Really? I've never heard anything but non-intuitive ramblings from UI design people. None of them seem to ever actually use computers. Rather, they dream up use cases based on contrived scenarios. I want one thing: The icon is where it was yesterday. Gnome, unity all the others have one job: Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of my way. UI stability is why I years ago abandoned the chaos of Ubuntu for the stability of Mint.
Windows XP got it right. Start button->office->word. Start button -> Email. Most everything after that is fluff.
(Oh wait, but actually companies make money by making software into experience, so I guess that's where the overall trend comes from.)
I'd say Windows 95 in this context. XP was the first stable version of Windows (yes, the first one deserved to be called Windows 1.0), but the Start menu was working well in Windows 95/98/ME, too.
Isn’t this, quite literally, what Gnome Shell Extensions are?
-using the website to install extensions requires both a browser extension and installing chrome-gnome-shell, not installed by default by most distros
-UI to configure extensions is in Tweak Tool, again not installed by default in most distros and full of the things GNOME people don't really want you to touch but will begrudgingly allow
-the second most popular extension is an improved UI for managing extensions
-the API is poorly documented and new releases always break tons of extensions
That is a philosophy DEs should have, but (if you'd like suggestions) which XFCE most cleanly follows.
Other examples of missing stuff: - Complex shortcuts: you can't set keyA and also keyA+keyB as shortcuts work on keyPress rather than keyRelease. So no SuperKey and also SuperKey+L/D/R and such. - Easy window resize: the dragging thing is exactly 1 pixel wide. Gotta use Alt+Right-click to resize.
But you get used to XFCE's tiny quirks, it really gets like heaven after some work.
Incidentally, I'm part of the silent majority that enjoys Gnome and loves the emphasis on clean simplicity. No, it's not perfect, but it's moving in the right direction.
I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory. I also missed split-screen functionality, and the inability to right click and fire up a terminal from that location. Oh, and also looks like they've dropped being able to double-click on an executable .sh file to run it.
Luckily none of this bothers me as there is Caja.
> I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory.
I agree, but FWIW you can press Ctrl-L to focus the address bar, which allows you to enter a relative path, e.g. name of a file/directory in the current directory.
(or just use this overlay if you run Gentoo)
I'll try to keep it up to date.
(or the Nemo file browser, which also retained split-window functionality)
It's such a weird decision, as searching recursively something is a rare task, so having a dedicated button would be fine. While going to a file/folder in the current dir is pretty much the basic interaction with a file manager.
I don't get their reasoning there.
If somebody knows of any trick to get the old behavior back (even patching the damn nautilus), I'll take it. I'll probably upgrade in a few month and I'll need it badly.