Losing faith in Gnome

The decision in Gnome to move buttons in dialogs to the headerbar is driving me crazy! Why would they do something like that when they don't control the button placement within applications like Firefox, Chrome, Inkscape, GIMP, ... Also every single OS I can think of, Commodore 64, Amiga, Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Meego, WebOS not to mention all websites on the entire web, puts buttons in the lower right corner.

This is also where your eye moves when reading a book. Maybe if I was a 100% Gnome user this wouldn't be an issue, but I use Mac/Windows for work and got an Android phone in my pocket.
You might think "that's not worth losing your faith over", but it's not just that. Of the top of my mind: the removal of the desktop icons, the removal of the tray icons and of course the dialog buttons.
I'm so sad to see them doing stuff like this with thinking it through.

Gnome 3 Usability Hackfest

Last week Canonical hosted the GNOME Usability Hackfest in London. Some interesting research was done and there's a lot of awesome improvements coming to the "Control Center”, Nautilus and Gnome 3. I hope Ruben Vermeersch's wish for a yearly GNOME Usability Hackfest will come true. I won't try to summarize everything that happened, but I will encourage you to read the blogpost I've linked to below. If you want the summarized version ArsTechnic has a nice article titled "Task Pooper" could revolutionize GNOME desktop".

Thomas Wood: Usability Hackfest London


Seth Nickell: Early peak into Gnome 3’s potential


Máirín Duffy: Adding Chapters to Totem

Bastien Nocera: We're (re)moving settings again

Ian Cylkowski: Deconstructing Nautilus and rebuilding it better

Not really related to the Hackfest, but related in the sense of improving the user interface of the Nautilus file manager.

Spotting Visual Inconsistencies

It isn't that often that Hylke Bons writes a blog post, but whenever he does, I always find he's posts to be very interesting. In Hylkes lates post, On GNOME and Elegance, he writes about how small things can help make the GNOME desktop elegant. As he says, elegance in interfaces doesn’t come from funky graphics and pretty widget themes. It comes down to how your interface is laid out. Hylkes gives some pretty obvious, but good to know examples and encourages everyone to report bugs if you come across any visual inconsistencies. Certainly a must read!

I love the fact that there's so much focus on artwork, UI Design and Usability for the linux desktop.

Source: On GNOME and Elegance

A New GNOME Control Center?

I love all the UI work and clean-up that is going on in the Linux world at the moment. Whenever a new application get's written, the UI is carefully thought through.

Recently F-Spot recieved some UI love, GIMP 2.8 is planed to introduce many user-interface improvements, new Banshee is getting a clutter based Netbook-focused interface and just today I came across a proposal for a new GNOME control center working on the preferences menus.
Without even compareing the Gnome preferences menus to the Windows Vista or Windows 7 control center, everyone will agree that the Gnome preferences menus is an unfriendly mess.

A design effort at Sun led by Kristin Travis and Jenya Gestrin has been working to 'advance' the preferences menus. Their goal is to show how the current preferences menus could change to a more simpler and direct launcher and it is looking very slick.

There's a Flash prototype (2.37 MB) showing some of the variations that were considered along the way.

Source: http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/Whiteboard/ControlCenter

Give Gnome A More Modern Look

click image to view in full size
When compared to KDE 4, OSX or Windows 7 the default Gnome desktop looks… let’s face it… old. Here are a few steps I took to make my desktop look more modern:

- Change the theme:
I’m using the Dust theme which is included in Ubuntu 9.04 (also available for earlier releases).
- Change the icon set:
I find the Oxygen icon set to be one of the best set’s out there, I really do love the upcoming Breathe icon set. Although Breathe is still work in progress you can already take it for a test drive.
- Change the wallpaper:
Of course I use the photo wallpapers from my Ubuntu Wallpaper Photo Pack, which recently was updated and now holds eighteen photographs (43 MB).
- Adjust panel properties:
Transparent panels look very modern and makes the panels more integrated with the desktop background. Under panel properties I also set the size to 34 pixels.
- Add custom system sounds:
The sounds I’m currently using are the Rhodes system sounds I created myself.

If you like to rock out with your dock, I would recommend that you try Gnome Do.

GNOME PackageKit Updates

Remember Richard Hughes blog about a new experimental update viewer in GNOME PackageKit. Richard has been doing some tinkering around the edges to make things work better, hopefully without getting in the way. This is shown quite nicely from the following UI from the new update viewer.


And, thanks to Daniel Nicoletti, PackageKit now understands media requests, so the backends can request the user do something with physical media. This is still using the non-blocking logic we’ve always been using, so if we’re using multiple disks then the content has to be copied off each one in turn before the transaction, rather then installing direct from the media. Trust me, it’s better this way.

Planning for GNOME 2.28 and 3.0

With GNOME 2.26 having been released a few weeks back, the GNOME development community is slowly beginning to ramp up work on the next release, which will be known as GNOME 2.28. The release schedule for GNOME 2.28 is out, along with a tentative schedule for GNOME 3.0! GNOME 3.0 will take off where GNOME 2.30 would have been, and will come with some significant improvements to compete in the age of KDE 4.

First though, with the GNOME 2.28 release schedule, its first unstable release (v2.27.1) will be out later this month on the 29th. For the next few months will be several more development releases in the GNOME 2.27 series and also minor bug-fix releases in the 2.26 series. Come this September, GNOME 2.28.0 is planned for release on the 23rd. Among many other features and changes to come, GNOME 2.28 will complete the migration from Mozilla/XulRunner to WebKit for its web rendering engine.

A month after the release of GNOME 2.28 will be the first GNOME 2.30 (3.0) development build and that will continue on in the usual GNOME development fashion until March of 2010. GTK 3.0 and Glib 3.0 are scheduled for release on the 22nd of February in 2010 while GNOME 3.0 is scheduled to be out on the 31st of March. In other words, we are just shy of being one year out from GNOME 3.0!

Landing in late August during the GNOME 2.28 development cycle will be the gnome-shell beta release. Throughout the GNOME 3.0 development cycle, various libraries will be stripped away such as libgnomeui, libglade, etc. The feature freeze for GNOME 3.0 will go into effect in late January.

The release schedule for GNOME 2.28 and GNOME 3.0 can be found on their GNOME Live web-site. Additionally, new details regarding GNOME 3.0 were also published today. From the revamping of the GNOME user desktop experience to streamlining of the platform to the promotion of the GNOME desktop, those details can be read about in detail here.

Source: www.phoronix.com

Gnome Deskbar-Applet Maintainer Wanted

As you might have guessed from the GNOME 2.26 release notes there where no big improvements for Deskbar-Applet during the last release cycle. In addition, most items on the roadmap for 2.26 remained unresolved.

Sebastian Pölsterl (sebp) has nearly been the only active developer for the last two release cycles and the time he spend working on Deskbar-Applet was decreasing steadily. Therefore, he is now searching for someone who is willing to take over maintainership and who brings new energy to the project.

If you are interested or want to know more please send an e-mail to the deskbar-applet mailing list.

Source: http://www.k-d-w.org/node/64

Stracciatella GNOME session

Martin Pitt blogged about the availability of the "Stracciatella GNOME session", which allows users and developers to easily access an environment that is closer to the one from upstream GNOME. It still contains the Ubuntu patches, as providing packages without them is not currently feasible, but it does remove Ubuntu added components, initially the new notification system. So you will be able to choose between the “Ubuntuized” and a more “upstream-like” GNOME experience. Martin Pitt wrote a beautiful metaphor for this in his blogpost:

...I called that “stracciatella GNOME session”, after the favorite kind of ice cream which is mostly vanilla (GNOME), but with some brown chocolate chips (Ubuntu modifications) in it.

Sounds delicious Martin.

http://martinpitt.wordpress.com/
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/265

Multiple Desktop Environments in a Single Linux Install

Shawn Powers (The Associate Editor for Linux Journal) has made this short video showing how simple it is to start sessions using different desktop managers on a single Linux installation.

Gnome Adds Fading Between Backgrounds

In Nautilus, gnome-desktop and gnome-settings-daemon, patches from Ray Strode landed, adding support for fading between backgrounds.

Kurros uploaded a video of the fade effect: http://ezri.org/nautilusfade.ogv (1360x768 Ogg Theora, 3.6 MB)

The New GDM Is Available For Testing

Today Sebastien Bacher made it possible to try the new GDM, currently planed for Jaunty+1, in Intrepid. On the Desktop mailing list Sebastian wrote:

GNOME upstream worked on a GDM code refactoring some cycles ago, the new version is not used in ubuntu yet, but it's being considered for next jaunty+1 and it would be nice to start giving it testing now.

The upgrade plans are described on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Jaunty/GdmUpgrade and you can get it a first version in the desktop team ppa now.

To try it add "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main" to your sources.list and install gdm-new

There is some known issues:
- the new version conflicts with gdm, fast-user-switch-applet and gdm-guest-session, those and ubuntu-desktop will be removed when you install the new gdm version
- the new gdm has a switch user applet but it didn't get the ubuntu changes which happened during the intrepid cycle
- the new gdm will get started directly after installation, that should close your session but you will be switched to gdm, you can select your current user to resume the session use though
- there is no configuration migration nor graphical tools to do changes to the configuration
- the new version might be lacking some of the options you were using

The new version should be mostly working though and let you log in, switch between users, suspend the computer, reboot, etc.

If you do try the new version and have some comments feel free to reply on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list, if the user feedback is good the new version will be uploaded to universe.

Source: Sebastien Bacher

For more information about the new GDM, visit http://live.gnome.org/GDM/NewDesign

Nautilus Places Reorganization

Back in December I wrote about how the Nautilus places menu looks very cluttered. If you also think a change is needed, you can post your opinions on bugzilla on Bug 508404 – "Sidebar should categorize items displayed with headings":

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=508404

Nautilus sidebar needs a cleanup

Hylke Bons descripes himself as being a consistent user interface experience junkie. Back in November he posted a mockup of the Nautilus sidebar. The current sidebar looks very cluttered, so let's hope the gnome UI developers will clean it up a bit.



I know that you can report usability-bugs in the Gnome bugzilla - if this one isn't reported yet, it should be.

The road to GNOME 3.0 (first draft)

This is the first draft of the road to GNOME 3.0 artwork and UI-wise. v0.0.1

Vision
GNOME 3.0 should have visual refresh. Such a major release without any or little changes could dissapoint users. No radical UI concept change, but incremental refinements around the desktop of things that have proved to work and dropping or improving/dropping things that don't, making the GNOME desktop look prettier and make it more usable. Overall it should look new but still be recognized as the GNOME desktop, but improved.
GNOME 3.0 should also be easier to design for. GNOME is highly themeable, but methods used aren't always as easy and documentation is poor. Right now designers can only adjust certain options of an existing widget theme, or depend on GTK+ hackers to make their theme work.

Events and Deadlines


Components
These are components of GNOME that the Art Team will be working on. Note that there are no seperate "art packages". The team will be working closely together with all kinds of different projects, especially on the UI work.

- Login screen
- Splash sceen
- Wallpapers
- UI design
- Widget themes
- Icons
- Fonts
- Animations
- Website

Ideas and Points of Discussion
Login screen
New GDM version? Seamless transition from the login screen to the desktop: prevent color flickering. Fading in of the wallpaper and panels. Making the login process a smooth transition will make it look shorter. New theme.

Splash screen (more like getting rid of it)
The splash screen is totally useless, the icons are often misaligned and it's causes two more "flashes" in the login process. A lot of distributions are already turning it off by default.

Wallpapers
GNOME 3.0 should have some new wallpapers. A contest could be held, it turned out very well for GNOME 2.24. Does anyone really use patterns? We haven't added any new ones in the latest 2.24 wallpaper update.

UI design (Note: think of "layout" instead of "looks")
Window list applet update, include an optional "dock mode" with basically bigger icons? Notification area applet update, better spacing. [1] Clock update applet, The date can be less eyecatching, and the time more. [2]

Widget themes
GTK engine(s) that let's the designers have control, instead of tweaking certain options. Make spacing themeable? New theme.

Icons
Follow the naming specification, ignore everything else. [3] Applications should have a hires icon. More use of hires icons where they are appropriate. Tango Next Generation (Mango) icon theme as the default theme now that the licensing is going to be LGPL? [4] Yellow colored Foxtrot folders? [5]

Fonts
Bitsream and Dejavu are quite spacious, a condensed type kan show more text in the same space without losing readability. Nicer smoother fonts that look great bold as well, a good bold font is important for dialogs etc. and where you want attention on the text Use color tints in UI (have a secondary font color?)

Animations
Subtle smooth effects that increase usability and are pleasing to look at. (think Banshee [6])

Website
The current gnome.org website looks like it's from the 90's. It may give people a wrong impression about how modern the GNOME platform really is.The GNOME 3.0 break is a great opportunity to create a new (think Web 2.0) website.

References
[1] http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/ugly-notification-area-in-gnome/
[2] http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/pretty-gnome-clock/
[3] http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html
[4] http://jimmac.musichall.cz/i.php?i=Tango-NG
[5] http://www.andreasn.se/blog/?p=21
[6] http://banshee-project.org/

http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/wip/gnome-art-roadmap-draft.pdf