extensions.gnome.org launches [LWN.net]

extensions.gnome.org launches

Posted Dec 7, 2011 23:49 UTC (Wed) by tuna (guest, #44480)
In reply to: extensions.gnome.org launches by MisterIO
Parent article: extensions.gnome.org launches

Making a system that is optimized for having 10 windows instead of 100 windows open seems like a wise design decision. I am sure you have good reasons for having so many windows open, and if that is your requirement, maybe you should investigate a different DE.

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extensions.gnome.org launches

Posted Dec 8, 2011 0:09 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

at work we provide services for a couple thousand customers, a few years ago the company decided to re-write the application to be more modern, slick, etc.

During the development they repeatedly made decisions based on "90%+ of our customers don't need this feature". After a year and a half of development they announced that the new version was complete with great fanfare and got ready to roll the result out, only to discover that only 30 of our 2000 customers could use the new version of the product, because every other customer used one of those features that "90%+ of the customers don't need"

the fact that the statement "if you need that feature you should use a different DE" (or equivalent) is being said so frequently should be setting off alarms for people

This sort of thing is one of the big reasons why the simpler Microsoft Office competitors have not taken off, 90% of the people may not use 80% of the features, but the trouble is that it's not the same features that they don't need.

extensions.gnome.org launches

Posted Dec 8, 2011 20:50 UTC (Thu) by sgros (subscriber, #36440) [Link]

So, you provided one (ok, two/three) examples of (supposedly) bad designs and that's OK, but the question is what does it prove except that there exist designs that are arguably flawed? How does that extends to Gnome Shell? Certainly there could be positive examples too, and we could end up enumerating both without any purpose.

In this particular case, two things are very interesting here, at least for me:

1. If you have a problem, then you fill a bug! In the end, if it is really a bug, bad design decision, or just a specific case not taken into account on purpose (but otherwise good design decision) is not known in advance and certainly not based on a single case.

2. To claim something is bad design simply based on a fact that _you_ have a problem, and repeat it every time you say something, is a bit too stretched and offensive (at least it sounds so to me)!

And I'm having open 12 Firefox windows and 107 tabs, which is now a lower value of the usual state, but I don't notice any slowdown. Could it be that the original poster really has 100 separate windows? But what is the purpose of such a large number of windows? BTW, I like gnome shell. There are problems and annoyances, but I believe that things will be better with each new release.