Introduction to Gnome 3

http://www.gnome3.org/

by audidude • 16 years ago

139 72 16 years ago

I'm sorry, but that Metacity theme and even the GTK+ theme are really lacking. They lack the polish that Meerkat's Ambiance theme has (everytime I post a screenshot of stock 10.10 I get comments asking what the themes are).

It's a shame, I think Gnome-Shell looks cool and I think GNOME3 brings a lot of UI/UX changes that have been needed for a while, but they're not doing themselves any favors giving the actual appearance a real chance to shine. The "GNOME" default icons are a pity, too.

edit, I guess it's not Metacity any longer... Mutter.

junkbit• 16 years ago

That is an old gtk theme. The GTK3 look fits better with the new titlebar

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakubsteiner/5201953378/sizes/o...

drivebyacct22• 16 years ago

It's getting better, but that screenshot has plenty of it's own problems. That titlebar, menu, icon row and tabs takes up like 200+ px. Versus like 60 with Chrome.

What's the deal?

md81544• 16 years ago

"AN OVERVIEW AT A GLACE (sic)" ???

apakatt• 16 years ago

"Simply Beautiful". It feels weird that the fonts on the site are better than on the screen shots. The font on the top and in the "Messaging built-in" is really grandma-sized and not really beautiful.

As said before, the theme and icons are really really lacking. I'm sure however that it will work great (and look great after some modifications like adding the Ubuntu font and Faenza Icons).

generalk• 16 years ago

Is this information still relevant?

From the Try It link (http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html):

GNOME 3 is under active development and will not be completed until April 2010. We hope to be able to provide live USB images really soon. Watch this space!

antimatter15• 16 years ago

It appears the date has changed to April 2011

kingsidharth• 16 years ago

>Simply Beautiful?

Seriously? Since when Beauty is that top priority for GUI? Usability, Gnome, Usability!

drivingmenuts• 16 years ago

How much of the eye-candy (IM, etc.) is so woven into the desktop that it's impossible to remove?

With OS X and Windows, I add the extraneous stuff - it doesn't come pre-installed and pre-enabled.

I'll stick w/XFCE, thanks. It's based on Gnome, but it doesn't have the cruft.

archangel_one• 16 years ago

What? In Windows 7, the contemporary version to GNOME 3, all the flashy effects come on by default - or at least they did on this machine. You have to turn them off if you don't want them. IIRC OSX is basically the same... isn't it a little counter-productive having a whole lot of pretty effects if they're off by default?

ugh• 16 years ago

I don’t really see the contradiction.

puls• 16 years ago

They're trying to sell "simply beautiful" but all of the images on the front page have serious antialiasing problems.

Huh.

rbanffy7• 16 years ago

Stable software or a beautiful website... Tough choice when you have limited resources... I'm glad their priorities are right.

mikedouglas• 16 years ago

Not that I want to beat up on a open source project, but for a desktop environment focused on ease of use, there are some very odd things overlooked.

1. How am I supposed to know what these icons do? Why even title them? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-biweei4eyuey217fisi7ks2d9f.p...

2. Eight of the eleven icons in the dock have significant title clipping. Did no one notice this? https://img.skitch.com/20110118-e1ykw7u3qf3gwmuhxaug28p5mr.p...

Usability isn't minimalism. It isn't translucent windows, rounded corners, or stark blacks and gradients. It's these details, and about a hundred others that I'll run into while using your software. These details can either add friction to whatever problem I'm trying to solve (and therefore add marginally to my bad mood), or they can remove it. If you don't ask these questions, you aren't even giving your users a chance.

acabal4• 16 years ago

People like to beat up on MS a lot, but the differences between the Windows 7 GUI (or iOS GUI) and Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers who say to themselves, "well, I think our users will like text truncation, let's throw it in tomorrow!" are at versus a big company with millions to spend on thoughtful UI design, graphics, research, and focus groups.

Windows 7 has its problems too, but it's clear to me that the changes Gnome 3 is bringing are nothing more than what some out-of-touch developers think is what users want, without having actually asked users. Maybe I'm wrong on that assertion but that sure is the feeling I'm getting from this project.

Gnome 3 would have benefited greatly from a series of focus groups before development started or from snagging a high-profile UI expert to rap them on the knuckles whenever they had a bright idea like using 12 different font colors, sizes, and styles on the already-overwhelming dashboard screen.

cturner• 16 years ago

I think there's no substitute for clued-in developers.

Focus groups produced the interface overhaul to Windows Vista and 7. Rather than building on an existing, successful interface, they decided to be more mac-like, and managed to make the interface prettier but much yet less usable in the process.

I agree, gnome fonts are yuck. Even in the screenshot on the frontpage the fonts look awful - both in the text document and the dropdown menu headings.

rbanffy7• 16 years ago

> Gnome 3 really highlight the disadvantage that a bunch of spare-time developers

You do realize you are criticizing the topmost user interface details of a theme of an extensively themable early release. I think those "spare-time developers" have been focusing their attention on the API changes that the Gnome 2 to 3 transition impose and the new concepts introduced by the shell. The core seems very good. What you complain about is usually addressed in the configuration files for the theme and the names of the shortcuts. Multi-lingual support will bring some additional problems that should be addressed in the coming weeks. There are many dozen different themes that are compatible with Gnome. All those will have to be tweaked to look right.

Have a little more faith, for just about every computer that is responsible for your internet access runs on top of software written by people you would call "part-time programmers".

I'd trust their work over the one from Microsoft's full-time employees anytime.

sciurus2• 16 years ago

One interesting thing about the Gnome Shell design process is that it has been very open and responsive. Although there was a heavy focus on creating design principles up front, the actual design has evolved a lot over the few years that the project has been active. The overview of the current design at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design has many relevant links that you can explore if you're interested.

I know there are plans for usability testing, but I don't know how they have progressed since this blog post http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/gnome-shell-usability...

joe_the_user4• 16 years ago

I think what's most unfortunate is that Linux desktop people follow MS' approach of integrating the windows managers and the graphic shell ever more closely.

This approach seems to requires a monolithic application.

I would imagine it could be more open-source-appropriate to separate out the Windows manager (in charge of the details of font and icons) and the shell (the taskbar, start-menu, explorer-type-application etc).

Caveat: I'm working on a shell-like project myself. I suppose I might feel some satisfaction to see Gnome get it wrong but I don't want to see a monolithic system that freezes out alternatives.

j_baker• 16 years ago

I'd like to point out that the images are marked as being of an alpha version. These complaints are fair, but they can be forgiven for not having all the details under control at this point. I personally am reserving judgement until I have an actual, finished product to test out.

ra• 16 years ago

It does say "alpha version".

The concepts look good, lets hope they sort out these details.

sciurus2• 16 years ago

I think the clipping might be fixed. I don't see any in the dash (GNOME's term for the dock) or the application picker in the screenshot at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design?action=AttachFile...

bouncingsoul2• 16 years ago

I'm amazed by how dumb and severe the icon label truncation is. That screams to me that it was designed without testing it with real content.

How can anyone see Network C…, Network P…, Network P… in the preference panel and not wonder if the truncation is too agressive?

rsl7• 16 years ago

Truncation like that also happens on the Mac when the Finder's grid spacing is set too tight. They may have overlooked it for the screenshot.

bouncingsoul2• 16 years ago

I'm not criticizing truncation. You need to do it on long names. I'm saying it looks like the designers of the GNOME UI are using truncation as a quick fix for a flawed design.

Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter:

http://i.imgur.com/MN3Q2.png

Notice how the tracking (spacing between letters) in the first item gets tightened to make it fit? It looks a little squished, but it's much preferable to reading dots.

The last item had to be truncated, but it happens in the middle and keeps the useful end information visible.

I was being honest when I said I was amazed at the GNOME truncation. I think an operating system UI that can't handle the names of its killer apps (e.g., OpenOffic…) lost its way somewhere.

endgame• 16 years ago

I used to use dillo as my browser of choice. It truncated tabs by dropping vowels, which I thought was really clever. I have no idea how well that would work in other languages, though.

jawee• 16 years ago

For those complaining about the details: I think this represents the code and general work on a new interface that is coming out. The applications that it is working with are the utilities that have been included in Gnome for quite a while and the names worked fine with the old menu system; clearly the work being demonstrated is on the interface level. The current interface only takes the default application names it is being fed. I´m sure a finished ¨product¨ will take into account these details, but I don´t find it unreasonable that it looks how it does in an Alpha product. Simply changing what the name appears as in the shell isn´t going to be the long term solution.

cmeiklejohn3• 16 years ago

Ubuntu's decision to move to Unity made me go back to Debian for GNOME/Clearlooks for the first time in a while, but what am I going to do now with the way GNOME 3 looks?

npaquin• 16 years ago

I'm totally with you on this one. XFCE is an excellent option to avoid this design madness.

cmeiklejohn3• 16 years ago

Xmonad

viraptor• 16 years ago

It seems that you switched before you tried. I don't know much about unity, but I was following the beginnings of gnome shell and I can't wait to get it in my hands. Activities / creating desktops as you need them is exactly what I wanted. But there are other cool things included too.

cmeiklejohn3• 16 years ago

No, I used unity in the netbook edition in both 10.04 and 10.10. I switched when I heard it would become the default.

vilya2• 16 years ago

A lot of effort has gone into this; it's a shame to see so many disparaging posts here. I think the developers should be applauded for their work.

Between this and Ubuntu's plans to adopt Wayland in place of X, there are some interesting times ahead for Linux on the desktop. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.

snprbob86• 16 years ago

The developers absolutely deserve to be applauded for their work, but declaring it as "simply beautiful" is almost laughable. I think that it's actually quite ugly. And even if you disagree, I don't think it's fair to call your own work beautiful unless you've proven that the overwhelming majority consistently enjoys your aesthetic.

rbanffy7• 16 years ago

For a lot of people, Justin Bieber is a great musician. Popularity is not a trustworthy indicator of artistic merit.

vilya2• 16 years ago

I read that as more of a goal statement than a description. Whether or not you think they've succeeded, they certainly seem to have put a lot of effort towards that goal: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/

senko2• 16 years ago

Wrote a long comment and then the web bug ate it :-(

In a nutshell: it's more of an introduction to GNOME Shell, which is just one part of GNOME3. It's going to be used by default, by old interface will still be available for those who want it. The UX is probably the least finished part yet, since a massive amount of work first went in invisible improvements for v3 (such as gobject-introspection).

Something the HN crowd will like: the Shell is written in JavaScript, has bindings to low-level libraries using gobject-introspection, uses JS libraries like jQuery, and comes with its own FireBug-like tool for inspection and modification at runtime. Since most of the look&feel is done in JS, you can just jump right in and hack left and right. One of most impressive demos at GUADEC2010 had a couple of JS oneliners doing various special effects on the desktop. Also, the whole thing is themeable in CSS, which is a lot nicer than doing gtkstyle theming.

aaronbrethorst2• 16 years ago

> Also, the whole thing is themeable in CSS

Does this mean the ludicrously generous padding will be as easy to change as

    html * { padding: 2px!important; }

That would make me very happy.

senko2• 16 years ago

Well, HTML/DOM is not used, but you should be able to do something of the sorts to the UI elements, yeah.

emef• 16 years ago

typo on http://www.gnome3.org/faq.html? It says "Commons Questions and Answers", where I think it means "Common ..." Didn't see a contact link so maybe a webdev will see it here.

fingerprinter• 16 years ago

As far as open source desktops go, I'm rather excited about both Unity and Gnome3, but for very different reasons.

I think Unity, which is my preferred desktop right now, is shaping up to be the nicest, prettiest and easiest to use desktop open source has ever had. I might even consider it to be the first open source desktop I could point my mother to and she could use it straight away. I'm fully expecting Unity to be just plain awesome in several cycles.

Gnome3 with the JS core is open for extension like we've never seen before in open source. I say that b/c of the ease with which someone could extend now...like it or not, JS has a lower barrier to entry than traditional tech used in linux desktops. I can't wait to see what people create for Gnome3 via this extension scheme.

I know I'll have both installed for sure...fun times ahead!

jamesaguilar• 16 years ago

Gnome 3 "Made of Ugly." How is it possible that the aliasing on those fonts in the example image is allowed on the front page of their marketing. Every third line is a different size and has a blurry appearance.

carussell• 16 years ago

That's the result of bad post-processing on the image.

zvrba• 16 years ago

Based on the screenshots, font rendering -- the most important thing -- still seems to suck big time.

biju• 16 years ago

>A lot of effort has gone into this; it's a shame to see so many disparaging posts here. I think the developers should be applauded for their work.

bad work is bad. GNOME developers are again ditching code that works (and it sucks).

http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html >This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

zecg• 16 years ago

Gnome 3 Alpha, codenamed "Jumping the Shark". So many things shown are ridiculous - the spacing, the truncated titles in the ribbon-thingy, the seeming changes in the concept of workspaces. Why are dropbox and the wireless-thingy broken off from other system tray icons? What is the rationale for the changes in basic concepts? At the moment, I'm still using Gnome on all computers. This version might be just what I need to finally start using a minimal tiling manager.

lanolin• 16 years ago

> "Simply beautiful", "Distraction-free computing", "Everything at your fingertips", "completely redesigned for GNOME 3", "And much, much more", ...

This page reads much like a corporate ad.

> "GNOME 3 is crammed full of new features."

Is that a good thing?

For Gnome, I want: more streamlining, compartmentalization, removal of deprecated features, and optimization. Make it smaller and tighter -- only add parts conservatively and if they offer great value.

Introduction to Gnome 3

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