this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

who even decides what's "modern" anymore?

can anyone, honestly, without reading the article (or guessing from the headline), tell me which of these is the "modern" design?

screenshot of the nautilus file manager in light mode screenshot of the nautilus file manager in light mode

edit: people are getting confused by the fact that one is tree view, not icons view so i changed the image. old image here

[–] owiseedoubleyou@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Apparently "modern" means hiding options behind extra clicks

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i may be blind but what exactly was hidden behind one or more clicks?

[–] Spider89@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Notice Min/Max buttons missing from window bar?

That's the default.

[–] Trashboat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago

That’s nothing new though, that’s been Gnomes thing for over a decade

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

tbh not the best choice but that's just their design language I guess. what I was asking about tho was this post's redesign specifically

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I think "modern" can be interpreted as nice and clean UI which is beautiful to watch and only the absolutely most important stuff is shown and the rest is hidden. So, like apple design approaches, I guess. Say form over function. Microsoft tends to go that route as well. Luckily for user who like function over form, there are different flavors of Linux.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I think "modern" can be interpreted as nice and clean UI which is beautiful to watch and only the absolutely most important stuff is shown and the rest is hidden. So, like apple design approaches, I guess. Say form over function. Microsoft tends to go that route as well. Luckily for user who like function over form, there are different flavors of Linux.

[–] curioushom@lemmy.one 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Clearly the dark mode is the modern one! Jokes aside, I just realized that there THREE menu options on that toolbar: hamburger, kebab, and waffle! I realize they do different things, but no wonder people are confused by and scared of computers. Also, now I'm hungry!

TIL of kebab and waffle menus.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

as someone who's not scared of computers, i have no idea what they do. i assume the right one is icons/list/compact[^1] not a waffle menu, but the hamburger and kebab? i have no clue

[^1]: though why it's showing list when the current view is icons, i don't know either

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since the kebab menu is inside the location/search box, I'm guessing it contains search-related options.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

maybe; but if the location of menu buttons hints at their use then the hamburger should collapse the side drawer like the one on e.g. youtube, but i doubt it does

[–] HouseWolf@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Corpo's and social media "designers" who would throw out their own mother because she's "outdated"

Honestly as someone who doesn't use Gnome... I can't really tell much of a difference, Seems like a strange thing to build hype over.

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

as a GNOME user I also don't get the hype lol

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

hey as long as it has thumbnail preview I will be hyped.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

The first one doesn't waste space in the title bar by expanding the locator and navigator buttons there.

[–] Asymptote@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

Full height sidebar - from Mac OS 7 or so - must be modern?

[–] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's just my opinion (since it's not in the article) but a thing that makes Gnome and Libadwaita a "modern design" is the fact that the production behind it tries to bridge the gap between a "mouse and keyboard" and a "touch screen" workflow.
None of the other DEs come even close to Gnome when used on a tablet

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

meh, subjectively i find that creates a "worst of both worlds" situation. but this comment was more about the futility of the development time that went into this specific feature

[–] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

this comment was more about the futility of the development time that went into this specific feature

yeah sorry, I should have been more specific with my answer: features like this are supposed to help you in a touch screen situation or in general with smaller screens.
When the window is resized under a certain size, the left panel becomes hidden and with it part of the top bar, to make it less cluttered and confusing.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

but ...surely you could just do the same thing with the old design? artist's rendition:

in fact, now i look at it, it makes them look even more similar once i collapse the sidebar

[–] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

The difference is minimal, in the newer version you have 1 less element when the sidebar is collapsed (the hamburger menu).
Generally speaking Gnome 44 is already well optimized, 45 is going to be a more "tweaks and small improvements" kind of update rather than a big design changes

[–] Heavybell@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Petition to force anyone talking about software to use "trendy" or "fashionable" instead of "modern".

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It'd be kinda nice if they made these kinds of changes options rather than just deciding this is best

Could honestly take it or leave it, doesn't really add anything

[–] sugartits@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
  • Adding options

  • Gnome desktop

Pick one.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i'm not even sure it's worth having an option. i don't think i'd even have noticed a difference, apart from the menu button being in a slightly different place to every other gnome app. it's fine; but it wasn't worth the development time

[–] sab@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The last thing I want is an option for this. My gosh, imagine the amount of options you would end up with if every single design choice was turned into an option. Who in the world would like that many options.

I'm happy to just have a design team work on whatever they think looks better and works best for the user experience, and implement it after some rounds of public review and testing. This looks neat enough to me - slightly less cluttered than what my current Nautilus window looks like while maintaining the same functionality.

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who in the world would like that many options.

KDE fans?

Awww, Plasma fans, you know I'm playin'.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] s20@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Seriously, I envy you guys. Every time I try to use Plasma, I end up spending all my time tweaking the desktop, and by the time I'm done, I realize I've just recreated the Gnome workflow...

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

every time i try to use gnome, i end up spending all my time going "dammit, where are all the bleeding features"

(also the lack of fitts' law adherence due to that pointless bar at the top)

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I had to look up Fitts's law, and I'm not sure I get it. Could you explain what you mean?

ETA: I kinda feel like mine was about KDE not being a fit for me personally, and yours was a slam on Gnome rather than a statement of personal preference.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I had to look up Fitts’s law, and I’m not sure I get it. Could you explain what you mean?

basically; the speed that it takes to click a button is dependant on the size of the button and the distance from the cursor. however, buttons at the edge of the screen have effectively infinite size, as they can't be overshot. the most used actions should be placed there, as they are the easiest to click by muscle memory (particularly the corners, as they have infinite size in both dimensions)

on windows, kde, cinnamon, etc.; by default the bottom left is start, the bottom right is show desktop (this one i can't explain), and the top right is close maximised window. the top of the screen is also used for other window-related actions like minimise, restore, change csd tabs, etc.

gnome flouts this by having most of the top of the screen doing nothing (most of it is completely empty) apart from rarely used actions like calendar and power. and the bottom right and left doing nothing[^1]

did i explain well?

ETA: I kinda feel like mine was about KDE not being a fit for me personally, and yours was a slam on Gnome rather than a statement of personal preference.

nah it was very much a personal thing: some people like having a minimal and clutter-free feature set; i like having as many features as possible, because then i find features i didn't even know i liked.[^2]

as for the top bar: this one confuses me - it just seems objectively bad. but obviously it's not as some people clearly like it. i haven't had anyone actually explain to me why, though

[^1]: i mean they also ignore it in other ways, too

[^2]: i didn't know how useful a terminal embedded in the file manager would be until i started using dolphin, now i can't do without it

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

did i explain well?

Yes, thank you!

I personally love the feature set of Gnome, but I can see your point. Compared to other DEs, it might seem like a lot of wasted space. And I guess in a way it is, but I don't miss those other functions.

The top right corner doesn't even need a click to go to overview, which brings up my desktop view and the app launcher - that's the bottom left and bottom right functions you described in one place, which makes sense to me since in my head they're related.

The top right is still close maximized windows, but because of the way the Gnome workflow is structured, I don't really use minimize basically ever, so I don't miss it. Also in the upper right we have volume control and battery feedback.

I never have more virtual desktops than I'm actually using. Everything is exactly where I expect it to be. My brain is wired for the Gnome workflow, and extra options justbatent needed.

I've used Dolphin's terminal in file manager thing, and while I can see the utility, I prefer my right-click -> open in Console setup. That's just me, though.

Eh. It takes all kinds to make the world go round, I guess. FTR, I am a huge fan of the KDE project. Their contributions to the Linux world are massive and cannot be overstated. Krita alone is amazing, and I used calligre as my main office software for a few years.

I'm just not a Plasma guy. ¯_ (ツ) _/¯

[–] espi@mas.to 2 points 1 year ago

@Zeus @s20 wow this is interesting and makes perfect sense.

I really like GNOME and the functionality I use the most is the top left overview. Incredibly useful and easily accessible.

GNOME really should use the other 3 corners.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's the neat thing. It's so customizable, you can turn it into another desktop environment.

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I mean, almost. I can pull it off on my desktop, but I can't get the touchpad/touchscreen gestures to work right on my laptop.

Kinda looking forward to Plasma 6 to play around with, though. Might even be enough to get me to switch for a while!

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I tried KDE, it's cool but I get the same thing of trying to recreate gnome/pantheon

It kinda sucks in GNOME when there's just one thing you would like to change though

Have been trying to get a tiling window manager on GNOME but all the gnome extensions that do it kinda suck

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really? I'm not a tiling WM kinda guy, but I thought Forge was decent.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I found it rather laggy. Maybe I should give it more of a chance just felt clunky and laggy to me (I assume because it's superimposed ontop of GNOME not integrated into it)

Edit: I gave it another chance and I actually really like it thank you for calling me out on that

Think it was only clunky because I already had a bunch of stuff open before turning it on

[–] 0000@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well I just switched to KDE Plasma last week and I'm pleasantly surprised just how many things are configurable via a menu and how well it runs on Wayland With a Nvidia GPU.

I used to despise KDE Neon, and used Gnome for a bit, but I don't think I can go back anymore until their design philosophy changes again.

[–] serratur@lemmy.wtf 3 points 1 year ago

I hope they stick to the design philosophy, having different choices in DE is a good thing.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Problem for me is KDE is dependant on configuration to get it to look nice, GNOME looks nice and works well out of the box but sucks if you want to do anything ontop of that base

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

"Modern" means copying Mac OS or iOS.

[–] mtchristo@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I haven't yet seen the article, the light theme one is probably newer because of tabs.

Anyways both look like an android app, I know most will hate reading this but Windows Explorer rules.

[–] Zeus@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

nah, i agree with you. win explorer with qttabbar, tortoisegit, and some tweaks from winaerotweaker

dolphin is pretty good though and it has some features that explorer doesn't, like a terminal pane

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 0 points 1 year ago

The bottom one looks like a mobile app interface, so it must've been the "modern" one.