Open-Source GUI Fans: Meet Gnome 2.2 (TechWeb) [LWN.net]

TechWeb takes a look at Gnome 2.2. "The upgrade moves toward settling unnecessary differences with its open-source competitor the K Desktop Environment, or KDE. There's a growing trend among developers in both camps to adopt specifications that bring consistency to common functions found in desktops and applications, such as having similar help, file, and cut-and-paste operations."

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Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 22:12 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (9 responses)

One gratuitous difference which was introduced in GNOME 2.0 was to reverse the positions of OK and Cancel on dialogue boxes: now OK is on the right, Cancel is on the left, which is contrary to GNOME 1.x, KDE and Windows. Where did that bright idea come from? It's incredibly annoying for people who use more than one machine. At the very least it should be user-configurable, but if it is they haven't made it easy to find out where. I just installed GNOME 2.2 and they don't seem to have changed their minds on that one.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 22:32 UTC (Mon) by erich (guest, #7127) [Link] (4 responses)

Reading from left to right i think having the OK button being left is intuitive. I don't mind if that is different from windows/kde/gnome1 because these don't have them the same everywhere i believe.
At least from windows i believe to remember having the OK button on the left in many standard dialogs, and an "apply" button on the right, the cancel button inbetween.
They just did not pay too much attention on this. Neither did they on making "Yes" and "No" intuitive. "Do you want to save the file?" and "The file is not saved, do you really want to exit?" are basically the same - just Yes and No are reversed (so clicking cancel probably is the only sane choice when you don't want to pay attention...).
Gnome2 has a nice Document about these aspects of user interfaces. I guess they explain their reasons to put "OK" on the left as well.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 22:40 UTC (Mon) by erich (guest, #7127) [Link]

Hmm... didn't read your posting carefully enough.
In fact i like the file selectors with the OK button on the right.
It gives the button some kind of "last thing to do" feeling.
You fill out the entries, then "sign" your input in the right-lower part. It does make sense to me. Right-Lower corner for the "Complete the Job" button is intuitive. When i'm finished writing something i'm usually in the lower right corner. ;)
I bet they explain it in their user interface guidelines document.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 22:50 UTC (Mon) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (2 responses)

It's documented here:

If the alert was produced in response to a user action, place a Cancel button immediately to the left of the affirmative button.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 23:12 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

It's documented here:

Yes, but that's hardly a standard, and it goes against the trained instincts of most users (not just windows users, but most linux users too). In fact it clashes with the ordinary "yes or no?" question too: we don't expect "no or yes?" It makes no argument why this is better. In short, it is totally pointless, and it will be fun if, having decided to collaborate with the KDE folks on human interface guide, they end up clashing over stuff like this.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 10, 2003 23:39 UTC (Mon) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

Yes, that kind of clash is to be expected. I won't try to find the exact quotes, but GNOME was conceived as a desktop for "the majority of world population who didn't choose a desktop environment yet", whereas KDE was conceived to take the best from Windows, MacOS, OS/2 and CDE.

The problem with GNOME is there are not so many "virgins" among its users. Some of them have to use different desktops along with GNOME, sometimes on the same monitor (think VNC or X server for Windows).

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 11, 2003 2:32 UTC (Tue) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, this is the Mac button order. Gnome is not trying to be incompabtible for no reason; they are copying from the "best".

Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines: Basic Dialog Box Layout:

The Western reader's eye tends to move from the upper-left corner of the dialog box to the lower right. Put the initial impression that you want to convey in the upper-left area (like the alert icon), and place the buttons that a user clicks in the lower right. Following this guideline makes it easier for users to identify what's important in a dialog box.

Pointless difference in dialogue boxes

Posted Feb 11, 2003 6:13 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Gnome is not trying to be incompabtible for no reason; they are copying from the "best".

Sometimes being the best is not good enough. ;-)

90+ percent of the world's desktop computer users are used to [OK][Cancel], and whatever reasons there may be to arrange buttons otherwise, no matter how well-formed the argument, most people will not care. Annoyance wins over logic most of the time. But Mac users will like it.

It's also inconsistent with other aspects of Gnome, such as the metacity window manager, which appears to be designed to emulate the Windows interface rather closely. There seems to be some disagreement within the project as to whether an idealistic or a pragmatic approach is best.

GNOME attitude

Posted Feb 12, 2003 11:59 UTC (Wed) by mwilck (subscriber, #1966) [Link] (1 responses)

GNOME is very strict (too strict, I say) with its interpretation of the human interface. They seem not to care to make these things configurable. Somewhere I found a statement saying configuration options were a bad thing (too confusing for novice users).

I don't like that attitude. While trying to please novice users, are they entirely neglecting people that have their own taste?

I gave up on GNOME 2.0 after I had tried for 2 hours to configure single-click activation of desktop items, substitute META for ALT for window operations (needed to get the Gimp to work) and get rid of the menu panel at the top of the screen.

If there are configuration options for these somewhere, I at least was unable to find them. I used to prefer GNOME 1.x over KDE, but this has changed with GNOME 2.x.

I have no strong feelings whether OK or Cancel should be on the right in an OK/Cancel dialogue, but this is yet another example of the GNOME designer's ignorance against user preferences. They just implement what they (who, actually? Apple?) think is right.

GNOME attitude

Posted Feb 12, 2003 15:18 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Somewhere I found a statement saying configuration options were a bad thing (too confusing for novice users).

That might have been Havoc; he's talked a lot about minimizing configuration, and has refused to add "crackrock" features to metacity. In priniciple I agree with him, but in practice one man's crackrock is another man's essential feature.

I gave up on GNOME 2.0 after I had tried for 2 hours to configure single-click activation of desktop items

This is Nautilus Edit->Preferences->Behavior, at least with Gnome 2.2. IIRC Gnome 2.0 was the same.

substitute META for ALT for window operations

Run gconf-editor apps->metacity->general->mouse_button_modifier to change this.

and get rid of the menu panel at the top of the screen.

Right-click->"delete this panel" didn't work? I see the option, but I don't want to try it lest I can't get it back. :-)

Me too.

Posted Feb 11, 2003 1:35 UTC (Tue) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] (1 responses)

I as a user am looking for the Yes/No/Cancel in that order because:
1. That's what I'm used to from other environments.
2. It seems like a logical order. Cancel/No/Yes seems like something created by pessimists who read left-to-right!

CTRL vs. ALT for the most part have been changed for copy/paste actions, and I appreciated the change but this dialogue bothers me far more than that ever did. It doesn't seem intuitive, let alone familiar.

Me too.

Posted Feb 11, 2003 2:39 UTC (Tue) by tim_evans (guest, #7666) [Link]

As described in the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines, there are very few places were a Yes/No/Cancel (or Cancel/Yes/No) dialog is a good idea. It's a much better idea to have the button text be descriptive of the action that they will perform. For example, instead of:

Save 'foo.html' before exitting?
[Cancel] [No] [Yes]

You have:

'foo.html' is not saved.
[Close without saving] [Cancel] [Save]

Add the appropriate GTK stock icons to pretty up the buttons and you hardly need to read any text at all. It's faster and less prone to errors.

Open-Source GUI Fans: Meet Gnome 2.2 (TechWeb)

Posted Feb 11, 2003 8:53 UTC (Tue) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] (1 responses)

quote: "Open-source GUIs are unlikely to ever challenge Microsoft's dominance on the desktop with Windows."

And 640kb should be plenty for everyone. Comments like that are just plain stupid IMHO. I'm not saying that GNOME or KDE will take over the desktop tomorrow, but I think they got a good chance of getting quite a large part of the desktop marked. Especially in the business sector.

Open-Source GUI Fans: Meet Gnome 2.2 (TechWeb)

Posted Feb 11, 2003 11:16 UTC (Tue) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link]

Exactly my thought. "They're going have to eat their words on that one."

MSwindows does fine as a home user environment, where you have to balance function, play and needs of the amateur technologist.
But in organized environments, in school as well as in business, the Linux-based desktop is already off ground. The benifits of a well-organized system overweight the drawbacks of "not yet all that mature".

Especially when demands and budgets don't give any other choice.