New GNOME dialog on the right:
Apple’s dialog:
They say GNOME isn’t a copy of macOS but with time it has been getting really close. To be fair, I don’t think this is a bad thing however they should just admit it and then put some real effort into cloning macOS instead of the crap they’re making right now.
Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.
So much for the GNOME, vision and their expert usability team :P
The founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza, stopped using Linux in favor of macOS in 2014 iirc. That makes me guess that the macOS design was at least acceptable to him. Maybe the visions were similar enough.
What does the founder of GNOME have to do with GNOME in 2022? He worked for Microsoft for 6 years.
https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html
That’s definitely interesting.
These are pretty standard UI patterns.
Your point being…?
His point is that you have no point.
My point is: if you want to copy / be inspired by others at least do it right.
So, copying is making something identical. But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.
Ever hear of two things just being similar? We are talking about a UI - these things have always followed patterns that change as usage patterns change in the industry. I think you must be young and/or inexperienced because this kind of trend goes back to the ‘80s.
But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.
I would categorize it as poor copying because the copy doesn’t conform to the design / UX patterns that were present on the “original” work.
Bro… There is but so many ways to effectively organize something basic like that jfc.
Best or standard practice, ever heard of the concept?
If it is standard design, it is not targeting iOS. That is his point.
I actually like it, margin is maybe a bit much. For the apple extra margin, gnome app can add any buttons they want on those dialog, it is up to app devs to add an extra margin between some button!
Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.
And gnome has those dialogs in a different colour to achieve easily noticable differentiation between the two options
The issue there isn’t only differentiation, that well done, the issue is that an user might miss click because both buttons are close to each other.
That same logic could be applied for the save and discard button. Should there be a bigger gap between them lest somebody misclick and discard things instead of saving them¿? Atleast in the case where they accidentally click cancel instead of discard, they are not losing any data.
Hell if this really about data safety, discard/don’t save should be the isolated button because it is the only destructive option
According to the UX experts you don’t need the space between the save and discard buttons as long as the “save” is the first one. Missclick are more prone to happen from top to bottom than the other way around, so if the user wanted to hit “save” it’s more likely he will click above the button than it is to click “discard”. Same logic applied down there, when the using is looking to cancel it’s easier to missclick and hit the “discard” button than anything else.
Can you share any study for this. If this is true, it is fascinating and worth looking into in more depth
This is an application of Fitts’s law. I saw some paper referencing it to back that kind of margins on destructive actions but I don’t remember the title.
Well fitts law doesnt mention anything about asymmetrical spacing anywhere. Infact going by fitts law, the new gnome design is great because the hitboxes are pretty large
If you’re going to give GNOME shit, at least let it before how much they destroy portability of GTK, enabling cancer like Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.
Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.
Well I’ve complained about those a couple of time… but people always say that it’s their vision.
They made GTK4 portable thanks to the gnome design being moved to Libadwaita.
My only problem with both designs in your images is the colors. It’s a pretty standard part of UI design (in real life and on computers) that “red means cancel” and “green means continue.” Apple using blue is no big deal and I’m 90% sure they just use a user chosen “highlight color.” (Maybe Gnome as well?) But cancel or delete or similar things should probably be red or another color that signals “Stop.”
I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors. Red means danger. Light blue means info. Green means yes or success. Yellow means warning. Other buttons are a darker blue — basically the highlight color. (Not saying they chose the best version of those colors. Just that the general idea is consistency and what users most naturally expect.)
It’s just an accent colour and can be changed.
Where can i change easily accent colors in Gnome without using extensions?
Accent colors are coming with GNOME 47.
Yup, i know, its just not possible atm. But thank you anyway :)
The “Save” button uses the accent color which is blue by default. With configurable accent colors coming to GNOME 47 and GTK/Libadwaita, you can choose a red accent color.
See the original description of the screenshot:
It’s now using standard button styles, fixing the long-standing issue where suggested and destructive buttons would look the same when using red accent color
I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors
Yes it does. Those guys did a really good job.
I started on gnome. I love it at first, but as time has gone on my experience with gnome had gotten worse and worse, and my KDE experience keeps getting better. It’s a real shame because I actually tend to prefer the gnome look at feel, but KDE has been so much more usable for me in recent years.
It’s very easy to get a Gnome look and feel with Plasma nowadays.
I still don’t know why Gnome loves wasting 3 % of the screen on an empty black bar, tho.
That is true. But I have an overall better experience getting KDE to look like gnome.
That’s what I said.
Yeah ngl I don’t get using the entire space fore almost nothing. I use a few extensions to fill it up and make it more useful
I’m kind of on the same boat you’re… however KDE tends to have issues with visual proportions and margins everywhere.
Wtf… I like the layout of the old dialogue better. It is easier to read.
The older one is actually properly executed, the first button is the “Cancel” one and that makes sense because people read from left to right and tend to click mindlessly / without reading on the first button. Not sure if they actually changed the position on right to left languages but they should have…
I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.
To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.
But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.
I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.
To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.
Just because you aren’t used to the macOS workflow it doesn’t mean it is bad - that’s the same argument you GNOME fan boys do with Windows users ;)
But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.
Yes, it’s okay, and that was never an issue in this discussion. The issue is that they didn’t took enough inspiration on basic UX patterns.
I find that “carefully included extra margin” outrageously ugly
Same
Looks alright to me.
It’s ugly, but useful.
(unlike me, I am ugly and useless /s)
I don’t completely disagree with you, however the cost of losing an important document because you clicked on the wrong thing is way higher than having to look at the extra space every day.
I hope they continue learning lessons from other OSes.
I’m feeling like you are wrong about them outright copying. Some good things can be taken from macOS and Windows. But a lot of bad things too, which is why they are thinking it through.
Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it… Apple doesn’t own modals or modal design.
Here there are not 20 ways of putting 3 buttons in a modal. They just happen to choose a way that will also work on mobile I guess.
Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.
I don’t like everything Gnome has been doing, especially with the lack of customization or the status bar. But Gnome has been my go to for 7+ years and I like where it is going. Extensions are pretty fly too 👌
Sometimes when you get UI experts and users and engineers in the same room they iterate to similar outcomes because its the logical conclusion. Apples design in this case isn’t ground breaking or even original.
If multiple species of jumping spider can independently evolve the ability to see red from different branches of their family tree, multiple dev teams can come to the same conclusion about what is more comfortable for reaching with consideration for left and right handed people on various types of screens.
The problem is so scoped these days, its fairly logical for UIs to come to the same outcome.
Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it…
Well, it’s insulting for people to lose their work because someone did a lousy UX job. :)
Cloning macOS should not be views as something “bad” because for what’s worth we all know Apple spends a LOT in usability research (they’re not as good as they used to be, but still better than the rest).
Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.
That’s the thing, I’ve basic design / UX training and all the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add a margin. Any design undergraduate should also be able to notice that life saver as well… however the GNOME team totally missed it.
This isn’t the first time them failing at basic UX and they don’t like when people try to suggest improvements nor when they later on criticize them.
Having used OS X, there is no way they’ve done usability testing. Doing basically everything is hard on OS X
This is an insane take based on absolutely nothing.
Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple. And microsoft also does a couple of things better than apple. Apple isn’t perfect and microsoft isn’t all bad
Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple.
Yes, so let’s copy Apple and keep the few things GNOME does well.
At least it is not a cheap copy of Windows.
Ahaha fair enough. * screams in KDE *
I don’t use KDE as my daily driver but it’s on my SteamDeck and I haven’t once been trying to change a setting or something and encountered a window that looks like Windows XP because no one at a whole multi-trillion dollar company could be bothered to update it. It’s way better than Windows 11.
Excuse me, Windows is the cheap copy of KDE.
No you got it all wrong KDE is just a Windows 11 copycat. Microsoft is full of original ideas.
Both designs are good imo. Adding the extra space for the “cancel” button could cause a copyright claim so I think that’s a viable reason why it’s absent in GNOME. And I don’t see anything wrong in copying Apple design. They can do what they want and the new design is very nice in terms of ease of understanding and accessibility potentials. GNOME’s workflow is similar to Apple’s so why not copy some more things for better consistency?
We shouldn’t design desktops to avoid copyright claims. Desktops should just create original designs that make sense for the goals of the desktop. We don’t need to make changes based on Windows 11 or Mac OS. They aren’t separate entirely and irrelevant.
Do you mean that any copying is bad or any copying is ok as long as it helps achieve the goals?
When you copy the outcome is almost always going to be worse than the original. Do your own thing and be the person or project you want to be. You don’t need to care outside of the project.
Both designs are good imo. Adding the extra space for the “cancel” button could cause a copyright claim
What ahaha since when a modal is copyrighted? I don’t buy it, this is simply poor design by the GNOME team.
GNOME’s workflow is similar to Apple’s so why not copy some more things for better consistency?
Exactly my point, but they should learn how to properly copy things. Or at least think about them, Apple didn’t add the margin for no reason.
I get it that you hate this design and its obvious strong inspiration by Apple but accusing GNOME team in being lazy is too much. They created the most popular and one of the most stable DEs on Linux and their own workflow that’s similar to Apple’s but still is unique. Also when I saw that new design, I was amazed. To me it looks really great. It’s going to be a good update with accent color support (I won’t fight about it ok?) for sure. It’s just a matter of preference. Both designs are good enough technically imo.
I get it that you hate this design
I don’t hate it, it looks better than what was there before, no doubts there, but at the same time they could’ve just made it better.
All the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add margins, accents and shades. Any design undergraduate should be aware of this, however the GNOME team totally missed it.
It’s going to be a good update with accent color support (I won’t fight about it ok?)
It’s funny that you mention that because…
In macOS, you can specify an accent color to customize the appearance of your app’s buttons, selection highlighting, and sidebar glyphs. The system applies your accent color when the current value in General > Accent color preferences is multicolor. https://support.apple.com/en-mt/guide/mac-help/mh15217/mac
I’m totally okay with “being inspired” (cloning) macOS, it should be viewed as good thing because Apple does spend a lot in UX research however lets make thing properly.
I don’t hate it, it looks better than what was there before, no doubts there, but at the same time they could’ve just made it better.
How? Improving something like this is hard. Do you have any proposals?
All the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add margins, accents and shades. Any design undergraduate should be aware of this, however the GNOME team totally missed it.
I’m afraid to tell you that in 2024 nobody cares about that. “Shape following feeling” in MD is the best example I can think of. Now aesthetics is preferred to make people buy (or use for free in this case) the product. People are not tech savvy. They want good looks and GNOME nailed it imo. It’s stunning. They even got me but I do care about aesthetics unfortunately. I’m a spoilt mass consumer. Eject me if you will.
accent color
Accent color taboo. Let’s not talk about accent color.
How? Improving something like this is hard. Do you have any proposals?
I’ve submitted a fair share of UX in-depth analysis with examples and links to literature on the GNOME team blog and they tend to ignore / comment dismissingly and then remove my comments after a few weeks.
Accent color taboo. Let’s not talk about accent color.
Ahahaha
Judging from your post and replies, you look very aggressive, rude and demanding so no wonder the devs deleted your comments.
In-depth analysis ≠ random ramblings on lemmy.
To be fair, he could also just be fed up after a long time being ignored for what he thinks is quite an important design decision.
the most popular
Citation very much needed
one of the most stable DEs on Linux
Hardly, but I’m guessing you’re thinking of reliability instead. Not really surprising when it’s so stripped down that vanilla GNOME is pretty much unusable. When you extend it, in order to get a proper DE, that goes right out the window.
That fact makes it especially funny that vanilla GNOME is by far the fattest DE around. How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.
Citation very much needed
Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora use it as the default and they are very big distros. Idk if it’s enough but that’s what I know.
Hardly, but I’m guessing you’re thinking of reliability instead.
Idk. KDE was unstable for me and it always has bugs after major releases. They should test things better.
Not really surprising when it’s so stripped down that vanilla GNOME is pretty much unusable.
Personal opinion.
That fact makes it especially funny that vanilla GNOME is by far the fattest DE around.
Deepin.
How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.
You have a point here. Qt is better in terms of efficiency afaik and performance is extremely important for an OS component. But hey at least it’s getting better over time.
Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora use it as the default and they are very big distros. Idk if it’s enough but that’s what I know.
I mean, that’s pretty irrelevant. If you were for example at least comparing the downloads of fedora Vs spins, that would be a beginning of something.
Idk. KDE was unstable for me and it always has bugs after major releases. They should test things better.
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In case it wasn’t obvious: stability is not reliability
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So does GNOME, especially when you have a lot of extensions
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KDE is pretty crap in both regards
Personal opinion.
Is that why every distro comes with vanilla GNOME? Oh wait…
But hey at least it’s getting better over time.
Meanwhile over the years KDE got lighter than GNOME while constantly piling on features.
This is turning into a meaningless argument now. I don’t want to continue.
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How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.
It can happen when you have to develop all your technology on your own instead of relying on the work of a hundred-million dollar company that does the heavy lifting for you.
Gnome is so much better than Mac OS
Also it is kind of insulting to call gnome a clone of something else. It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.
It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.
There’s a lot of ideology at play here.
Yeah you are right. It just annoys me when people call it a cheap knock off.
Wait - Gnome user here (heavily modified and with multiple extensions) …
macOS window management and trying to using it via keyboard is a totally miserable experience (forced to use it at work :-/ ) … at the same time, Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags. I still happily prefer Gnome over macOS on my desktop for literally everything, macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings, setup cannot be properly automated, the ‘auto features’ totally suck and do everything I do not want them to do and macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…
Gnome sucks, but it sucks less for me than all other alternatives on the desktop at the moment…
My biggest reason to stick with Gnome are Wayland, Evolution/Online Accounts and that I can automatically configure Gnome to something usable with dconf/gsettings. I am not holding my breath that KDE ever gets their KMail story under control, stability as in zero crashes and being fully configurable via Ansible. The very moment this happens, I’ll happily jump ship. (Of course also waiting for Wayland support for Xfce :-P)
Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags
Isn’t this ironic? The DE with a user base that is way more tech savvy people thinks users can’t use tags.
macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings,
What are you talking about?? At least on macOS app icons are consistent not the crap they are on GNOME.
macOS (…) setup cannot be properly automated
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple makes automated setup even easier than it is on MS ecosystems, companies can literally buy a computer on the Apple Store and have it shipped to an employee with the companie’s profile pre-installed by Apple without even needing to touch or open the box. The employee get’s the computer, opens the box and just has to login with this corporate account.
You’ve Apple’s own MDM, Jamf, JumpCloud and so many others. Even Ansible can be used to configure, setup and automated macOS deployments.
macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…
Well at least it doesn’t like a 5 second pointless fade animation after every single click like GNOME does, nor does it bundle web technologies for theming that make the DE be as slow as it can get when it comes to rendering a new window.
I wish the thing about tags was ironic
Concerning the rest of your points: Icons are one of the few things I never had an issue with in Gnome. ;-)
Concerning automated setups, the only system I care fore is Linux and am forced to use macOS. For my use cases, I don’t care about the tooling/possibilities for companies to install crap on my machine (my company does that). Using Ansible to automate my setup for macOS is theoretically possible, but such a crappy experience compared to Linux, that I don’t bother. Not to mention no unified installation/update system on macOS and the shitty default apps like Finder, Window management etc. The solution which sucks the least for me is using macOS as dump VPN driver for my virtual Linux box, so I can get shit done.
… no need to argue about bad Gnome defaults, it is trivial to disable all animations and the shell is fast enough even on my netbook. :-)
