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Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application DesignDay: A New Approach to GNOME Application DesignPosted Feb 12, 2012 3:57 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014)Parent article: Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design
I think the very vast majority of users simply maximizes all windows, and has done that since the beginning of time.
Especially when 800x600 or 1024x768 monitors were common, not having maximized windows was definitely not an option for general use.
Most people generally spend most of their time looking at a web browser/document viewer, a game, an office application, an IDE or an artist tool, and all these need as much screen space as possible, so nobody sane uses them non-minimized outside special cases.
Not really sure what's new there.
Also, the only reasonable choice for a default size for a new window is maximized, since any other choice would be arbitrary.
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Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 5:52 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
office workers don't look at a office app window or e-mail window all day long, they have their IM app up in a corner somewhere at the very least.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 11:44 UTC (Sun) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] office workers don't look at a office app window or e-mail window all day long, they have their IM app up in a corner somewhere at the very least. Their ... what? Do you mean Facebook Chat in the web UI?
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 18:40 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
whatever instant messaging client they use, in large companies there is usually an internal server so that the chat traffic within the company doesn't go out over the Internet.
in small companies it may be something like a facebook or twitter window or app.
in many large companies, running something like this all the time is close to mandatory.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 19:59 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Yes.
Chat is now a integrated feature into Microsoft's groupware. "Office Communicator". It's commonly used now.
Before that I noticed it was very common to use external chat services. For technical users it is typical to setup a IRC server or set up internal Jabber server. I've seen this is just about any place I ever worked in or at least sat down in. In places without internal IM I see people using text messages or using rouge services like 'facebook chat'.
(Business with IT goons that try to block any sort of ability to use IM is really doing everybody in the company a big disservice. It's very reasonable to keep things internal-only, of course.)
Even when not using full screens people will always focus on what they are doing. Especially if they are reading text they will mentally blot out everything else happening on the screen. So it's a always a challenge to be able to design a desktop so that people don't miss high priority notifications. Especially since what is a 'priority message' is so flexible and changes depending on tasks and particular users.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 7:43 UTC (Sun) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
> I think the very vast majority of users simply maximizes all windows,
> and has done that since the beginning of time.
Not users that I've looked over the shoulders of. The vast majority of them have windows maybe filling up to 90% of the screen, but rarely do they maximize stuff (the only exception I've seen as a common case are people actively using a projector as part of presentations).
I'd really wager that most things _don't_ benefit from being absolutely full screen, especially with how common widescreen monitors are, especially since you lose the easy ability to glance at any other app (whether it's an IM app like dlang said, or some resource they're also using).
> Also, the only reasonable choice for a default size for a new window
If you start shoving maximized-by-default mode on people, though, new users quite likely _won't_realize_ that you can tile (even if only manually) windows, unless someone shows them (or they do it on accident). IMO, Desktop Environments shouldn't do anything to _exacerbate_ the dumbing down of the "average" computer user.
Quite frankly, I don't really think the "average" computer user is getting dumber. The vast majority of people out there did NOT grow up with computers, and the ones that did, didn't grow up with ones that had an interface all that similar to the current paradigms.
Hopefully one day I'll have a spare system powerful enough that GNOME 3 won't simply fail on it, so I can actually try it first hand to see if the various horrible descriptions of it are accurate... Personally, I've never been a fan of GNOME, and found the 'gnomeification' of various GTK apps I used to always be a major regression (I like my option windows, damnit!), so I don't have much confidence GNOME 3 was a reversal of anything.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 11:27 UTC (Sun) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] Given that computer presentation of text generally uses horizontal lines, and that extremely long horizontal lines are awkward to read, maximizing doesn't really make that much sense on a 1920x1080 monitor unless you're using the kind of app that has lots of auxiliary controls to chew up horizontal screen space with. (1080x1920 would be another matter. There, it probably would make sense.)
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 17:31 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
What does matter is visual distraction.
A 80 character by itself floating in the middle of a 1080x1920 blank background is vastly easier and more pleasurable to read then:
Depending on what you are trying to do it is more advantagous to stuff the maximum amount of information into the smallest amount of space... this is something that tiling window managers do a very good job of.
But it is certainly not desirable every time or even most of the time.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 18:09 UTC (Sun) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] I reject both option (@) and options (A) through (C), preferring (D) a desktop whose applications don't look like they belong in downtown Las Vegas, so that having one of them visible around the edges of another is not significantly distracting. Any application that can't do anything useful with the full width of a 1920-wide display has no business being maximized on one except at the explicit choice of its user.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 19:12 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Any application that can't do anything useful with the full width of a 1920-wide display has no business being maximized on one except at the explicit choice of its user.
Which is _EXACTLY_ what the Gnome developer said should happen in his blog.
Unless the application developers requests the application to open maximized by default (because that is what he is intended by the application), then it won't.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 12, 2012 12:35 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
> I think the very vast majority of users simply maximizes all windows, and has done that since the beginning of time.
I really doubt that. Most basic desktop users I know are completely lost if they cannot easily access the desktop (background), because they put everything on the desktop, so they always keep a part of it uncovered for drag-and-drop operation (they are unable to use a file selector).
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 13, 2012 18:32 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
This is one of the raging failures of the modern desktop which ought to be corrected: Desktops and desktop icons. It's not a desktop, the metaphor is decreasingly useful on a conceptual level and users should be taught some kind of storage principle that doesn't involve "on the screen in front of me."
Even if you replace the "desktop" with a big "FILES" button that's always visible in a corner of the screen and that shows the former "desktop" folder, and do nothing else, that would be an improvement. Users constantly "lose" things behind windows and mostly do not understand stacking.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 13, 2012 2:56 UTC (Mon) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]
Reading this thread, I have been wanting to respond that I hardly ever maximize windows. Then I realized that I am reading this article in a maximized browser window. I am reading it on my laptop which is somewhat low resolution (1280 horizontal pixels and about 10 inches).
On my main desktop, I would never maximize the browser because it is 1920 pixels across and a 20" monitor. Typically, my browser is about the same size and dimensions as a A4/letter sheet of paper. This about half the width of the screen.
Thinking about it a little more, if a given window has to be 75% or more of the width of my screen to be usable then I might just maximize it. All this proves is the "maximized makes sense for small screens" argument (for me). I am a little surprised though about how big "small screens" turns out to be (for me at least).
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 13, 2012 18:24 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
> I think the very vast majority of users simply maximizes all windows, and has done that since the beginning of time.
In my experience most "real" users don't maximize windows at all. Instead they carefully drag the expando until the window is big enough, which is sometimes approximately the same size as maximized, and then carefully position it in the center or top-left of the screen.
"Why don't you click the maximuze button instead?"
"The what?"
This happens all the time.
Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design Posted Feb 13, 2012 21:50 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
> Also, the only reasonable choice for a default size for a new window is maximized, since any other choice would be arbitrary.
I strongly disagree. Many apps have very natural sizes. GTK+ in particular was one of the first toolkits to have good natural auto-sizing in widget hierarchies (I think, could be wrong).
Some windows have a bit resizable content area, and the size of that area is indeed "arbitrary." Things like the main windows of a word processor, web browser, image editor, etc. Other windows have extremely specific natural sizes based on their contents; there is nothing arbitrary at all about the window size chosen by the application when mapping the windows.
Even the apps with resizable content areas often have a decent "good guess" as to a natural default size that may not map to fullscreen. Web browsers are best off targeting a specific view area "resolution" for instance based on how Web sites are actually designed. e.g., they are generally made to fit something between 800 to 1024 horizontal virtual pixels, with any extra space "wasted" by whitespace; other sites just assume the resolution will not be much higher and so will gladly fill the extra horizontal space by making the main content very hard to read by stretching out text lines far beyond comfortable lengths.
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