Ubuntu 18.04 - GNOME - Desktop icon conflict

Mon May 14 17:20:20 UTC 2018

On Mon, 14 May 2018 at 18:40, Jim <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:

> That's certainly true. Since that time they seem to almost delight in
> arbitrarily removing features and functionality.  Removing the ability
> to have two panes open in Nautilus seemed like the most user unfriendly
> thing you could do to a file manager. I can't remember ever seeing any
> reason of why it was done, other than that's what the developers
> decided. I used Nemo for awhile but for some reason never felt that
> comfortable with it. I've been using Double Commander for quite awhile
> now and don't miss Nautilus at all anymore.

That in itself wasn't a deal-breaker for me, but the desktop icons thing
more or less is. I also dislike the desktop layout. GNOME 3 fans tell me
"it keeps out of my way" but that huge top panel, almost totally unused, is
an egregious waste of space. Along with desktop icons, notification icons
in the top panel are now deprecated. The username/network/volume/brightness
controls are all merged into 1, for no good reason I can see.

At least Unity put the menus in there -- a good big target to hit.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/fitts-law-and-infinite-width/

This is the thing that irks me.

Many parts of older UIs, back in the 1980s when things were still
developing, were designed one the basis of solid academic research. So, for
example, Fitt's Law is behind the Mac's top menu bar.

Lots of people curse at it, but they don't realise there is science behind
it.

Microsoft, constrained by look-a

But once there was a difference, people started to form preferences, and
holy wars raged over it.

Apple's single mouse button. There are studies, with solid numbers. It
takes *thought* to pick what button to click. A lot for beginners, a
fraction of a second for experts, but thought, every time. So Apple reduced
it to one.

Microsoft, appealing to "power users", gave you 2. The original Unix
machines, and Acorn, 3.

3 is more powerful, but it takes decision-making time.

That, and having to aim at in-window menu bars, has wasted millions,
billions, of man-hours across the world over 3½ decades.

In System 7, Apple made the titles of aliases italic. You can't set
filenames in italics, so if the filename was in italics, it wasn't you. It
was the system telling you something -- that this wasn't the original file,
it was a pointer to it.

In Win95, Microsoft couldn't do that, because look-and-feel lawsuits, so it
put a little curvy arrow in the corner. Easier to miss, but perhaps more
logical. Later, Apple copied that back again. (!)

Lawsuits and holy war. Powerful reasons, but bogus ones. People don't
*like* Apple's choices, but they had *reasons*.

Now, that stuff is moot, because of touchscreens.

But the GNOME devs, in the admirable pursuit of simplicity and a desktop
that's as easy as a phone, are not doing the science. I suspect they don't
even *know* the research existed.

They're just identifying features they don't use, and removing them. No
consultation, no research, just "we can get rid of that".

But it is virtually an axiom: you cannot get to a simple design by starting
with a complicated design and removing bits.

Simplicity has to be the goal from the start.

You can't write a haiku by starting with a novel and removing words.

But that's what they are trying to do.
But once there was a difference, people started to form preferences, and
holy wars raged over it.