s a bit premature to do away with multiple windows.
I totally agree!
Tabs are not a replacement for proper window management.
How do you show the content of two tabs side-by-side (or one above the other) in the same app? Very easy to do with two windows.
How do you create a 2×2 square of four tabs? Very easy to do with 4 windows.
Once you start adding those features to a tabbed interface, you are back to an MDI interface, and lose all the benefits of tabs.
A proper task manager, with proper window management (Windows 7 dwm is crap in this department), gives you the best of all worlds: windows, tabs, and tasks.
Silly user! No one needs to work with two windows from the same application! Or, if you need that you can click extra times! It’s not as if convenience for common use cases like this is as important as following an artist’s mockup that looks pretty.
Usage scenarios with 2 windows of the same app, off the top of my head:
* I’m using a web browser and want to open another window in anonymous mode (I do quite often to log in as another user on websites I create – this way I don’t kill the original session).
* chat windows in IM programs (Pidgin) are separate from the main window (the one with a buddy list).
* open some app as root (a text editor would be a common example)
* GIMP’s interface is multi-windowed.
I’m using Docky on the left on “older” Gnome (2.32), placed on the left (the same as on the video in TFA). There’s a option (AFAIR not a default) to have an indicator next to dock icons that tells that there are multiple windows open. Right click brings a contextual menu that lets me choose a window to be focused. It’s not very handy (I’d like a left click on an icon to toggle focused windows).
It seems a number of people are commenting solely based on their misunderstanding of some text rather than any actual user experience. GNOME Shell allows users to run multiple times the same app. It is just not the default action when you click on a icon. Right click provides a option “New Window” which does the task just fine.
Also Maximize and Minimize are still options and can be enabled via dconf. Just not the default.
Is there a window list in a taskbar or something similar?
There is a Dash which is sort of similar to the OS X Dock. You can see screenshots or videos online.
If you are referring to the dock on the left than this is the root of the problem – just application icons and no individual windows.
Windows are shown in the overview mode (alt+f1 or windows or just jam your mouse cursor to the top left). No window list necessary.
So I take it that an action is necessary?
If moving your mouse cursor counts as a action, sure. If you don’t want to do that, writing a extension to show a window list is fairly trivial in javascript.
You aren’t only losing the little time it takes to move your mouse to the left, you are also losing the overall picture of your current activities.
But, whatever … you’ve got to get inline with the big boys (OS X, Win7) and the colorful icons are soooo pretty.
The problem is not if it’s possible or easy to find an workaround … it’s promoting the wrong defaults thus hindering usability for the unwashed masses who don’t bother with configuration …
”
But, whatever … you’ve got to get inline with the big boys (OS X, Win7) and the colorful icons are soooo pretty. ”
Another comment indicating a lack of actual use. GNOME 3 actually uses monochromatic symbolic icons for the most part.
What’s that got to do with anything? Colorful is meant as a metaphor of form over function, which is exactly the case here: the dock as an UI element looks more elegant and more visual with its big and visual icons, but fails in terms of usability and productivity because, as I said in previous comments, makes interacting with multiple windows of the same application cumbersome, while at the same time limiting the user’s perspective over his or hers current activities.
This concept was made popular by Apple’s OS X, which in typical Apple fashion wanted to be different than the rest of OSes on the market (no matter the consequences, I might add). Then came Microsoft with their typical “me too” attitude and copied the Dock blatantly in Windows 7.
Then comes Gnome 3 … and from the way things look for now they want to get in on some of the hip Dock action as well … Hurray for [un]usability!
“What’s that got to do with anything? Colorful is meant as a metaphor of form over function”
Nice backtracking. Btw, if you cannot spot the differences between the Dash and Dock, I can’t take your comments seriously.
Your fanboyism makes it very difficult to take anything you say seriously.
A window list is a necessary feature of any WM; one way or another it must exist (and so it might as well exist my way.) Some of us like having the information be ever-present. Arguments like “But, but, but you don’t need it! Honest!” aren’t very convincing to people who disagree.
This all seems very familiarly like the GNOME spatial browsing debacle where dissenters were told that the new default (which at the time could not be reverted at all, that only came after protests) was better and they should just use it. Let’s be perfectly clear here: Some users won’t be content with just whatever it is GNOME decides to do, no matter how much nicer you or anyone thinks it is, and will demand the familiar even if there are no advantages to it. Since there are in fact tradeoffs here there will be a pretty large demand for these features.
My computer should obey me, not you. No argument that involves me not getting my way has any hope of success. GNOME Shell in several annoying ways does not conform to my requirements, which makes it a non-starter.
Fortunately this is the land of open source and no one (yet) requires a specific WM for the system to function. I can and will choose something else. Still, it would be nice if GNOME devs took an attitude of wanting to bring more people into the GNOME fold, rather than this exclusionary stance they have now. Maybe if they provided the option to let me have my way, and the other posters in this thread their ways, maybe then GNOME would grow and prosper and dominate. I would have thought that was one of the goals.
“A window list is a necessary feature of any WM”
Actually window list has nothing to do with the window manager. Window list in GNOME 2.x is a feature of the panel. Unless you are referring to what you get with alt+tab which still exists in GNOME Shell.
”
This all seems very familiarly like the GNOME spatial browsing debacle where dissenters were told that the new default (which at the time could not be reverted at all, that only came after protests) ”
Not true. Always was configurable via gconf. Then exposed via the file manager.
If you window manager does not feature one in the same binary or via an available, bundled tool then it’s defective. It is a necessary feature.
Any option for which there is no UI is not an option at all. I wish GNOME fanboys would learn this, too: You didn’t give the user an option if it’s not discoverable by clicking through preferences. If editing a text file is required, or resorting to editing the GNOME pseudo-registry, then there is no option. 98% of all users will be stuck at this point. Who cares if 2% can figure it out by asking Google?
”
If you window manager does not feature one in the same binary or via an available, bundled tool then it’s defective. It is a necessary feature. ”
Then you are going to call all window managers defective since none of them provide a window list like the one in the GNOME Panel. In desktop environments, a window list is always separate from the window manager. They are logically separate functions. You cannot equate a desktop environment to a window manager btw.
“Any option for which there is no UI is not an option at all.”
Again not true. gtweak provided a UI for this forever.
“If editing a text file is required, or resorting to editing the GNOME pseudo-registry, then there is no option.”
You don’t go around redefining what a option means. Whether it is exposed via a text file or xml frontend or whatever, it is still a option. You might claim that it is not the ideal way to expose the option but that is a slightly different debate. Every window manager I know of exposes options not available in the UI but via other means for various reasons and that is not limited to window managers either. For instance, Firefox “about:config” exposes dozens of options not available via the regular UI.
You need to get out more. Every window manager I have ever used has included built-in or via a typical add-on a way to access the window list. Even twm does this! I made no requirement that the window list resemble the GNOME 2.x task pane.
Please pay attention to what we’re talking about. I said there was no option at the time spatial browsing was introduced, you said there was. I said I meant to exclude editing gconf directly, so you point out gtweakui… which was also not available when spatial was introduced.
It’s an option for you and me, perhaps, but it’s not an option for 98% of everybody.
Those options are unavailable to most people, making them no option at all. My mother is a great example: There’s no way she ventures into a text file to tweak a configuration, but she is more than capable of wading through preference dialogs to find the feature she wants.
Ah, but they are available in-application via a UI! If the Nautilus preference dialog had a button labeled “Advanced” which opened gconftool with the nautilus-specific options visible then I would allow that the options in gconf are available.
”
You need to get out more. Every window manager I have ever used has included built-in or via a typical add-on a way to access the window list”
No. it does not but also you earlier said it must a embedded tool but now you redefined your inclusion to mention “add-on” but also said the window list need not be like the one in the GNOME 2.x. In that case, GNOME Shell does include a window list.
“so you point out gtweakui… which was also not available when spatial was introduced. ”
Wrong.
“It’s an option for you and me, perhaps, but it’s not an option for 98% of everybody. ”
Made up statistics really and now you do agree it is a option. Then the question becomes is the option exposed in a ideal way and that really depends on the specific case. Some options are just fine exposed via a text file or a hidden editor. Others are useful in a tweaker. Others via extensions.
Pay attention. I said:
What do you think an “available, bundled tool” is if not a “built-in or typical add-on”? In both cases am just excluding third-party tools. In both cases I am saying that the tool must be built in or typically available, such as when it is typically distributed with the WM. In the latter case it is an “add-on”, much as the GNOME task list applet is an add-on.
Links or it didn’t happen. When spatial mode came out initially there was no way for users to revert it.
I said it is “perhaps” an option, which should not be taken to constitute agreement. Using back-channel mechanisms for configuration is not an option. I say this very clearly here, but you will object that it technically is an option, so I will say that it is only technically an option for some people, so you will say that I agree that it’s an option, but I don’t so I will say it’s not an option…. and around and around we go. Would you care to stop dicing semantics? If you’re still unclear on what I am meaning then I will explain it (again) very, very slowly. If you are clear on what I mean then either make a real point or stop talking. Attempting to score points by relying on conversational parlor tricks doesn’t impress me and doesn’t move the conversation forward.
In totally unrelated news, 75.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot. If you want to delve in to this area we can debate exactly what percentage of people really cannot perform configuration without a GUI option, but I didn’t think it was a point that anyone would be interested in contending. You may read “98%” as “a vast, unknown majority which I believe to be very high” if you wish. Should I have changed it to 99%? Or would you pounce on that and declare I was changing my story, as if I came here declaring that a particular percentage point was Holy Writ?
Any option not available via a GUI is not an option. Any GUI option requiring an external tool is not an option unless the tool is typically installed with the application. Can I be more clear? We’re not discussing configuring sendmail, we’re talking about the behavior of your WM and your DE. I am making statements about the appropriateness and necessary availability of options for your WM, or for other end-user desktop applications for that matter. For these things an option not exposed via a GUI or an option requiring you to independently install a third party GUI are not options; they may as well not exist.
And, please, do not bring up gconftool again. Yes, it probably is installed by default but for a number of reasons it is not a suitable tool for users to edit configuration. GTweakUI would qualify, if it were installed with Nautilus, but it typically isn’t (and certainly wasn’t at the time!)
“What do you think an “available, bundled tool” is if not a “built-in or typical add-on”?”
A add-on is not a bundled available tool. If you are going to count a add-on as a bundled tool, GNOME Shell does have a window list. Just the UI is different from Windows and closer to Mac.
“you may read “98%” as “a vast, unknown majority which I believe to be very high” if you wish”
If you want to say that, say that directly. Don’t make up stats to sound more scientific or accurate.
“Links or it didn’t happen. When spatial mode came out initially there was no way for users to revert it. ”
Link to what? Gtweakui?
http://gtweakui.sourceforge.net/
That wasn’t the only UI btw. Just the most commonly available one. Look up the cvs history of nautilus change and gtweak if you want proof.
“Any option not available via a GUI is not an option. ”
I am sorry but I disagree completely. You are just redefining what a option is to fit your argument. This is flimsy.
Everybody likes to poke around in a registry because it’s so much fun. User friendly too.
User friendly or not, it is still a option and users here seemed to have assumed it is not. My point still stands.
You probably mean power users. But that’s just a small percentage of the users. The majority doesn’t bother to change the defaults even if there is a friendly settings widget to do it.
The majority of users don’t care about having a window list either. Only power users care about it and they can use a extension.
Unless we see some kind of study we don’t know what the majority of the users prefers. We were discussing the merits and shortcomings of docks and window lists. BTW, why do you think the dock approach is superior?
“Unless we see some kind of study we don’t know what the majority of the users prefers.”
I wasn’t the one who brought up the idea of majority of users preferring something in the first place. So if that a criticism of my position, it equals applies to yours. Having said that, there is a great amount of publicly archived usability studies on general purpose desktops including ones done by Microsoft and Apple, not to mention Sun, Novell, Red Hat etc that GNOME can and does rely on. They also use the help of several interaction designers and usability experts.
For a quick perusal, I suggest
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design
“BTW, why do you think the dock approach is superior?”
Why would you assume I think that? People don’t necessarily need window lists. They need good ways of accessing a list of applications they are currently running. Dock is one way of doing it. Window list is another. Dash is another variant and so on. It doesn’t have to be either/or. With GNOME Shell extensions, it can be all of these and I don’t see a problem with that. For instance,
http://torb.blogspot.com/2010/08/dock-extension-for-gnome-shell.htm…
It is a fairly trivial extension that shows what capabilities are being exposed. Ideally, something like the Firefox add-on interface would make it easy for users to browse and enable extra features. A window list is a obvious extension in that list.
I hope you are sarcastic. making pcb’s in eagle for exampel you want to use the schematic editor and the layout editor at the same time. interaction in one window will result in changes in th other editor.
but then i would say that the proper solution is two monitors or putting the windows on different workspace.
Easy, right click on the icon and select from the list – is it really that hard? really?
When discussing usability this is not a question you want to ask your users.
And, yes, it is that hard, being one of the most used features of an OS, you lose time over and over again. Also you lose perspective – you don’t have an overview all the time.
Does anyone know if those Live CDs also include proprietary Nvidia drivers?
Gnome Shell looks quite nice.
I really like the way “workspaces”, activities or whatever you wanna call them are handled. There is imo absolutely no reason to have like 4 different workspaces if you only use one currently. So what they did there is great.
There are some things which I don’t like though and which hopefully will be changed in 3.2.
One is the removal of the maximising button. Yeah I know you can double click the window “bar” (sic?) or drag it to the top. Though that is imo harder to discover than an icon.
Then there is the default suspend. I don’t want to press a key just to be able to turn the computer off. How should a normal user discover this? And if a user discovered that, couldn’t it be that they would try the “Alt” key at many occasions just to see if there are “hidden” features elsewhere?
Despite that suspending does not work on many machines.
Now you could say that this should be fixed. Yet IIRC it can’t be fixed reliably due to bad Bios implementations.
So gnome is trying to be like a phone/tablet interface or something? I guess that leaves KDE as the only big desktop release left for Linux unless XFCE or LXDE decide to come in and become more featureful. Gnome 3’s shell really doesn’t look as useful as gnome 2 was even, and gnome 2 while featureful often had quirks that just drove me insane.
Honestly KDE has had the right ideas for my use cases throughout the 4.x release path in terms of window management and program launching. Its all about the search/tile/expose goodness in my mind. They have all 3 unlike many other of the window managers. Its customizable to no end and works quite well most of the time doing so, but the default are quite nice as well.
Qt may be written in a language I hate, but that doesn’t mean I dislike the library or the desktop built around it, quite the opposite.
I like the approach Gnome shell is taking. The window management reminds me of a hybrid of CDE and WebOS. Minimized programs are treated as tiles or cards that can be grouped according to function. The only thing that’s missing is a right-click app menu.
IMO, the perfect desktop OS would consist of a dock for frequently access apps, a right-click menu for less often used apps, and running apps would be shown as iconified tiles (small pictures updated in real-time, not icons) on the desktop. The only way that I’ve seen to get this setup thus far is a very hackish fvwm2 setup that uses ImageMagick to generate thumbnail previews for minimized apps.
Gnome Shell has its quirks, but it is nowhere near as bad as the crap they were putting out just six months ago.
I recommend anyone that’s looking at Gnome3 to take a look at Docky. It provides the task-based dock “right now”.
I have converted my wife into using Linux, without too much issue. She’s been using for over a year now. Her machine has Fedora installed, just like mine. Strangely enough she didn’t find Windows 7 taskbar to be practical. Instead of that, it was either XP taskbar or GNOME 2.x taskbar.
Last night I proposed that she tried GNOME fricking Shell, which I have been hating for a while now, and that feeling doesn’t want to change so soon.
Thinking on GNOME’s Shells advocates’ words, that this desktop is based on what’s best for the user, to make life easier, I was glad that she absolutely hated GNOME Shell.
The whole “Activities” menu and the workspaces were a complete mess, not to mention that she complained hard about the lacking of a window list.
I don’t think GNOME Shell is going to get there, and so Unity.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure someone said the same thing about WIMP years ago…
First of all, it’s harsh to judge like this unfinished software, secondly that doesn’t prove current window management paradigm is better, maybe what’s happening is that you and your wife spent a considerable time of your lives using one paradigm and unconsciously will reject anything different from that because it will have to spend an unnecessary amount of time getting used to something new.
See, some people hate new things, understandably, but there are also people who likes new things, and if we all keep technology halted because some people don’t like these new things, what’s going to happen to human society?
I myself, despite not liking very much this Gnome Shell, appreciate the effort Gnome guys are putting in trying new concepts, even if they fail, because if no one tries, how we will improve?
Gnome Shell is still fully WIMP oriented. Even if it itself can make some use of touch panels, the applications can’t. No breakthrough here.
It is not true that in order to improve the experience you have to throw away stuff and start again from scratch. I’d be more happy if Gnome guys instead of rolling off another “best thing ever” had simply fixed the panel. After so many years it still gets messed up when I change the screen resolution and it is next to unusable in a vertical mode.
Installed here. I like how beautiful and fluid it is, and how they don’t break common design rules like KDE guys always do.
It’s still have lot’s of bugs and minor problems that ruin the experience, but I think that’s understandable for alpha software..
It’s not a great concept, but still, a remarkable attempt at trying to improve desktop experience.. That’s exactly why I like open source, because there are always people trying to do hot new stuff, independently of how money they will make with it or not
comment deleted by me.
Edited 2011-02-26 22:14 UTC
I’m curious to know how life on a desktop without a window list, a maximize button and a minimize button feels like. I think I would hate it but I don’t plan on finding out.
Why do developers/designers seem to NEED to make changes? Even without a window list or a dock where to recover minimized windows from, a minimize button would have equated the “hide” option on Mac OS X; that would have been useful. Sometimes, even if it’s rare for me, people maximize windows. I often found myself hitting F11 in Opera lately for badly designed/coded pages. Moreover the link they gave in their announcement message about these buttons is broken…
The message, found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg02527.htm…, makes it even less justifiable in my eyes (but I’m not an insider).
As to the Power Off option disappearing in favor of a Suspend option (which, according to a previous commenter, is problematic on some BIOS implementations), beyond the pointlessness that the author of the linked article sees, it seems even incomprehensible to me. But once again, I’m not an insider and I can only guess that the designers and coders in the Gnome team have studied their users’ habits.