Re: [Usability] Gnome 3.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le mercredi 08 juin 2011 à 20:48 -0700, Brian Francois a écrit :
> Hi All,
> There is no easy way to approach this so I am going to just jump.
> Sorry for the abruptness.  Somethings I like but mostly I would
> consider it a failure.  In fact, I am in the process of switching to
> KDE in hopes that is more stable then gnome3.
You may prefer KDE for many good reasons, but GNOME 3 is supposed to be
stable, and usually is. On my laptop, it works perfectly. So lack of
stability should prompt you to file bugs, and not blame design. ;-)

> I think it is an innovative enhancement to be able to switch an
> applications page but at what cost?  I used to have a series of
> applets across the title bar and I could easily select what I wanted
> in just 1 click.  Now I have to switch to the applications page and
> either select a favorite or scroll through a list.  This new approach
> is cool but it is far less efficient then applets across the title
> bar. 
What applets exactly? The Shell has many status icons for essential
things, and the messaging bar for ongoing things.

> I also used to get a small icon representation of my applications
> across the footer.  When your application gets buried, under other
> application,  you can find it in the footer and with a single click
> you can bring it to the front.  Now you have to switch to the
> applications page and select.  Again cool but less efficient.  
This is the whole point of the design: allowing you to be more focused
on your current task. See https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design

If you find it hard to switch windows, you might find that using more
workspaces really helps, and they are easier to use in the Shell.

> Dragging a title bar to maximize a window cool but less efficient then
> clicking on the maximize/unmaximize/minimize button, in the upper
> right.  
I don't think efficiency is a central issue here: we don't do this all
the time, and dragging is quite easy too. It can even be easier if you
consider that the title bar is a much bigger target than the small
buttons.

> That applications side by side is neat but rather gimicky, and besides
> it doesn't work as expected on a dual headed system.  One app on one
> screen and the other on the (far side) of the other screen. 
Please file a bug (or find the existing one if it's been reported
already).

> I don't like that I have to log out before shutting down.  Often when
> I am done I want to power down the machine and be done with it.  Now I
> have to log out, wait for it, then finally shutdown.  That blows!  ...
> Effectively it means my wife will never power down because it is now
> too complicated or too tedious because she is not likely to wait for
> the log out process so she can power down.   That makes it my job!.
You actually can power off directly by pressing the Alt key when the
user menu is open. I also think this decision is questionable, but the
Alt trick is a good workaround.

See https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet for more tricks like
that.

> The applications are now enormous with the giant title bar and larger
> font.  Makes my 20 inch monitor look small and my low resolution
> laptop is absolutely dwarfed.
With GNOME 3.0.2 the title bar is not as tall as before. The font can be
changed with GNOME tweak tool[1], and maybe in 3.2 there will be a way
to adjust that, or to make it fit your screen better automatically.

> Selecting applications also is a hindrance.  Generally it is what you
> want to have only one application displayed at a time but not always.
> A terminal, for example, usually when I want one I want several.
> There are other applications as well where I want several.
Then you definitely need to put them on a separate workspace, that's
what they are here for.

> The auto update tool doesn't seem to work anymore.
Not sure what you mean by this, but that's probably a distribution
thing, and anyways that's a bug that you should report so it can be
fixed. Not a usability issue.

> I could tolerate those things but now I am finding my applications to
> be unstable.  Evolution, my mail tool of choice, usually locks up
> after minimal usage and frequently I can't even start it without it
> freezing.  Emacs also freezes and I am sure other applications as
> well, which I am sure to discover as soon as I start using them. 
Same : that's not supposed to happen, and that's probably not linked
with the Shell. For Evolution, please file a bug in the GNOME bug
tracker, and do the same for other apps. (If too many apps freeze, it
might be related to your system, in which case GNOME isn't to blame
here.)

> On top of all that it seems to be very slow.
Depends on your graphics card, if you are talking about the Shell
animations. Or on your general hardware if that's about starting
applications. In the former case, please file bugs with details about
your graphics card and driver, many bugs like that have been fixed
(usually, in the drivers rather than in GNOME).

> This is meant to be constructive and I hope you can see it that way.
Kind of hard to answer all the points you raise. The essential issue is
that you criticize both design decisions and technical bugs, but your
unhappiness with GNOME 3 might largely be influenced by these bugs. It's
hard to judge the new user experience e.g. when graphics aren't smooth
(believe me, I used the Shell for more than one year with slow
graphics).


Hope this helps


1: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeTweakTool