Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.

[Tim Murphy <tnmurphy gmail com>]

On 19 May 2011 05:01, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net> wrote:

On 05/18/2011 09:47 PM, Tim Murphy wrote:

On 17 May 2011 20:55, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net <mailto:sloshy45 sbcglobal net>> wrote:


       I've had to acclimatise to all sorts of horrible interfaces
       after using better ones e.g. to Windows after Linux and you
       can get used to almost anything.   I can even get to the point
       where it's difficult to get back into the thing you prefer
       because you have hardwired all the Windows crap ways of doing
       things.  Is that all there is to say about it ?



   This is a huge reason why so many people dislike GNOME 3. Instead
   of getting used to how it works, they complain that it's not
   exactly how they're used to using it. Many people have approached
   it with an open mind and, for the most part, enjoy it very much.
   If we enjoy it, then GNOME Shell has to be at least somewhat good,
   yes? Just because you do not see it as so does not make it bad.


You miss my point. I'm saying that if it takes a long time to get used to something and to accept its warts it then it's no better than e.g. Windows.

As I said, it took a very short time for me, my family, and several other users. Nowhere is it set in stone that "GNOME 3 takes a fortnight to learn how to use". The article never said that it took him a fortnight to get used to it; the article *did* say, however, that he had been using GNOME 3 for a fortnight and got used to it within that time. It can take minutes to days to get used to GNOME 3, and as I said, your mileage may vary. It's not as large of a change as many people suggest, really.

If you have to keep telling people they are wrong and you are right for weeks then you have failed to make something that is obviously any good.

You're assuming that every one of their complaints is valid. In another post in this thread, I described the difference between a valid and invalid complaint. A good majority of the complaints boil down to "the desktop isn't exactly how I'm used to using it". You can still do everything you could do in GNOME 2 (almost), and for a lot of users, it's faster. It takes a while to get used to, not because it was designed like that, but because the standard way of using the desktop is stuck in many users' minds and it takes some time, whether it's a few minutes to a few days, to adjust. This is how it always is when switching to something new; this isn't GNOME 3-specific.

It would be like me trying to give you a lecture on why you ought to like Atonal music and that's it's only because you listen to so much ordinary music that you don't like it.  Perhaps I should explain to you why it's wrong to not like spinach?

Food is a valid preference. You don't choose what foods you like (though I admit some are an acquired taste). You do choose how you use the desktop, however. Saying that some preferences are analogous to food preferences is essentially saying that we were born to use a desktop a certain way, which is rather unscientific. Wanting an omnipresent window list (one of the popular complaints) when that functionality has been improved upon by GNOME 3 in many ways (overview, Alt+Tab/Alt+[above tab], dash, etc.), though, is not a valid preference because it shows that the user is still attached to the way things used to be done. A window list is completely unnecessary, and any flaws in the current design that make a window list seem better should be fixed (assuming that there are flaws).

   Does Windows have new releases every six months? Is Windows a
   rolling release? On the most popular GNU/Linux operating systems,
   changes come very quickly. On Mac or Windows, changes are
   incremental and major updates are considered separate from the
   older software. This is how GNOME 3 wants to be treated; not as an
   "incremental update that's forced upon the users" like you
   suggest, but as a completely new desktop, and it must be seen as
   that or else a user's first impression will be sub-optimal.


That would be cool if there was actually a choice but people who want to keep their kernels and applications and compilers current are forced to take the gnome-shell or switch to XFCE.

Fallback mode is always there, though it's less than optimal since you have to configure it with dconf-/gconf-editor. GNOME 3 had to make the jump to innovate eventually, and it's better sooner than later. GNOME 2 had a long life and many parts of it became hard to maintain and buggy. GNOME 3 fixes that by having a fresher design.

 Concepts are one thing and daily use is another. It's rare to actually come across something that is such an improvement that it's worth a lot of upheaval but here are a couple of examples of instant wins:

...

I hope that the shell will become like that and I don't see why it can't but it doesn't feel like those other things at the moment to me personally.   It just feels like a change to a different set of tradeoffs which in too many cases are opitmised away from me.  I don't need to be told I am wrong or old fashioned here - I am letting you know that your conclusions are not valid for everyone and I keep getting the impression that this falls on deaf ears.  I don't know if it's helpful to continue posting but perhaps representing a contrary point of view is worthwhile sometimes.

I'm sure that the development and design team would love to hear some specific examples of how GNOME 3 is a regression. I've heard a few before; launching several applications in succession, for example, is slower in GNOME 3 than in GNOME 2 with panel launchers, though this is overcome with an extension or simply launching the applications on startup. Another regression that I can think of off the top of my head is how the file manager/recent documents list aren't quite as integrated as GNOME 2 was, though these are things that are being worked on. The reason it seems like so many complaints "fall on deaf ears" is that they have already been discussed and the users making the complaints and suggestions can't provide concrete examples of why their suggestions are valid. As I've said, I've heard some good suggestions. The most popular complaints, though, are invalid, baseless, and without examples, as has been proven to death in this mailing list many times over.

Apparently they don't listen and repeat robotically, "use a hotkey" or "you aren't giving it a chance".  You have heard ample complaints but brush off every one of them. why bother to discuss?   I'm only motivated to reply to this because I want to show how utterly resistant you are.

 

   Also, let me give you an analogy: say that GNOME 2 is a bicycle
   and GNOME 3 is a motorbike. Naturally, it still does the same

I ride a motorcycle but lots of people ride bicycles into work and don't want a motorcycle.   They keep fit on their bike whereas I get fat and unhealthy and stressed from the extreme traffic in London. When you come along and say your bicycle now has an engine, "praise be", you would not get a round of applause from the cyclists.  There has not and won't be a definitive answer ever about whether bikes or motorcycles are best.

I admit that was a bad analogy (I should have thought of a more solid one). Bicycles are cheaper than motorcycles and are used for exercise, while motorcycles are used for quickly moving around. The difference here is that GNOME 3 and GNOME 2 are meant to do the same thing, which is not the case with this analogy, so it's a bad one as I said, and I apologize. GNOME 3 aims to be better than GNOME 2 at the same job (and in many areas it already is), so a "what's good for you might not be good for me" argument isn't really appropriate here.

No it was a good analogy because it absolutely indicates the kind of assumption that there UIs can be ranked on some single axis in order of "superiority" and that all others are wrong to complain that what they used is blown to bits or degraded in usefulness or accessibility by a change that seeks other tradeoffs.  If you don't want complaints then it's best to stick to your branding.  Create a new brand for a new thing and don't disenfranchise the people who liked and use the tradeoff balance that they have got.

Prove your idea is better by convincing people and seeing them choose it.
 

There may be an answer to every query and it could possibly even be an answer that would satisfy the people who are complaining but even their "invalid" complaints are telling you that something is not right.

And that something is that they often fail to provide evidence of a regression, and many (but not all) complaints boil down to "I want the old UI back because I'm used to it".

That is to say, they are forced them to re-learn and cannot see the benefit.  Moreover when one of them persists, there is always a convenient answer that involves relearning with a small dose of "who cares that it's a bit harder to do x".
 

There's also the problem of tossing off those complaints as invalid rather too easily e.g. "define a hotkey - hotkeys are the best" by offering an answer that suits you and not them.

GNOME 3 supports configurable hotkeys (I know this was an example). That's always possible, but I don't see any examples of that happening. The wide variety of people of this list to discuss issues helps prevent that.

I don't doubt GNOME 3 is good - I'm talking about the shell.  Apart from not having a clock the panel is as bad a UI as it always was but at the moment the shell is worse for me.

...What do you mean? Is there some instance where the clock isn't visible for you? Last I checked it should always be visible; sounds like a bug to me. I'd report it if I were you.

No, design new stuff as much as you want - just:
1) Don't think you're right and they're wrong
2) Shove it down their throats and expect a thank you from all of them

I find it funny that it's apparently considered "shoving things down users throats" when we don't listen to their every demand. Some things are valid, some are not.

To progress and keep using the bits of GNOME we like, we are all but compelled to accept the shell.  It's hard to get the panel, there are dire warnings about it not being maintained, it doesn't appear to have any of the applets that it once did.   In other words the shell is being shoved down people's throats.

Possibly I am just bolshie but I can't stand that feeling of being pushed and have a particularly violent reactionn to it.  Hence I'm writing this to you from XFCE which has been improving quite a lot. 

Anyhow good luck and I hope  good new things will come out of all this somehow later on.  I think that there's a lot of revolution required in the rest of UIs as even the concept of an "Application" strikes me as being highly retrograde and I am sure that there is a lot yet to happen which will make some of this moot.

Regards,

Tim

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