Should Apps Replace Title Bars with Header Bars? (gnome.org) 362
Gnome contributor Tobias Bernard is on a crusade against title bars -- "the largely empty bars at the top of some application windows [that] contain only the window title and a close button." Instead he wants to see header bars -- "a newer, more flexible pattern that allows putting window controls and other UI elements in the same bar." Tobias Bernard writes:
Header bars are client-side decorations (CSD), which means they are drawn by the app rather than the display server. This allows for better integration between application and window chrome. All GNOME apps (except for Terminal) have moved to header bars over the past few years, and so have many third-party apps. However, there are still a few holdouts.
He's announcing the CSD Initiative, "an effort to get apps (both GNOME and third-party) to drop title bars and adopt GNOME-style client-side decorations... The only way to solve this problem long-term is to patch applications upstream to not use title bars. So this is what we'll have to do."
He's announcing the CSD Initiative, "an effort to get apps (both GNOME and third-party) to drop title bars and adopt GNOME-style client-side decorations... The only way to solve this problem long-term is to patch applications upstream to not use title bars. So this is what we'll have to do."
- Talk to the maintainers and convince them that this is a good idea
- Do the design work of adapting the layout and make mockups
- Figure out what is required at a technical level
- Actually implement the new layout and get it merged
Implementation is already in progress for Firefox, though it has not yet been started for other high-priority apps like LibreOffice, GNOME Terminal, and Skype. "If you want to help with any of the above tasks," writes Tobias, "come talk to us on #gnome-design on IRC/Matrix."
Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:4, Insightful)
"I must make my mark by fucking up a user interface that's worked fine for thirty damned years!!!! Because I'm soooo much smarter than everyone else!!!"
The sad thing is, the dolts running Gnome might agree with this simpering jackass. Hell, can't pass up a chance to cram in more bloat!
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the fuck are we supposed to grab a window in order to move it if the title bar is crammed full of junk?
Keep the title bar and bring back the menu bar as well. those of us that actually use a windowing operating system need them.
You want to determine whether the user is using a touch interface and adjust the UI accordingly? Fine. But some of us actually produce content on desktop computers, where design elements are made to conform to a keyboard and mouse interface.
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> Where the fuck are we supposed to grab a window in order to move it if the title bar is crammed full of junk?
Come up with a new UI paradigm. For instance, for years now I use Meta+Left Click to grab my windows and move them (KDE). I can grab them anywhere in the window area so I don't have to try target a few pixels at the top of it. To maximize the window, I just drag it to the top of the screen. To unmaximize it I pull it away from the top the the screen. It is much quicker and easier to move windows
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I wish windowing systems were less flexible. In the 80s everyone was trying to build libraries that made creating consistent UIs easier. Some operating systems just built a standard library in and enforced its use.
In the late 90s people switched to horrific skinned UIs and breaking basic functionality that users came to expect. We never fully recovered.
TFA points it that the title bar is actually the responsibly of the application and is optional. Screw that, make it mandatory and consistent. Life is too sh
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Where the fuck are we supposed to grab a window in order to move it if the title bar is crammed full of junk?
Under X, you press Alt and grab the window anywhere to move it. Left mouse button for move, right for resize. I guess this depends on your window manager, but I've used it since forever under many different systems.
This is how it should work with the desktop metaphor, after all. Because if you have papers lying on your desk, it would be silly if you had to grab them carefully by the top edge to move them.
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Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:4, Funny)
I remember an exchange here that went something like this in a thread where a load of people were saying how great the macOS UI is
Primus: The macOS UI isn't that good. For example the window border is very narrow and you have to click on it to resize.
Secundus: Narrow border? Hard to click on? What are you, some kind of spastic?
Tertius: Apple fans show their people skills once again.
I was laughing about that for ages.
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a similar discussion with a Mac fanboi back in the '80s. There were no menus in the application he was using. You were supposed to just ``know'' that randomly clicking on elements of the application display would bring up a menu---sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. In the past I would describe this as the ``Myst'' User Interface: just randomly click on stuff to see what happens.
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The sad thing is even though Apple sell about 15% [idc.com] of phones and about 8% [netmarketshare.com] of desktops everyone else seems to think if they copy Apple they'll sell more stuff.
It never seems to occur to them that when people buy an Android or Windows device instead of an Apple one, it might be because they don't like the way Apple do stuff and therefore copying Apple is not a good idea.
The problem is all the tech journalists are Apple fanboys and if they see other platforms copying Apple they shower them with praise. And then
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:4, Insightful)
Myst UI, that's good, I'm keeping that.
Oh look, instead of a menu bar I have a widening arrow, a ribbon, a curled ribbon, a trio of lines, a trio of dots, and a trio of dots with double lines.
I have no fucking idea which one has the controls under "View", but even when I find it, that still won't justify the Myst button.
I'm not sure I even tolerate the usually-consistent gear/screwdriver/wrench that kindasorta manages to identify with config/prefs.
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a new fad of making the scroll bar needle-thin too. Just about usable on a stable desk with an actual mouse; not so good on a touchpad when you're riding a bus or train.
And as you point out, terrible if you have reduced dexterity.
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I prefer the mac UI. But even more than that, I prefer customization. That way if you want a fat border, you can get one, if you want a thin border you can get that too, and if you want no border it's available.
The OS makers seem dead set against user customizations. Windows removes more and more control panel settings over time that are UI related. The Mac has extremely few UI customizations. Linux used to be chock full of easy to use customizations, almost too many, but now it's just as sparse as ever
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"Spastic? My aunt has cerebral palsy. Please check your ableism."
That appeal to authority through familial disadvantage does nothing to refute the argument that without disability, one ought to be able to manage the windows as they are.
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the old days Windows had a style WS_THICKFRAME. That both made the resizeable and gave them a frame a few pixels wider. The wide frame was cue to the user they could resize and also made it bit easier to grab the frame to resize. Now of course designers have decided thick borders are aesthetically ugly, even though for less dexterous users that must make the UI harder to use.
It's like accelerators. In the original Windows accelerators were always visible. So for example the F in the File menu was underlined as cue that Alt+F would open that menu. So to save a file you'd type Alt+F, S.
Then in WIndows 2000 designers got involved and decided this was ugly so they're hidden until you hit the Alt key
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... [microsoft.com]
I.e. there seems to have been a move to flatter UIs on aesthetic grounds even though this makes them less discoverable to noobies. Modern Android, macOS and Windows take this to absurd levels.
Re: Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:2)
Rotate your screen to portrait mode.
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Which is why I'll never buy another conventional laptop with its tired 1990s form factor.
Tablets that change orientation via a rotatable kickstand would make far more sense than a fixed hinge.
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What are the drawbacks of connecting a keyboard to a tablet and doing programming on that?
Well first off, you connected a keyboard to a tablet.
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Most IDEs and advanced text editors have a "full screen" mode. They also often have sidebars and highly customizable layouts.
And while you can use a lot of tools as a developer, most of them are usually well integrated. Pilots need all these bells and whistles because they need to know at a glance how their plane is doing. Programmers don't need constant awareness, they need focus, and they need to have their toolbox readily available. That's a different philosophy.
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There is room for improvement, in Firefox I have old style text menu, nav buttons, URL box, Search Box and dozens of bookmarks in 3/4 of the space that chrome or Firefox default uses to put half the amount of stuff. By default applications waste space with empty title bar and half empty menu bar. For some app's this doesn't matter, for a browser it's a horrible waste.
*Actually* improving things is not wrong! (Score:2, Funny)
The problem is how *utterly* retarded and out of touch their mindsets and goals are. ... like a literal mind virus that drives people retarded. (Has anyone seen BrainDead, the TV series? That's how this feels.)
It started with Apple, and Microsoft, Gnome, KDE, (What[TheFuck]WG,) Google, Mozilla, everybody followed them
Frankly, everybody who stopped using plain words in their programs, but uses only abstract icons instead, can fuck off and die.
Even worse if the UI is monochrome. The kind of people who like th
Donald Norman (Score:2)
. . . said pretty much the same thing, but he never expressed those thoughts quite that elegantly.
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I thought I had written this in my sleep until I got to the last paragraph.
It really seems these groups/entities are looking for ways to distinguish their products rather than actually make them better. Gratuitous and/or ill-considered change masquerading as improvement.
Re:Just. Fuck. Off. (Score:5, Interesting)
+1000
There are many reasons I despise Gnome, and this is another illustration of their arrogance. You would think they would have learned by now. This kind of thing is why I continue to use KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. Remember them mucking up desktop management? Removing any start menu option? Trying to force everything to run full-screen? Moving the stupid window controls to the LEFT side? Lack of sub-menus for program organization? Inability to see background/minimized windows? Lack of tooltips? Changing default icons to color-less line drawings? Removing more and more customizations? Gobbling up RAM like there is no tomorrow?
**I AM NOT USING A FREAKING TABLET***
Message to Gnome: If you are going to continue to ignore your user base and do freaky things to the UI, the least you can do is to make such changes OPTIONAL through easy user configuration. And not just now [to remove the options later], but ALWAYS.
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Reply to self- I left off perhaps my most hated thing with GTK3/Gnome- freaking HIDING everything, especially the damn scroll bars!
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I guess GNOME3 wants to be just like cwm without keyboard accelerators and using lots of memory.
Wonder if this is a direct result of how hardware people is shrinking vertical screen resolution every half decade or so, but leave non-GNOME applications alone.
The Libra-office proposal will screw it up for most other window-managers/DE.
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Brave, brave, visionaries.
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... you’re just as bad as what’s being complained about. ...
it's called leading by example. :)
Sometimes they don't get in the way (Score:5, Interesting)
Since there is empty space at the top for a title bar, other applications have been designed around that.
For example, Microsoft Remote Desktop puts a server bar at the top-center of the window.
Then there's Winamp, which can be sized down to be the size of a title bar and be kept always-on-top.
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Re:Sometimes they don't get in the way (Score:5, Interesting)
And I used to use Fluxbox with grouped/tabbed windows and mouse-over window switching. Very convenient but inimical to these proposed stupidbars.
Yes well.
Basically the GNOME people fucking HATE X11 and want to do everything they can to destroy it. Screw you for actually uing the features of X11 as intended, namely a window manager.
Remember: the GNOME dolts decribed middle click paste as an "easter egg".
Re:Sometimes they don't get in the way (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and it is not necessarily a bad thing that they are empty: it provides a clear area where you can grab and move the window. When I see the examples in the articles: how the f**k are you supposed to move these ? This is also what I don't like with chrome and the new firefox quantum: when your bar is full of tabs, good luck moving the window.
I know that multi-tasking is kind of overrated these days, but come on, some people still uses their desktop to do more things at once ...
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But how does new users discover that?
Well, I discovered it by reading X11/window manager documentation... But I do realize I'm weird that way.
I discovered it by going throw the window-manager options in kcontrol and being able to pick which modifier would trigger it....
In other words gnomes, gonfiguration is helpful, even if you don't want to change anything.
Re:Sometimes they don't get in the way (Score:4, Interesting)
The ubiquity of 16:9 and even 21:9 monitors today means vertical space is a lot more valuable than horizontal space. If 16:9 monitors had been the norm when these UIs were first being developed, I suspect the title bar would've been placed along the left side, not on the top (reversible to the right side for languages written from right to left). I use the Tree-style Tabs extension [mozilla.org] in Firefox for this reason. Instead of my tabs taking up valuable vertical space, they're shoved off to the side where I have plenty of extra space. (Although Firefox recently moved the tabs into the title bar space. Chrome half-does this too.)
Re: Sometimes they don't get in the way (Score:4, Interesting)
Discovery and consistency within a user interface used to be very important, but by all means you are welcome to go on and keep rubbing your greasy finger all over the screen in an attempt to figure out what those poorly or non-labeled widgets do.
Hamburger menus. Nuff said.
Consistent interfaces? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the chance that I'll have any kind of consistent interface, when thousands of app-writers are rolling their own? ZERO!
Have you had a look at the examples? Take a look now and tell me how I'm supposed to minimise or maximise the Chromium example.
Thanks, but fuck off.
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No, of course not. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a distinction between controls for an app and controls for a window manager.
These are two different concepts and should not be muddled up.
Similarly, should an app be able to bind Alt+Tab for its own use? No, of course not.
Re:No, of course not. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're thinking like someone that uses a computer with a keyboard and mouse.
The initiative is focused on users that use a touch device.
In other words, the project is run by UI idiots.
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We need something more snappy. Iduits? Uidiots?
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KDE Best DE since DOS.
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Gnome+Unity is so utterly messed up beyond redemption, maybe something that'll kill off defective thinking would be helpful in the long run.
I don’t really think you’ll have to worry about Unity all that much anymore.
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Problem is as app complexity grows... (Score:2)
... UI design becomes non trivial, if we look at how complex apps who have thousands of functions hidden or burried that even normal UI's can't handle. There's tonnes of stuff in many apps today that most people don't even know exists largely because it's buried in the lookup of the help menu.
UI consistency does matter if your app is simple then you can probably get away with it but you need to be able to read what something does at a glance.
Re:Problem is as app complexity grows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those are designed by people who have never learned how to design UIs. Human-Computer Interface courses are available and I'd gladly run one for the GNOME team if I thought they'd pay attention.
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Human-Computer Interface courses are available and I'd gladly run one for the GNOME team if I thought they'd pay attention.
Of course they would... they'd make a list of it called "Conventional wisdom" then add a column "Our innovative design change" and do drugs until the latter was full too. In fact it may already have happened.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
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too important to cooperate with my window manager.
I suspect that this is what it's all about. Some app developer wants total control of your desktop and doesn't want you to drag their beautiful creation off into some corner.
GNOME is done. (Score:5, Insightful)
The GNOME UI people have apparently become addicted to changing well defined behavior in favor of some crazy shit. GNOME 3 caused a mass exodus of developers because of this, so all they have left is the people who think it's acceptable to completely change the UI whenever they feel like it. This is descending into the death throes of GNOME.
Re:GNOME is done. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's designers re-designing things for no other reason than to have work to point to on their resume. That's it. If everything is OK, and things are going great, what kind of work are designers going to do? How are they going to get their next jobs?
Note that I'm not joking or being sarcastic. Designers really do get judged like this and if they don't re-design things, then where will they be? They will kill project after project because this is their lifeblood. I don't see it getting any better anytime soon, at least until "had the good judgment not to mess with a good system" becomes a valid bullet point on a designer's resume.
Re:GNOME is done. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnome is like when you take KDE and stack XFCE and LXDE ontop of it, add a hint of Enlightenment after you dive into the depth of the Windows 10 option switch, all while being drunk and on a tleast 2 types of narcotics.
Re:GNOME is done. (Score:4, Insightful)
Phoronix regularly summarizes the kwin developer's blog, complete with humourous rants about all the dumb shit the Gnome team in Red Hat want to foist on his KDE/Wayland implementation.
Gimp, Firefox, gnome system monitor and synaptic are the only GTK programs I use regularly or I'd purge the toolkit entirely.
Like MS Office on Windows 10 (Score:2)
so original !
we have existence proof of why this is bad design (Score:5, Insightful)
have you ever tried to reposition a firefox or chrome window that is full of tabs?
what happens when the window manager uses BeOS style titlebars?
what happens to my webex/remote-desktop overlays when there is no empty space for them to live over?
somewhat related: have you ever tried to resize a window that does not have obvious resize control handles? or have you ever tried to *not* resize a window when the non-obvious control 'areas' take your click instead of the drag-to-select-text that you intended?
and don't get me started on scrollbars that appear and disappear depending on where you put your cursor instead of what the content is.
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Also,
What happens when an application becomes unresponsive and you can no longer move or minimize the window?
What happens when you use this with a program like Synergy [symless.com] and your mouse moves off the side of the screen while dragging a window? (Chrome freaks out when this happens.)
Tobias Bernard is an idiot (Score:3, Informative)
So, Tobias Bernard is trying to convince everyone to join his CSD Initiative
"tl;dr: Let’s get rid of title bars." he says. And what is the "tl" in this case ?
This isn't "too long". It's too short and illogical. "Title" is already the term for what he's trying to say so, he might simply be trying to say that applications don't need a title. So, I wonder he he's using a title ("Introducing the CSD Initiative") at his own article. My take: he's an idiot.
God help us (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why I quit using Gnome 20 years ago. Breaking UI conventions that work perfectly fine and destroying consistency.
Why in god's name would I want apps to cram even more useless controls in my face? A window needs two things: a title so I know WTH it is, and min/max/close buttons. That's it. Now Gnome is taking that away? Just for 20 pixels of real estate ?
Anyone calling themselves a "modern UI developer" should be tarred and feathered. Apple went to flat controls and borderless buttons. Microsoft made Office 2016 flatter than Kansas and decided light gray text controls on bright white background was somehow legible. Gnome has been lost in their own rabbit hole for decades. All of it making interfaces less intuitive and harder to use. A pox on all their houses.
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And the title bar lets you easily move the window without having to hunt for a little bit of free space that this proposal causes.
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Have you even used OSX?
https://imgur.com/a/qsY7q [imgur.com]
There's a gradient and drop shadows there on the window header and every button has both a border and subtle drop shadow.
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OS X effectively keeps the empty title bar space he doesn't like (because Apple realized what a pain it would be without it.)
There was a thing a while back (Mozilla IIRC) to get rid of "unneeded" bars (title, URL, status) in web browsers. It didn't completely succeed, since most browsers are still usable, but it made life harder since you can't tell where the window ends and the next begins. The !@#$ translucent effect makes it hard too, that's one of the first things I turn off.
Title bars waste space, sure
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his is exactly why I quit using Gnome 20 years ago.
I assume you are exaggerating a bit, 20 years ago GNOME 1 was released.
Or are you from the future, did GNOME 6 remove everything by then :)
So now, like Windows 10.... (Score:3)
modern UI design (Score:5, Interesting)
Tricky. (Score:2)
On the one hand, maximum function in minimum real-estate is a good idea.
On the other hand, GNOME has become an ungodly mess and Linux' reputation for stability and speed has greatly suffered.
Get GNOME to conform to NASA's Power of Ten rules and then let's talk.
Re:Tricky. (Score:4, Insightful)
Arrogance (Score:2, Insightful)
This reeks of Lennart Poettering-levels of arrogance and stupidity.
Please don't put controls (Score:5, Insightful)
More useful than that... (Score:3)
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Apps should not do this unless they're using a robust library for it. There's too much which can go wrong. This is admirably demonstrated by Windows. You open an app then close it, you switch your monitor, and your app appears OFFSCREEN. I know this is basics, but I work with several apps which make this mistake. And not unsurprisingly, those apps tend to be the type which mess with the way the window manager works with them, making them harder to actually bring onto screen.
So yes, but only if there's
Re:More useful than that... (Score:4, Interesting)
... And frankly, that makes me think this should be the role of the window manager....
I would agree with that. The only reason why I put the onus on the app was that I was dumped upon the last time I brought it up for windows managers. Everyone told me it was the apps' responsibility. Seems like a lot of "not my job" finger pointing, imo. But I still have to ask, why is it still missing in GNU/Linux?
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It's a basic ease of use requirement. Why make the user resize and relocate a window each time the same app is opened? Aren't computers supposed to help reduce the number of repetitive tasks, not create more of them? KDE comes close on this, allowing me to remember size/location for individual windows, but the ability is sadly absent in the global settings area.
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Really, the app can save it's window location using its own system and then on start up request the initial window placement and size. A good window manager will allow this unless it winds up completely off screen, when it should step in and put it at least on screen.
The sad part is this isn't even hard to do for any competent app developer.
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If you right-click on the title bar--you know... the screen element that this Gnome bozo would like to see disappear--KDE provides an option ``More Actions -> Special Windows Settings'' that lets you do just that. It even lets you specify that the application should always open in a specific Pager window. It'd be perfect if all applications
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I'd much rather see someone go on a crusade to have apps remember their last window size and location on the desktop, so that i don't have to resize and re-location the window each time I open an app on GNU/Linux.
No, please for the love of god, NO!
Because no apps evre get it right in edge case. For example, I have two monitors at work. Not unusual. Slightly more unusually one of them is portrait. That means there's a lot of dead space.
More unusually, I like things being horizontally aligned physically, whi
Thank goodness for Mate Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
As Mate Desktop has been progressing, they've been slowly replacing Gnome 3 apps (things like certain settings apps, the NetworkManager GUI, etc) with ones more consistent with the Mate Desktop, which is traditional and has regular window title bars.
I for one never use the title bar for moving a window. I exclusively use Alt-click to move a window from anywhere in the window. However I want title bars because they distinguish one window from another using the color theme of window decorations that I want. I can make them small and efficient use of space. Gnome is what is making server-side title bars so big and wasteful. Also with HeaderBar CSDs it's very difficult to distinguish between windows as the headerbar isn't distinct form the body of other windows. This is something I've always had a hard time with on Mac, especially in recent years.
The other thing I use title bars for is to roll up or shade the window, which I use nearly every day, particularly with terminal windows! I think Gnome 3 has the ability to shade apps, even with CSD, but I'm not sure. I saw at least one bug report that said it's no longer possible. But again, where would you click to do that? CSD header bars don't offer consistency in where you can click. Do you click on what looks like a title? blank space between buttons? Hard to know.
With Linux desktops we used to celebrate diversity and choice. Now it appears Gnome 3 would be perfectly happy to be the only choice (getting rid of KDE, Mate, etc), and have all apps be Gnome 3 apps. Why would Blender ever want to integrate into Gnome 3's header bar? Blender doesn't need to look integrated, nor would it benefit it to do so. In fat it might even harm it. Better to look different and remind users that they are operating in a specific environment with a specific methodology that must be learned.
The article brings up important questions (Score:2)
How sane are the KDE developers, and is there a good KDE distribution with a Cinnamon-style desktop interface?
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KDE developers like to release broken software for a year or two after each major release (KDE 4, Plasma 5), but at least it's not intentionally broken, they just fail to update it to work with their new frameworks. And they lose features, but again only because the features aren't compatible with their latest idea and they'll eventually re-implement most (but not all)... they don't remove features purposely in the name of being user-friendly like GNOME developers.
Basically: KDE devs are incompetent, wherea
Ubuntu MATE (Score:2)
Most applications in MATE don't seem to be afflicted with this nonsense. I sure hope it stays that way!
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Get stuffed (Score:2)
This is a picture perfect illustration of how Gnome has jumped the shark. I booted Gnome off my desktop after the Gnome 3 fiasco. I switched to XFCE. What a breath of fresh air.
Of course, I didn't realize at the time that XFCE is based on GTK, so some of Gnome's shit has been slowly seeping up into my clean, workable, usable XFCE desktop. I've got too much invested in it, but, so far the amount of crap is manageable and can be dealt with by a few tweaks. If worse comes to worse, I suppose, there's always KD
fuck that shit (Score:3)
fuck gnome and their useless title bars with their inscrutable fucking hieroglyphics rather than menus with words.
design a UI for illiterate retards and only illiterate retards will use it.
I propose (Score:3)
That we put title bars on the back of the window, so that you have to flip them over to see them.
Count me as against this idea. (Score:3)
I'm almost certainly not the only user to configure my window manager to ``windowshade'' applications by double clicking on the title bar. Why screw people by making functions like that application-specific? I foresee this useful window function being:
Why force applications to re-implement useful screen elements that we already have and pretty much guarantee that the function won't work consistently across the applications that even bother to implement it? This sounds like a feature thought up by some one who thinks that an application's ability to have ``skins'' is the end-all-be-all of UI design.
Don't worry... (Score:2)
... I'm sure the developers will add an option so users can turn this behaviour off.
Server side decorations and Wayland (Score:2)
Functions of the title bar (Score:5, Informative)
The classic title bar performs several functions of varying utility. Let me count them.
1. As the title suggests, the title bar displays the title of the window. This typically includes the name of the application and the name of document currently opened, and can easily take half the space available or even more.
2. It lights up when the window is active, and dims down when inactive, helping the user maintain focus with a busy desktop.
3. It provides an intuitive, discoverable way of dragging the window. (For experienced users, Alt+dragging is more usable, although less discoverable.)
4. It is a big target for (un)maximization via double click.
5. It is a big target for opening the window control menu via right button click.
6. It houses the window manager controls.
7. Last but not the least, the title bar is provided by the window manager in a manner consistent across the desktop. If every application toolkit starts doing its own header bars, we lose this consistency.
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All of this.
TWM (Score:2)
Seems like a joke, but it's not. I sometimes run just twm or fvwm on plain old X.org.
What would this do to that situation? Would the apps still work? Would they revert to older behavior?
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Yup, me too. I run twm with a few patches I wrote.
One thing I find extremely frustrating is apps that are heavily integrated with a desktop environment to the point where you have to install almost the entire environment just to run one app, and good luck if you want to play with its configuration settings.
It would be great if the Gnome and KDE applications were designed to work well with their respective desktops, and also to work reasonably well on their own. This is exactly why we have toolkits like gt
Already there - get a Mac (Score:2)
I read his suggestion, looked up at the top of the window in the Safari browser and see it has:
Close
Minimize
Maximize
Previous
Next
Sidebar
Several plugin icons
The Link Address Field
Reload
Cancel Load
Share
Tab View
In other words, the Macintosh OS already does what he wants.
Sounds like it is time for him to switch...
Re: (Score:2)
Funny you mention macOS. Way back around Gnome 2 a small group of people, I think a few had just left Apple, formed a group to create the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. Within those guidelines some ideas were ok, like consistent spacing within UI elements. However some things like moving the dialog window buttons around started causing internal disagreement and developer grief. Most of those guidelines were fully implemented by the time of the GTK 3 release - please note that is the exact time GTK and Gn
Remember when we all had 15" monitors? (Score:2)
They were like 640x480 or something, and the windows had title bars. Now I consider my 27" monitor to be pretty modest, given what I see others using, and the title bars are literally irrelevant.
Maybe instead we should just have the title bars disappear when you aren't near them, like all the other UI controls! In fact, why don't we have the entire window operate that way, with only the things you hover over being visible? Everything else can fade to light gray on dark white (and in the Linux case, semi-
Hah! (Score:2)
Taking GUI advice from a Gnome GUI developer is like taking Twitter etiquette advice from Donald Trump.
Usability (Score:2)
I don't see even an informal usability study anywhere in that to-do list. I guess actual usability is no longer an objective?
Re: (Score:2)
The way Gnome 3+ is obsessed with removing features for fear of scaring off some "mythical idiot user", it might as well be TWM with a prettier theme. Well actually, TWM probably lets you minimize an app to an icon, so it has more functionality.
Seriously, if you need a bunch of config hacks and tweak tools to take your environment from "stock" to "basic usability," you should rethink your design priorities.