[HN Gopher] The end of the nice GTK button
___________________________________________________________________
The end of the nice GTK button
Author : MartijnBraam
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-03-24 21:58 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.brixit.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.brixit.nl)
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I agree 100% with the author, the old GTK button was gorgeous, it
| will be missed.
|
| > I have had to explain to people tons of times that the random
| word in the UI somewhere in an application is actually a button
| they can press to invoke an action.
|
| This is one of my biggest complaints with the super flat modern
| designs. Many widgets lost their skeuomorphic depth, which
| encoded a lot if visual information (the clickability, the
| current status), but in many cases nothing was added to supplant
| the loss of those visual cues, so now it is just a label (or a
| label in a white or grey box) and there is no way of knowing if
| it is clickable or its current status.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I'm also really not sold on those new "tabs" which are just
| text with an underlined colour. It's low effort and dreadfully
| unclear. I can only vaguely guess what they are based on their
| upper placement, but what's to really distinguish that from a
| menu? or just a descriptive label?
|
| I don't like saying this because I want Linux desktop apps to
| have every success, but these small and pointless frustrations
| kill my enthusiasm.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Backstory: https://stopthemingmy.app
| naoqj wrote:
| You can't get any more arrogant than this.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Wow, that's definitely something. Implying that tinkering with
| the low level aspects of a system are acceptable, but don't you
| dare apply a different stylesheet, because adjusting colors is
| delicate work that shouldn't ever be done by anybody but the
| developer.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The dark theme, while not officially supported as a normal
| application theme, works absolutely brilliantly and is a great
| example of how to design a dark theme.
|
| There are only three small screenshots of UI in the dark theme,
| but to me it looks very clearly like a naive "invert all the
| design token colors and call it a day" implementation.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. (You
| can't break the back of modularity-induced fragmentation and make
| a consistent GUI without making a few people unhappy with the UI
| design that the majority chose).
|
| That is Gnome. Gnome has become a top-down project that values
| consistency/coherency over modularity/theming. It's an extreme,
| and I suspect that they went too far, but with it comes a number
| of benefits, such as a unified visual style across all apps, and
| an easy to use internationalization/localization subsystem.
| malermeister wrote:
| libadwaita is very unfortunate in general and the zeal of the
| GNOME community has been very off-putting
| naoqj wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Especially about the first part
| smoldesu wrote:
| They're probably referring to the functional regressions it
| made with it's first official release, and how it furthers
| the idea of GNOME/GTK lock-in. libadwaita has made it
| extremely difficult to package cross-platform desktop apps,
| especially while appearing native on different desktops (eg.
| adopting the native Breeze look on KDE while retaining the
| native Adwaita look on GNOME). The lack of this functionality
| at launch (and subsequent empty promises of a replacement)
| have rightfully left a bad taste in some people's mouth,
| particularly now that much of the GNOME leadership denies
| that this is a problem in the first place.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| I don't think adwaita is that bad, but rather feel like they
| _yet_ have to polish some small details.
|
| Like the interline spacing on things, sometimes it feels
| inconsistent. KDE menus, for example, have a nice spacing -
| but GTK ones feel cramped. And those submenus that they place
| on things like the top-right menu on the panel have different
| line heights.
|
| Some other third party apps, for example that mail client I
| tried the other day (it wasn't evolution, but I can't
| remember its name) had serious layout issues. libadwaita was
| supposed to fix those inconsistencies and make devs lifes
| happier, but...
|
| And speaking of buttons and top right corners, I will never,
| ever get why they place the open/save/select dialog buttons
| in the top right corner of the dialog. Where you are used to
| find the 'close' button. Why?
| pmontra wrote:
| Wait ten years. New people will start working, old people will
| move on to other things. The new people will change stuff, mostly
| for the sake of it as it always happens, and one of the results
| will be less flat interfaces. Old people will be infuriated by
| the change. Very old people will rejoice but also complain that
| those UIs are not as good as the really old ones. New people will
| shrug them away and keep changing stuff mostly for the sake of it
| as it always happens.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's already happening, new interfaces from both Apple (see Big
| Sur/Monterey) and Google (Material design) are noticeably less
| "flat" and going back to 3d effects for "active" widgets. The
| effects are much as seen in GTK+ 3 - just subtle enough to not
| look overly confusing when compared to a totally "flat"
| screenshot, but still helpful to unfamiliar users.
| mikl wrote:
| Yeah, the new GTK4 UI looks like a clone of Apple's UIKit with a
| worse font. Shame that Gnome is following the trend of flat and
| boring UIs.
| smoldesu wrote:
| All of this is pretty much how I feel on the matter, too. GTK3's
| interface was a really lovely blend of skeuomorphism and more
| abstract widgets that came together to make a really unique
| experience. Even if it didn't work in _every_ context, I
| appreciated how well it worked for less complicated applications
| and making great-looking, device-agnostic GUIs. Cawbird was a
| wonderful native Twitter app made possible with GTK3. Curlew
| packed all of the important features of Handbrake /FFMPEG into a
| more streamlined, simple package. Foliate took e-book reading
| into the 21st century. So many amazing apps were enabled with
| this switch, and even though it's still a second-class toolkit,
| it was my guilty pleasure on Linux.
|
| In comes GTK4. Much like the article alludes to, the elegant and
| simple shadow of interactive elements goes _poof_. Developers
| spend hundreds of hours crusading against letting people use
| third-party themes, just so they can simplify and reduce UI
| elements to a nigh-unusable pulp. Developing with GTK4 is a
| nightmare. Using GTK4 is a pain in the ass. For christs sake,
| there was a devastating font-rendering glitch that existed for
| more than _ten months_ after the first GTK4 release that was
| ignored in lieu of simplifying buttons, developing a new forced
| stylesheet and telling people "don't theme our apps!" Whenever I
| take this up with a maintainer, they immediately take it
| personally and write out a litany of reasons why I'm wrong and
| why I'm not allowed to disagree. The priorities here are almost
| unbelievably misaligned, I've pinned my GTK packages at the last
| GTK3 release and await some sort of admission of failure.
|
| I simply can't take it anymore. These are the people making
| desktop Linux miserable, and I frankly feel no remorse watching
| their attempts at "simplifying" the ecosystem crash and burn.
| MartijnBraam wrote:
| This is exactly how I feel about it. The sad thing is that if
| the whole gnome ecosystem burns down I'd have to use the
| alternatives that I like even less.
|
| I'm just not designing gtk4 apps untill it's actually better
| than gtk3
| smoldesu wrote:
| Definitely. Keep on trucking, I'm developing GTK3 apps right
| alongside you!
| von_lohengramm wrote:
| The font rendering on that example of "the perfect button" is
| rather atrocious. It's kind of sad that Windows is (was?) the
| last bastion of serviceable font rendering.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If you think that looks bad, wait until you see what GTK4 was
| stuck looking like for the first 10 months of it's life cycle:
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Interesting, I always disliked Windows font rendering and much
| prefer the was MacOS renders fonts. I couldn't explain why, but
| I know many graphic designers who say the same. I guess it's a
| matter of taste!
| von_lohengramm wrote:
| Any font rendering looks amazing on HiDPI panels. Have you
| ever used macOS on a normal monitor? The text looks worse
| than anything else.
| mikl wrote:
| For some value of "normal". 4K (or better) monitors have
| long since become the choice for most of those who cares
| about how font rendering looks.
|
| After a decade of "retina" screens, I'm ruined, I can't
| stand the look of anti-aliased fonts, whether Windows,
| Linux or macOS.
| jabbany wrote:
| This.
|
| The devs and designers are all using 4k, 5k displays these
| days. Trying to use modern apps etc. on just "FHD" (1080p)
| displays is painful.
| naoqj wrote:
| I agree that the defaults are atrocious, but freetype can be
| configured and the options are limitless.
| von_lohengramm wrote:
| Linux font rendering has come a long way in the last couple
| years. With TrueType2 and Windows fonts taken from an
| installer ISO (and not the ancient corefonts package), you
| can actually get some overall mostly okay font rendering.
| Every now and again, the hinting bugs out and it looks
| unreadable, but its far better than the olden days.
| mholt wrote:
| The flat UI trend baffles me. The removal of text from icons and
| buttons baffles me.
|
| For example, in Windows 11 I spent close to a minute looking for
| "Rename" in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer. Turns out
| it's not there! It's been removed out of the flow of the list and
| put in the top of the right-click menu, behind a small, picture-
| only icon that I've never seen before.
|
| MacOS is guilty of this too: Buttons along the top of native apps
| like Finder don't have text anymore, the buttons are flat without
| borders, and the icons are thin lines. How is anyone supposed to
| know what they do??
|
| In most UIs (Apple and Android in particular), I can't tell when
| one of those on-off switches is ON or OFF. Is the dark side ON or
| OFF? Maybe the light side is ON. Oh, it's the opposite when Dark
| Mode is enabled; great.
|
| Bring back text. Bring back nice buttons.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| This is why I have reverted to the CLI whenever possible.
|
| There's something deeply assuring knowing that I don't have to
| relearn my whole workflow every few months when the trends
| change. ls, grep, find, ps, htop will always be what they are.
| Even the Windows CLI is thankfully consistent.
|
| All I want is to get work done the way I want, and I've found
| the CLI is increasingly the path of least resistance.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > ls, grep, find, ps, htop will always be what they are. Even
| the Windows CLI is thankfully consistent.
|
| Those command-line tools don't have any "engagement"
| opportunities nor are there bloated teams of product managers
| & designers having to justify their salaries by reworking
| them for no good reason.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| In macOS, you can actually right-click many header bars (like
| Finder) and choose "Icon and Text" instead of "Icon" for what
| shows.
| mholt wrote:
| I do this, but I do not want to do this.
|
| Also it looks funky. The padding is messed up and the text
| doesn't fit.
| duskwuff wrote:
| There's also an accessibility setting (under the "Display"
| section) for "Show toolbar button shapes".
| ggm wrote:
| This. Material design relies on the browser hint to inform you
| the mouse/pointer has moved to an active element. Viewed with
| no focus on an active element, how are you meant to tell which
| pane of flat colour is a pressable, actionable element?
|
| It looks great in print. It doesn't respect the modality of use
| for an online world.
|
| I'm tempted to think we have to go to browser vendors and ask
| them to make <blink> happen..
| goosedragons wrote:
| I ended up reverting back to the old context menu. Those icons
| are annoying to parse and I have a tendency to look down each
| row as 20+ years of context menus has taught. And having so
| many options tucked an extra click away.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| For everyone mad at at "Don't theme my apps," consider why
| developers are doing it.
|
| Getting complaints about how your app is broken because of an
| overzealous theme that is beyond your control _sucks_. And after
| 10 years of dealing with it, GNOME developers decided it was
| enough.
|
| And... I don't wholly agree, but at the same time, themes had a
| decade to get their act together and stop angering GNOME
| developers. They didn't.
| simion314 wrote:
| But why Qt/KDE developers don't lose their minds ? Either GTK
| theming is broken or the GTK app developers are not using it
| correctly or GNOME devs are assholes and really.really want to
| force their branding and vision. The above OR is not exclusive
| so it could be all 3 things.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I develop GTK3 apps. Theme breakage is generally a very real
| concern, as it usually points towards an issue with either
|
| a. The usage/implementation of widgets in the application
|
| or
|
| b. The stylesheet the end user is implimenting
|
| In either instance, the solution is very simple and within arms
| reach. It will always make more sense to encourage robust
| development practices over building fragile application stacks.
| malermeister wrote:
| The don't theme my app people were complaining about their bug
| trackers being full of theme-related issues. Instead of just
| setting up a filter rule in their tracker so they could ignore
| those issues, they decided to go super draconian and remove
| theming for the entire desktop.
|
| That disproportionate response to what comes down to an
| organizational shortcoming on their end made people upset, I'm
| not sure what they expected.
| MartijnBraam wrote:
| I handle "random theme breaking my app" as a valid bug report,
| it's not that hard.
|
| It's either something I'd have to fix in my app or fixed in
| that theme. Just ignoring the situation is just a shitty
| response.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| https://stopthemingmy.app
| MartijnBraam wrote:
| Yes I'm aware of it
| [deleted]
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| --- Now one of the worst parts is that everywhere I only even
| hint at not completely loving the new libadwaita theme I
| instantly get shut down and disagreed with before I can even get
| the chance to give some feedback. Apparently not liking flat
| themes makes me a madman in this world. Why am I not allowed to
| even have opinions about the look of the operating system I'm
| using? ---
|
| But to be honest, isn't it one of the recurring point of people
| running away from gnome? Haven't they just proceeded going ahead
| not listening to anyone?
| azinman2 wrote:
| So basically the new GTK is iOS but without the professional
| designers behind it.
|
| What I cannot understand is how Canonical, Red Hat, or some rich
| SV person hasn't thrown money at the problem and hired a big wig
| design firm or person to overhaul it all. Johnny Ive is now even
| available (if he'd take the project). But even going thru a site
| like dribbble there are so many amazing designers out there. To
| me it would be a more impressive portfolio piece for a young
| designer to properly design GTK/Gnome and put it out there for
| the world. What is stopping this? It can't be caring with the
| history of people sharing their themes. Is it just taste / money?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-24 23:00 UTC)