Re: [Usability] Gnome 3.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le jeudi 09 juin 2011 à 12:53 -0700, Brian Francois a écrit :
> Hi Milan,
> I noticed your domain is french and let me first say that your written
> English is very good. 
Thanks! ;-)

> Let me also say I appreciate the work you and others do and have done.
> I know it is hard work and you (group all) have probably poured your
> hearts into it.  I also agree with you that bugs are the
> implementation and not related to design, sorry.  That cheat sheet is
> nice and I will look it over.  I actually like the features I mention
> but I think they should have augmented  the existing features.
> Maximize by dragging to the top or hitting the maximize button.
> Unmaximize by dragging or hitting the unmaximize button.  Selecting
> applications from a title bar menu, as before, or by going to the
> activities screen.  Same for the active applications.  It is nice to
> see large images representing the application on the activities screen
> but it was also nice having small icons across the footer, select the
> icon on the footer when you "lose" a window and you are in business. 
But if you keep all of the features that were in GNOME 2, you're not
going to leverage fully the possibilities opened by the new UI. The goal
of the designers is to obsolete the old ways, and to remove as much
clutter as possible from the chrome, to make it simple. Three ways of
doing the same thing often brings confusion.

In the case of the minimize/maximize/close buttons, the idea was that
you often risk clicking the close button when trying to maximize,
especially with touchpads, and the effect is usually very bad (losing
your webpage, stopping music...).

> ... and I completely disagree that you will want only one version of
> an application in any given workspace.  Isn't that the whole idea
> behind the side by side view, to view two similar objects to see what
> has changed?
Nobody implied that. If you want two windows of the same app, just click
on the launchers wile pressing the Ctrl key, and that's it (it's in the
cheat sheet); or use the right-click menu; or drag the launcher to the
workspace.

> The changes from release 2 to release 3 are quite significant and some
> retraining is required.  I figured it out ok but my wife will be lost
> and I will have to sit down with her to "retrain" her.   I am sure my
> wife is not the only one that will be lost in release 3.  
I think you should check this assumption. Advanced users feel a little
lost at first because we all have our small habits, and use complex
features that were changed. But casual users don't mind: once they've
found out the Activities hot corner, and how to maximize their windows
(often they don't even use that feature, seeing my parents), they're
happy. It's very easy in the Shell to start your common apps, and the
overview gives you a great feeling of control over your windows. So just
try, she might feel at home in GNOME 3 quicker than you!


Cheers