12 Jul
2012
12 Jul
'12
11:21 a.m.
On 12/07/12 03:30, david wrote:
I'm firmly convinced that the GNOME design team
begins every session with the
question, "What more functionality can we remove from users today?"
Eventually,
the GNOME UI will consist of a single button in the middle of the screen
reading, "Shutdown computer". ;-)
Perhaps its a matter of what users and platforms they are catering for ... a UI
that works well on the smaller, hand held devices with touch interfaces rather
than a mouse and keyboard is very important if that is what you are using, and
lots of devices are like that now. It is becoming the most familiar interface.
It is easy to confuse 'intuitive' with 'familiar' and believe that what
one has
learned is somehow the natural way to do things, but this newer style of
interface is becoming the most common one => familiar => 'intuitive'. The
Gnome
version isn't the result of a collection random decisions along the way, it was
described and planned in detail years ago, when the work building it was
starting to get serious. Looking closely at UI habits derived from hardware with
particular limits and histories, then deciding what is just habit and what
really contributes to a good working environment, is a very important part of
making a good UI. See this 2009 document:
http://www.gnome.org/%7Emccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf
it predicts the Gnome 3 interface fairly accurately, and is clearly the origin
of their current design principles page a couple of years down the track:
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Principles
Workstations like audio studio setups are probably much better off with
something lighter anyway ... lxde, xfce, openbox etc. And those have always been
very customisable if you want to do your own thing in a desktop, many coders who
work heavily with text files and like to create their own workspace seem to have
gone with one or other of those. KDE still caters for those who like the older
windows on a desktop kind of thing, but it seems to be less and less the focus
of distributions ... probably for the reasons above.
Personally I have had xfce as my desktop for a few years, I got annoyed with all
the 'helpful' but limited GUI stuff and got stung by some nice little
customisation options I had used not being supported into the next versions of
my desktop managers, but at the moment I am looking at how to integrate smaller
tablets into my workflow, especially when there isn't a mouse or keyboard in reach.
Simon