Question regarding usability policy

[Maxim Fomin <mxfomin gmail com>]

Hi!

Some background. I am GNOME desktop user since version 2.xx (since
2008). I used gnome applications almost for the whole period except
brief time when used KDE environment. I am linux programmer and
contributed into several projects.

Question: approximately since gnome 3.0 (2011 or 2012 - don't
remember) I am witnessing usability degredation which makes using
GNOME environment inconvenient. In particular, I am complaining on
removing ability to set various options. I witnessed this happening
with various applications, so I suspect some programming paradigm
shift since GNOME 3.0 (gnome shell appearance is irrelevant to my
question). So, why does GNOME limits ability to configure applications
or lacks basic features (see below?

Lacking ability to set options has been slowly progressing for several
years. Usually I solved these issues by adapting to them, but recently
I decided to reconsider the approach. Today I removed applications
which I usually use instead of gnome ones and installed full GNOME
stack and tried to rely only on them. So, here are complains.

1. Gnome browser does not have 'Edit Preferences' panel. It would be
good, for example, to make it *not* to open last visited page.

2. Gedit also does not have such panel. For example, it could be used
to make gedit by default *not* to use 8 bytes tab. I remember there
was such option in the past.

3. Gnome Music lacks 'Open File' menu. Currently it can only open
those files, which are tracked by tracker. This design choice makes
the app to fully depend on functioning the tracker (better to call it
'Tracker player').

4. Tracker itself does not track mp3 files which do not contain audio
tag information. The reasoning behind this constraint is unclear.
Currrent design forces doing following steps to play audio-tags-less
file in default music application: install f.e. easytag -> add audio
tags to file -> track the file with tracker -> open file in
gnome-music.
4a. It seems that even after adding audio tags still not all files are
displayed.

5. Gedit lacks ability to display line numbers in the left. It would
be usefull for programmers. I remember there was such option in the
past.

6. Gnome shell lacks 'Run-as' button. Currently can be overcomed with
alt-F2. AFAIK, in gnome 2 this option was in the main menu.

7. Nautilus lacks backspace button behavior.  Google recommends to set
<Actions>/ShellActions/Up option ot to use Alt+Backspace, but both of
them don't work. Backspace was definetely working in previous
versions.

I consider all these issues to be not random, but a consistent policy
for several years. So, what the reason behind it?

P. S.
I am not a list subscriber.