You can pry Plasma out my cold, dead hands. Gnome, Macos, and Windows: now that's amateur hour.
Yeah, even as a GTK developer I'm gonna throw a yellow flag here. I've got both Qt and GTK apps that I really love and daily-drive, but none of my GTK3, GTK4 or Libadwaita apps even remotely approach the information density of a Qt app. There's nothing wrong with that; simplicity is nice for a lot of software. But programs like Cutter, Okteta or even music apps like Eliza cannot be built with the GNOME HIG. I'd even argue that certain GNOME apps like Meld, GIMP and Glade/Cambalache suffer from relying on the GNOME HIG too much.
That said, I find MacOS frustrating at times because basic things can feel like a pain. Switching between several windows of the same application isn't a simple Alt-Tab; the green button enters full screen mode (KDE/Windows F11 Full Screen is equivalent) instead of leaving just the menu bars and application bar on screen; tiling windows isn't as simple as ramming the application against the border you want to expand to. These are simple things I do often in other OS's that have tedious menu workflows in MacOS. I still like a lot of MacOS though.
I find it better than Context.app, which i did buy and used on a few machines for a few years.
it's like navigating within a sparse table.
columns are the apps, chosen by cmd-tab.
rows are the windows of an app, chosen with cmd-` .
Please feel free to answer these questions (I think I already know the answer so this is to illustrate a point, but I will also be happy to learn a better way):
1. How do you cut and paste something on a Mac using the keyboard?
2. How do you cut a file in one folder and paste it into another in Finder using the keyboard?
3. How are you supposed to know the answer to 2. except by learning it by discussing with Mac users?
4. I haven't tested recently but it used to be that there was no single consistent way to get to the start or end of a line while selecting the text in between. CMD-shift-arrow left/right worked most places, but not everywhere. Ctrl + a/e always worked but couldn't be used to select text, only to move the cursor.
PS: I already asked for a Mac as my next machine at work. But as someone who uses and have used almost all major desktops (Gnome 2, KDE 3, 4 and 5, Windows 95 - 10, several iterations of Mac OS X) for significant time, I do feel the "attention to detail" argument for Mac is a bit overblown.
PPS: I planning to get a Mac because it has good hardware, is silent, fast and because I want to try it again after a few years. Also I have migrates my whole family to Apple phones since last I used Mac at work.
The example of whether to use the same command for ready-a-file-to-perhaps-move-but-leave-it-otherwise as for definitely-remove-this-thing-now-and-maybe-put-it-somewhere-else is more a matter of taste than one or the other representing better attention to detail.
2. You don't.
I realize that's not a very satisfying answer, but it's quite obviously a conscious UX choice, and IMO not a bad one. The problem is, where does the file go in between the time you cut and you paste? If you accidentally copy something else to your clipboard, do you loose the entire file? Does the file appear in the Trash or is it deleted perminently?
You can use cmd+c and then cmd+alt+v to copy a file to your clipboard and then move it to a different directory, but moving is distinct from cutting in that it's a synchronous operation. There is no in between point where your file is lost in the ether.
3. Assuming we're referring to "how do you move a file with the keyboard", you open the "edit" menu in Finder's global menu bar, then hold down "alt", at which point "paste" will change to "move item here".
I agree "hold down option" is not particularly discoverable. However, it's a standard across all of macOS for enabling alternative options. For example, holding down alt will also change "Minimize" to "Minimize All", and "Quit" to "Quit and Keep Windows" (or "Quit and don't keep Windows" depending on your default preference). Once you know this basic idea, it's consistent.
4. To my knowledge this works in all apps that use Carbon/Cocoa. If apps reimplement these views and disregard Apple's design guidelines, what is Apple supposed to do?
P.S. I think modern macOS is a poorly thought out mess but I love how it was a decade ago (up to OS X 10.9).
I am waiting for a Mac as my next machine and the bit about alt in the menu should help quite a bit.
I am stil a bit annoyed from last time I used Mac a decade ago and all the things I couldn't figure out without extensive web searches or asking coworkers but I have still figured out it is time to try it again :-)
1. So to cut in applications (or anywhere anything is selectable other than Finder), it's cmd+x, as it has been since the early '80s; likewise, paste is cmd+v
2. In Finder, you'd use cmd+c to copy the file, cmd+v to paste a copy and cmd+opt+v to move the file. This was introduced, I think, in Lion (OS X 10.9).
3. Erm, using the menu bar to begin with? Reading the built-in help? Searching the internet? How do you learn it in Windows and/or any other $desktop or $wm?
4. *Emacs keybindings work in most places in macOS, and they have since the first beta of OS X.
Edit: *most...
anyway, kde is very configurable so most likely you might bend it to your liking, had you been somehow forced into kde.
> KDE being ugly makes it really hard to switch to
have you considered XFCE ? to me it's the best so far: it does all the things i need, it's fast and it isn't dumbed down like gnome.
It's not on wayland yet, but frankly I don't care much about the X11 vs Wayland debacle (though i slightly side with Xorg). Essentially I run whatever XFCE needs.
When XFCE will run on wayland, I'll run on wayland I guess.
You're not the only one. Ah, the poignancy of reminiscing about loves that we've lost.
Have you tried getting to know their contribution process, looking at their current design guidelines and submitting a new, well-thought-out and complete design guideline proposal to KDE? Having someone who notices the current problems with that aspect, like you, actually do the work and help fix it could really make a difference! :)
Would appreciate if someone can help me to get quicker at understanding with their system, so I can actually contribute and not just complain about it being inconsistent here and there. Even though I not use KDE myself, I use it from time to time on other’s machines and enjoy playing with it. I would consider a switch only if the DE would highly reconsider itself towards simplifying and making other defaults. At the moment, Gnome looks like it to me.
I'm not a kde contributor myself, but they seem to have a matrix channel for that purpose at [ https://webchat.kde.org/#/room/#new-contributors:kde.org ], where the contributors themselves can probably point you to the relevant resources and get started.
About your second point: From what I've been reading on their blog, a large focus of Plasma 6 is making the defaults more sane and simplifying them a good bit.
It's obviously a huge challenge to design systems that are simple and polished to understand and use on the surface, but powerful to customize underneath, and I'm interested to see how it will be tackled.
Edit: Also on this site [ https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved ] they point to resources for the KDE Visual Design group
^ While writing this, I came up with loads of concrete suggestions relating to Transformers, but kind of beside the point.*
The only real issue with that, for me (and it's not poorly rendered, not sure what that means) is the time it takes to activate. You have to hover over it for like a second before the pop-up shows up; this is especially frustrating when items are grouped.
KDE (perhaps surprisingly) does have a design group, but I have to imagine them not being taken seriously in the slightest.
Just look at the desktop wallpaper or any font choice of the average person. It's no wonder Comic Sans and Papyrus are the most common fonts in the world, even for formal business documents.
Which is perfectly fine, and design challenged people would enjoy a well-designed desktop environment as well, the issue is that they are ready to defend bad design choices to the death. So mention KDE having lower design standards than GNOME and you get a ton of people telling you "it looks fine to me, I don't know what you're moaning about."
You'd get the same answer telling the average person that, no, Comic Sans is not appropriate for an obituary.
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That said, KDE is slowly growing on me, but the default GNOME look is much more slick, even though GTK4 does 1/20th of what QT does. All modern GTK4/Adwaita apps are a flat, slick blob of grey list widgets.
Colour theory and the use of accent colours or non-monochrome icons is unknown to the average GTK developer.
The complaints are mostly "fun fonts are not appropriate for a business" and everyone jumped on hating it. But those who are not that stuck-up don't hate it with a passion...
Not only do you defend it, even your defense proves that Comic Sans is a bad design, because matching the needs of what it’s used for (in this case a business setting, where fun fonts are not allowed) is one of the highest factors in good design.
And you display another behavior which is common among Linux users that the parent hasn’t mentioned. Finally resorting to complaining that the Users are wrong.
Here’s the usual 3 step that prevents a lot of progress in the Linux world.
1. Have bad design ideas. 2. Defend those bad design ideas. 3. Insist users and the people who want better design are wrong.
Among designers the idea that comic sans is a very decent font is a very uncontroversial opinion.
Also, Comic Sans is not even something rebellious, it's literally a good-looking, quirky font, people just hate it because it looks distinctive and it stands out.
This is a bit dystopian to scream "NO FUN ALLOWED"....
It’s beyond awful, just get yourself some link to Google Fonts at least, and explore the myriads of much better looking fonts in every possible way. That’s exactly the problem with aesthetics perception of the FOSS community, having this subjective ‘oh but I like it’ stand on absolutely mediocre shit. I’m very happy that by some (unknown to me) reason modern Gnome (45) looks (and works) so good.
Not sure if you're right or not about Linux, but what you've laid out there has been Apple's approach for the past 20+ years and it's been working out pretty OK for them!
Yes, my god is KDE ugly, but just because they don't prioritize aesthetics doesn't mean they don't know better.
Linux users (and developers) prioritize functionality above all else. Meanwhile the entire discipline of visual design is just not very consistent. There are far too many subjective little rules and exceptions to maintain and they change all the time. Who cares?
Deliberate oversimplification of how things are displayed from the perspective of the implementer rather than the designer is its own aesthetic. It's the choice of reason and a rejection of the imperfections of human perception. It's rebellious and edgy. It's not a mere rationalization of laziness or ignorance, but a middle finger to business types and their marketing henchmen with their annoying design guidelines and requirements that just get in the way of the actual product. KDE was not made by people getting paid to smile and nod while staying quiet in their cubicles (at least not during the hours they worked on it). Very rock and roll. I'm all for it.
> Visual soup is hard to organize and make sense of.
Initially yes but once you know where things are, having everything be visually distinct can sidestep a lot of unnecessary GUI features (search boxes, configurable views, toolbars, etc.) to overcome the impenetrable and dishonest sameness that comes with "good design". If there's a way to avoid writing more code to maintain, they're going to find it. Why obscure the reality of the underlying logic and data when it just gets in the way of progress towards more functionality?
In a production setting desktop environments are rare anyway and that's where applications are at their most complex. That should be proof enough that visual design isn't functional. You want functional and accessible? That's a simple 1KB config file on a server somewhere that you edit from a terminal instead of an endless sea of GUI menus and a lifetime of wrist and eye issues. The ultimate "contoured handle" is a copy of vim! If you don't see the equivalence then you don't understand how much of an unnecessary and tortured metaphor the desktop really is. It's a concession, not a requirement.
Away from KDE, away from GUIs, a dense text readout of key value pairs with no new lines presents a lot of information, but is functionally useless. A tiny dash of design - pairs on new lines, some boldness for keys, indentation for values that wrap to new lines - drastically increases the readability. No matter how familiar you are with this particular text dump, this remains true. You can't escape design by running off into the terminal.
In GUIs, having movable, modular panels can be good design. Blender's design is quite good, especially among its peers, and everything about it can be shuffled around in ways most apps with modular panels can only dream of.
Again, we're not talking about a 1 dimensional spectrum between design and density. Design isn't just "add padding" and "remove customizability."
This is just saying that people who don't share your taste are wrong (and worse, just don't know any better). I dispute that. Aesthetics are highly subjective, and things that have an aesthetic sense that I dislike are not wrong, and the people who do like it are not ignorant or idiots.
Are you sure you don't feel this way because Windows and Mac go out of their way to prevent you from changing anything about the UX at all?
I'm not blind to it, but it certainly comes way down on the list compared to other things, like actually working.
As an example, my SO recently bought a new egg timer. She picked it solely based on it looking good. Turns out it's completely useless because you can barely hear it even if it's right in front of you.
Sure, if I'm buying something purely decorative, like a statue a painting, then aesthetics is all I'm going for. But for things I have to use, the thing has to do its job above anything else.
This is something a lot of designers seems to miss. Just look at Windows 11 when it launched, and the completely idiotic decision to force icons to group without text. Sure it looks less cluttered, but it's just like the egg timer, completely useless.
Sadly, that's going to fall on deaf ears, as most people still can't tell aesthetics and design apart.
KDE has all the features and all the buttons. It's what I'd expect a prototype to be like.
Gnome simply reaches good design by just omitting everything that'd be hard to design. One way to do it, but obviously missing a lot of functionality.
Truly good design is making all the bells and whistles feel intuitive. Good design isn't about looks, it's about information hierarchy and structure.
Which is why I love the Windows 9x design so much.