Cleaning up header bars in GNOME 41
blogs.gnome.org
blogs.gnome.org
Flat design got so thoroughly critized in the last decade, that people still jump on that bandwagon now that it's on its way out is astonishing. Leave it to Gnome to proudly announce flat design - worse-than-metro flat design, flat design without colors and backgrounds - for 2022. Unbelievable.
Why am I not surprised that GNOME would adopt flat design? I know it's trendy, but any time I have to use a recent Windows flat-design application (hello Visual Studio!) I find it annoying - it becomes a lot harder to determine whether something is a modal popup or an independent window.
It's like the GNOME dev never actually puts mockups in the hand of real users before starting to code.
Linux's default desktop UI should be good for all users. It's possible, and something to strive for.
It's flat design in the title bar where everything in there (except sometimes the title) tends to be interactive.
Making the window header bars feel less heavy is important.
But tbh. the problem was placing all kind of stuff into the title bars. Works well for a few handpicked examples but in general it works just so-so and in context of cross platform it falls apart...
So IMHO they should instead of trying to use the space in the header bars of windows they should have tried to see if they can eliminate header bars instead.
Hm, anecdata: I run a very simple window manager called IceWM. It has a flat IconButton at the left of the title bar, giving it an alternative way to access the window menu. It took years before I understood that you can click on hat. At least a decade I'm pretty sure.
> But tbh. the problem was placing all kind of stuff into the title bars. Works well for a few handpicked examples but in general it works just so-so and in context of cross platform it falls apart...
I completely agree. The examples they show are mostly awful, and even though with the current design (the less flattened) it's clearer what's clickable, it does not look great. So I think I understand where they are coming from with this change aesthetically, but like you said, the core problem is misusing the title bar space.
From this perspective, we have flat UI for essentially the same reason we're starting to see the formation of tech unions. It has been a long time since a lot of our industry has done anything new or even productive, and much of what we do is entirely self-serving, creating a kind of fragility that ultimately threatens the workforce. Endless UI churn producing worse and worse designs isn't a problem, it's a symptom that is impossible to ignore.
And even things like System6 weren't that _flat_. There were subtleties on their UI that gave a little depth to some stuff. But one could argue the _flat_ in their UI was some sort of answer to the limitations of their time.
So here we are. Witnessing complete destruction of the field of Design by commercial optimization and shareholder maximization syndrome. Thrift baby thrift.
[1] https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1372444 ?
I'm feeling very comfortable with it in GTK2/3 and QT4/5 apps.
Fits perfectly with the built-in theme metal2 from IceWM.
Use this with a filemanager like
[2] https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/zzzfm
for an optional desktop, and give a shit about what Gnome does.
I recall the GNOME team priding themselves on actually starting the original gnome 3 redesign based on studying usage patterns, and against the angry grain I was on their side and used gnome 3 for quite a few years. I have to wonder whether this design was passed by any accessibility folks or even studied, it seems like it is against that spirit of actually evaluating usage patterns.
And in GNOME more or less everything in the title bar can be interacted with.
And it's mostly symbols implying intractability.
So in difference to most flat design approaches I'm not sure this decreases usability tbh.
Also, sorry I made a mistake, I had to edit and add a "no" to it to properly say what I meant in that the buttons have no hint as to that they are actually buttons.
On Windows 10 it is actually worse, since Proton it is ignoring my bright-blue accent color, so by default both the color of active and inactive windows is the same gray.
Many stiles have a clear contrast between "active" and "in-active", but some don't have.
E.g. some of the styles used during the early testing for the default non-light/non-dark theme had close to non differentiable, and it seems some people are still hit by this.
I welcome this change. I've been using GNOME for tens of years now for both my personal and my office systems. I very much enjoy the experience. Keep up the good work!
Here's an idea: anyone, literally anyone spend a few hours updating the GNOME thumbnail generation code. It's the sole reason why file managers and photo browsers don't feel 'snappy' on the desktop. Or maybe the new Chromebook-ified topbar could revert to it's 3.38 glory, instead of being stuck with meaningless bubbles. There are so many regressions, sidegrades and completely ignored issues that I had to switch to Cinnamon when GNOME 40 rolled out.
I'm hoping that most of these issues can be addressed in the coming months, but I don't have much faith. Everyone is seemingly more interested in making a 1.5gb Flatpak out of their 500kb shellutil.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/blob/mast...