GNOME 2.10 Beta screenshots

If you really dig 3d-eye candy have a look at SUNs "Project Looking Glass" here.

Personally I cant see any point in having a 3d UI. In some sense the modern desktops are infact 3d.

It seems that are a certain number of persistent bugs that, for some reasons, developers are reluctant to fix. Now, since even a cursory glance to http://planet.gnome.org/ should be enough to see that devs are doing an incredible effort to fix as many bugs as possible, how about creating a page where we list the bugs that, as GNOME users, we find most obnoxious? And perhaps enhancemets requests, as well? Because either we learn to fix what bothers us, or we have the GNOME devs fix it for us: tertium non datur.

rehdon

Isn't that the purpose of Bugzilla?

You mean through the bug vote mechanism? That doesn't seem to work to well, does it? I was thinking more about a page where GNOME users can discuss about bugs/enhancement they would like to see fixed/implemented.

Besides, whining on an Internet forum is surprisingly emotional.

Spare us your wisdom, thank you. I can understand some people's frustration, if you can't I suggest you work a little more on your empathy skills.

rehdon

My comment about Bugzilla was sarcasm and I was attempting to highlight the fact that the bug voting system DOESN'T provide what was requested.

Man, I take back all of the above! But I suggest that you get training in your "sarcasm mode" ;))

Also, my comment about whining on an Internet forum was completely serious. I've never filed a bug report, but that big long schpiel above was my doing. I just got into it, you know?

Hmmm, you really should check if there are bug reports for all the problems you listed and, if not, create new ones. Bug vote may be nearly ininfluent, but surely if developers don't know about bugs they can't fix them.

rehdon

Also, why does Metacity insist on placing chat windows from GAIM over top of the GAIM contact list? I end up manually moving it every time.

Worse yet, is the reconnect status dialog, with the keyboard focus defaulted to the cancel button. It pops up and steals focus, usually while I'm typing something, so by the time I know its there, I've already cancelled it. To make matters worse, if it fails, it just keeps popping up, and stealing focus.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, without an HIG2, we have no idea if the improvements from HIG1 are helping, or making things worse. The HIG is used to defend elimination of options far too often. Less options don't help the noobs, better organized options do.

So, um, perhaps you should actually be using the beta of 2.10 instead of complaining about behavior that existed in previous Gnome versions? :-)

So, um, maybe I am...

The organistation / structure of the menu is becoming rather convoluted to say the least, not to mention takes up more real estate on the panel.

Personally I prefer the old "Main Menu - single menu", but agree with the parent poster that the "Applications - Action" menu bar made a lot more sense than the new setup, for all the reasons he stated.

Further to this I also wonder why configuration tools that require root access are displayed in the menu when logged in as a 'normal' user. This in my opinion is quite unnecessary, as it adds more options than a normal user needs, or should have 'access' to. Just imagine the calls to help desk "what's the password for root".

With regards to all configuration tools I would like to see the return of the old "control center" similar to Gnome 1.x. Perhaps with a tabbed interface to organise the various categories, and 'intelligent' enough to display options suitable to the level of the user, (ie root vs normal).

This would have the further benefit of simplifying the menus considerably.

One last thing is please bring back a graphical menu editor. Editing .desktop files is tedious. Not only that consider a new user migrating across from MS Windows or even KDE, who would expect such a feature, and most likely would not have a clue what a .desktop file is.

Cheers.

Desktop menu
------------------------------

* nobody will have an intuitive idea about the difference of "Preferences" and "Administration"

Would "Administration" be like the current "System Configuration"? If so, yes there are reasons to keep them separate. One contains features of how you like your desktop: ie, the speed of the mouse, the font to use, etc... The other contains administrative tools like tools to edit the users and groups on the system, tools to configure your network interfaces, and tools to adjust the date and time. The first menu set determines how you like your applications to behave...the second ensures that they will run correctly.

why is Gconf in the "Applications"-menu and not here in either "Preferences" or "Administration"?

Good question. I would agree that it should be moved to Preferences, and perhaps renamed? Something like "Advanced Preferences" or something to that effect?

20 entries in the submenu "Preferences" without any grouping are too many; it should imho at least group the most important/used ones at top: Keyboard, Mouse, Theme, Background and Screen

I agree that the prefs menu is starting to get out of hand. Perhaps a redesign of the layout is in order? Or at least grouping similar items like Background, Font, Screensaver, and Windows into a single "Display" app.

why does "shared folders" go into Desktop-Administration and not into "Places"?

I believe (I hope) that "Shared Folders" is a place to manage your shared folders (ie, create new shares) and not a nautilus location where you can view all your shares. Mac OSX has something similar to this where you have a single point of contact for every share in the system and it's an excellent way of doing it.

Applications menu
------------------------------------

* only two things: what is the difference between Office/Evolution and Internet/Evolution Mail (slides 5&6)
* why is the Office entry overly cluttered with "OpenOffice.org"

Very good points

* gnome already has a completly different "places" menu in nautilus -> that's confusing / lack of continuity

I'd agree with the second for certainty (unless there are plans on integrating the two). Nautilus also brings up some locations that the Gnome Places menu should have (like "Trash" and perhaps "CD Creator").

I'd also like to bring up the issue of naming convention in the menu system. It seems that some items are given a functional name, such as Rhythmbox (styled "Music Player"), and others are given their full title (ie, "Gaim Instant Messenger"). Personally I prefer the functional method only because it decreases menu clutter (see parent poster's point about OpenOffice.org, with which I'd be inclined to agree). Regardless, it would be nice to see some consistency.

This is not to try to dump all over Ubuntu. Please take this as constructive criticism. I personally run Ubuntu on two laptops and a server and overall it's one of the best distros I've ever used.

I'm not sure how many of those things are specific to Ubuntu, but I'm using a self compiled Gnome 2.9, and I no longer have menu entries for those desktop prefs. All I have is the Gnome1-ish "GNOME Control Center", which looks like this, and I like it very much.

I agree with most of what the grandparent is saying and with your comments. I disagree with the functional naming. I don't think "Rhythmbox Music Player" is too cluttered, and it fits in better when you have alternative players installed, such as "Muine Music Player."

Somebody please file these comments with Gnome Bugzilla so that changes can be considered in the core distribution. The Ubuntu distribution can certainly change the menu scheme, but the default configuration should be good to begin with.

with naming having the names starting with a program name is that users that not know the program name will have harder to find them as the can't search in alphabetical order. That is why Music Player (Muine) is better than Muine Music Player. It would also make it possible to create submenus in a natural way in case multiple Music Players was installed.

Music Player (Muine) is better than Muine Music Player only for a new user who does not know the names of the different music players but after a few days, what you want is "Muine", not "music player". When people want to use the application they are used to (Word, Firefox, Photoshop, Gimp, Abiword, Frozen Bubbles, whatever ...), they do not want to have to search between the various "text processor", "web browser", "graphics editor", "game" strings before finding the relevant information.

When using software for a long time I always develop a mapping of interesting menu entries to screen coordinates (click on the left top of the screen, open fourth menu, click 2nd menu entry). I really don't care for the labels. Beginners do. I don't think this is a major issue. Is it really that harassing?

i don't see any flameboite;)

4. - Finish the gnome integration of Firefox! All it needs are stock icons and it will be perfect.

Firefox is neither part of the GNOME project nor uses it GTK as toolkit of choice. A few icons will not turn it into a GNOME application.

I can agree with the VFS and the menu issue but I don't see how bitching about some volume-control would help anyone. It's not even a bug but a lack of a feature. If you want it so much, why not hire some dev to do it?

Excepted for the name-calling part (how's that supposed to help, even if they deserved it?), I agree with the parent post. Sometimes is very frustrating to try and reach the developers, and that's particularly true for a software project as complex and important as GNOME.

The only solution is to gently insist, I see no other way but a sane feedback from users to developers.

rehdon

The only solution is to gently insist

All that EVER gets you, is a "we know better than you" answer. Bitching about it doesn't work either, but at least you can vent some frustration in the process.