GNOME To Lose Minimize, Maximize Buttons 797
An anonymous reader writes "When GNOME 3 arrives in a month, users might be surprised to see old UI staples 'minimize' and 'maximize' buttons gone and replaced by... nothing, in the case of minimizing, and either drag-up or double-click-titlebar for maximizing. Says Allan Day, GNOME Marketing Contractor: 'Without minimize, the GNOME 3 desktop is a more focused UI, and it is a UI that has a consistent high level of quality. Yes, moving to a minimiseless world might take a little getting used to for some, but the change makes sense and has clear benefits.' Some users already welcome the change, while others are in an uproar, swearing to wait for GNOME 3.2, switch to KDE or even Windows. What do you think? A better, simpler interface for new times, or a case of making something simpler than it should be?" I like minimize and maximize buttons, but I'll admit to liking the look of GNOME 3 .
Re:Is that really well tested in the real world? (Score:5, Interesting)
Minimize is removed because the concept doesn't make much sense in GNOME Shell. Minimize only has an intuitive function when used with a panel, while in GNOME Shell all it does is make the window disappear. The last time I tried GNOME Shell, minimizing did prove to be a frustrating habit acquired by years of having a panel.
Maximize on the other hand is removed because... well, because this is GNOME we are talking about...?
Re:Is that really well tested in the real world? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're arguing that minimizing is an uncommon thing to do and also one that doesn't work well within the general interface ideas behind Gnome Shell. So minimizing is, basically, deprecated. OTOH, they're not at all saying that maximizing is infrequent. What they are saying is that you should maximize in other ways: primarily by dragging the window to the top edge (that'd be the same as in Win7; the mouse gesture might be different, I haven't really tried Gnome 3); double clicking the title bar will also still work, I assume. Mouse gestures are supposedly more "gratifying" or some similar thing that will undoubtedly get a lot of hate on Slashdot.
FWIW, it's true that I only really use the close button on the title bar. I rarely minimize windows, and I invariably maximize by double clicking the title bar.
Re:What does this improve? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnome always had this problem of bad decisions.... (Score:5, Interesting)
... from the very beginning.
I lost track of all the "cool" but horrible ideas which made it into gnome.
- CORBA after it had long died
- XML
- GConf (the horrors of the windows registry re-implemented by monkeys)
- C# and Mono - embracing Microsoft technology!
- Umpteen window manager changes, none good enough
The sad part is that the other DE's are not in a good shape either. KDE 4 has come out of the woods recently. Enlightenment is still not out. XFCE does not have that traction. GNUstep is like HURD, barely alive.
May be writing a good GUI is beyond something that can be accomplished by a mainly volunteer community...
Re:Already Running that Version on Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
All things you could already do with any decent X11 window manager. How is it that GNOME's removing easy access to these features, and cluttering the context menu making them much harder to access, only to come back around and make them easier again, is a positive feature? Hell, if GNOME/KDE weren't trying so hard to imitate Windows all the time, they wouldn't have to remove the normal options, to FORCE people to kick their Windows habits, which GNOME/KDE have been encouraging, while all other X11 WMs used a different and superior model to Windows.
I use blackbox based WM's because they make it this quicker and easier than anything else. Mouse-over the title-bar and wheel-up to shade, wheel-down to unshade. Mouse-over the maximize button, and middle-click to maximize vertically-only, or left-click for horizontal-only maximization, in addition to the normal left-click. Right-click on the titlebar and the top entry is "send-to", select the workspace and it's gone. Don't need to mouse-over a tiny "switcher" applet to switch workspaces, either, mouse-over any blank area on the desktop, and wheel-up/down to go next/prev. Or you can middle-click for a list, or you can always use the toolbar (but you don't NEED the toolbar at all, if you don't want it).
Long lines of text (Score:4, Interesting)
I paid for the [1920px wide] real estate, why would I want to waste most of it?
There's a reason that newspapers have several columns of text, and this reason is that text becomes harder to read once lines become longer than 80 characters (roughly 40em in CSS). With long lines, too much of the effort is spent on finding the next line of text and making sure you don't repeat or skip a line. So put one browser window in half the screen and the other browser window in the other half.
Re:Has slashdot been taken over by The Onion? (Score:2, Interesting)
Gnome core modules are dominated by Redhat devs. Gnome sites are hosted by Redhat. Gnome foundation board is populated by Redhat employees. Anything that goes on with Gnome is preternaturally influenced by Redhat's agenda. Who stands to lose the most by Gnome's lost market share? Ubuntu, of course. This is move like Redhat's decision to release kernel source with the patches already applied in order to screw with Oracle. By driving users away from desktop, Redhat effectively kills Ubuntu's (Canonical's) ability to gain in market share because producing a polished desktop is Canonical's avenue to selling value-added services and tie-ins to their server support options.
Of course, Redhat loses some desktop share too, but that's not been their focus for a long time. And as soon as Canonical folds, you'll probably see Gnome adding support back to the version 2 type interface with gnome-panel and such.
Btw, Redhat also unduly influences freedesktop.org projects as well. They are very much the Microsoft of the Linux community.
Re:Is that really well tested in the real world? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maximize all your windows by default, that's what I do.
I got rid of the minimize and maximize buttons a long time ago.
All windows (except for dialogs) are started maximized.
If I don't want a window maximized I double-click the title bar.
I've bound "minimize" to mouse-wheel down on the titlebar.
This way I can scroll through my windows by positioning my mouse on the titlebar and scrolling down. (remember, all windows are maximized, so the title bars are perfectly aligned).
Re:Is that really well tested in the real world? (Score:4, Interesting)
actually, i just tested live image. and boy... it rocks like hell. as much as i was skeptical about minimize, maximize removal... in 1 minute i started wondering why were they there in the first place. managing maximization like in gnome 3 fells so much more natural. and minimize? when you have smart desktop managing, there is actually no point in having it. and automatic desktops... ROCK
so... in 1 minute it felt natural
in 5, i started wondering how dumb interfacing with desktop was before shell
now, just give me good session manager and i'm willing to forget every single pain with interfaces as they were. don't know if i like docked dialogs copied from apple though, but fortunately they can easily be set off to standard behavior with settings manager. although i don't plan to do that first second, i want to be sure i have it right.
p.s. the version that came with fedora 14 annoyed the hell out of me and i went back to standard after 1 day