Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Don't get me wrong, warts regarding high DPIs have existed for far too long and definitely need some love, but I'm a bit sadder the few complaints I see about design direction were not taken on board.

Running what appears to be a touch UI (definition: very few buttons, those that exist are large, lots of dead space, information density very low) with a mouse feels shockingly unproductive, and at least personally, conveys the impression of working with a mobile app toy rather than a workstation used for getting work done.

GNOME3's launcher: http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/GNOME-3-16-...

You can't look at this and not see shades of iOS's Springboard. Very touch friendly on small mobile device screens, very wasteful on large ones, like the kind most of us have at our desks.

...and like the kind that most of G3's users will be running it on.

I'm forced to write off G3 as yet another misguided attempt to unify touch and mouse UIs, in an attempt to appeal to the kind of newbie user that wouldn't even be running G3 in the first place.

I use it regularily. Never even thought about it, because i just hit the super key and start typing. Finds what I want to launch every time.

Except for the fact that it monopolizes the whole screen? Windows 8's start screen was panned for the same reason; there's no reason to send the user's state to the background for something that objectively does not require it.

An example of doing the same thing, the Right Way, would be Quicksilver or Spotlight on MacOS.

What's the use case for the launcher (activities menu) on G3? If you've invoked it, either by throwing your mouse to the corner or by hitting the super key, you either want to:

1. Start something

2. Close something

3. Switch to something (that being an open app or a virtual desktop).

Zero of these cases require, or even benefit from backgrounding all open windows. Compare and contrast with the Win7-Era start menu and taskbar, or Ubuntu Unity's sidebar, or MacOS's Dock.

What's the advantage of just using a little bar on the screen to search for what you want to launch, or close, or switch to? Because when I'm on windows 7 and looking for what I want to switch to on the start bar, i'm definitely not using the rest of the screen for anything. I'm looking for the right little icon to click.

Tell me why it's the "Right Way".

For one, you can look between the start menu and and an open window. More than once I've need to run some obscure command or some program I didn't even know was installed, and I can just glance over to my documentation to make sure I've got it right.

My eyes have muscles that allow me to move them where required. Most people do. They don't need the entire desktop blanked out for a single UI element that might take up ~10% of the space.

Again, we're right back to mobile-first use cases- everything is fullscreen. Except that nobody is using G3 on mobile devices, so why design in that fashion? What's the user benefit?

When the "windows" key (for me the "command" key -- I use a Mac BT keyboard), the visible windows are shrunk (but readable) and the I start to type. I can still read the window contents (1920x1080 11" display, 10 point touch). The desktop is not blanked out. On that selection screen, I have fast-start icons, and the desktop selector. Yes, it is "different" but I find it more usable than either Windows or Mac.

Of course, that may be due to familiarity. My primary platform is a mobile device, but I also use Gnome 3 (Fedora) on desktops. We use Mate on RHEL 7 on our larger display configurations (4x4K monitor in a 2x2 grid and 3x4K in horizontal configurations). But, on those configurations, we lock down and don't offer start menus to the end-user at all (kiosk style application).

I do like Gnome 3 for general use, though.

Mice in general are shockingly unproductive as compared to keyboards - using Gnome in a primarily keyboard-driven manner is where it really shines.

That just surfaces the complaints of poor use of screen real-estate. If I'm using the keyboard to launch things, that indicates:

1. That I'm probably at least a proficient user (newbies tend to not keyboard)

2. That I'm probably on a non-mobile device with a large display.

If I'm not using the keyboard, but rather using the mouse, that indicates:

* I am absolutely not on a mobile device.

Absolutely none of these indications point towards mobile-ification of the UI. The only way G3's UI direction makes any sense is assuming touch input.

You can reduce the size of the launcher and icons. And have the launcher hidden until you mouse to a corner.

I can also use a different DE, but that's really not the point. Defaults matter.

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