"There's been talks of "TweakUI" type functionalities in the past, with no one ever showing up, and putting their money where their mouth is, and implementing it."
While I've got no horse in this race, that's not exactly true... See: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/
According to Ubuntu popcon data, there are at least 97747 installs of the ubuntu-tweak package.
I could't help commenting that this preferences app reminds me of KDE 3's control panel. Of course, the lack of excessive options still makes a lot of difference!
25 February 2010 at 21:37
Anonymous said...
Looks like a great idea, keep in mind secrets killer feature, anyone can submit a new secret for review (http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit ) and secrets keeps its db up to date with the online version, that's a great thing.
The mockup theme looks also great, any chance to get it for real?
25 February 2010 at 21:50
Anonymous said...
If the app is extensible via plugins, easy to write so it doesn't remain unmantained then should be a nice win.
Mike, Ethan: you guys need to read the post a bit better...
Andrew: Ubuntu tweak is nice, except that it's not "GNOME tweak"... I'm sure that bits could be reused. I'll make sure that contacting the Ubuntu Tweak people gets on Vincent's TODO list.
Anonymous #1: No technical details have been discussed, but when the app was mentioned, I mentioned the online database as well.
I see three things here that seem to reference theme/look and feel type information.
How does this relate to / integrate into a setting the overall system them (something allowing me to download a meta-theme that will update the login screen, mouse pointers, colour scheme/window theming, icons, firefox/wine/etc., theme, etc.)
While I like GConf, I understand the need for something like this, but this design, while pretty, doesn't seem like it will scale well. In the mock-up there are only a few applications shown in the left frame. On a real system, you could have a very very very long scroll through all the apps that are installed. It makes more sense to use some sort of categorization similar to how the main menu is structured. While boring, it is very easy for the user to navigate and it would scale very well with a careful use of collapsing fields like an accordion. It would also be nice looking and be in keeping with the look of Gnome Shell (I'm assuming this is more of a 3+ thing anyway).
Really, I was just wondering if this kind of cool window decoration is possible to achieve client-side wise. I searched the web for some notes about it, and I found this one live.gnome.org/GTK+/ClientSideDecorations. But I guess it is, and to answer you, I don't wish to see such a decoration on all of my windows, but it can definitely look cool for some special applications (something you run once in a while).
26 February 2010 at 22:47
Anonymous said...
n't think moving the options away from the application they apply to is never a good idea. they don't seem related and coders tend to not expose options when away from their application. why is it so hard to make an "advanced switch" so you have your default options ui but get to extensive-options-mode via a simple click? kind of like what vlc does. This is a divers mode and people actually use the programs on their pc differently. Taking options away makes each application less universal and creates the need for more applications.
Anonymous: No offense, but VLC isn't an application I would use as an example of what a carefully designed application would look like.
The application itself is featureful, and a great player/encoder, but not something I would take as an example for how to present advanced settings.
28 February 2010 at 12:59
Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
3 March 2010 at 03:14
Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
18 March 2010 at 04:37
Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
18 March 2010 at 08:04
Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
30 June 2010 at 08:42
Currently at the GNOME UX hackfest in London, where plenty of good discussions are happening. One thing we discussed recently is removing preferences. Everybody loves when we remove preferences because it gives them a reason to vent steam, and we love receiving abuse (“- Are you being sarcastic? - No, I never am.”). There's been talks of "TweakUI" type functionalities in the past, with no one ever showing up, and putting their money where their mouth is, and implementing it. Taking a well-known MacOS application as a way to represent super-tweaky (or crack-rock, depending on which way you look at it) settings and preferences, Jakub (with help from the ever tweaking Hylke) mocked up “GNOME Plumbing”. [Image]PLUMB!!1! The honorable Vincent Untz has volunteered with implementing the settings pane for the gnome-control-center to go along with the changes in other capplets. The reasoning behind removing settings is never made to antagonise people. There are various reasons, taking into account the increased complexity of preferences and settings, the ratio of people using such features, and possibly the maintenance costs of having more tweakable bits. Contact your local designer if in doubt :) A lot of us had hoped that gconf-editor could serve as a crutch, hoping the community (in that case, the community of the more vocal people that complain about the changes) would handle creating the settings tweaker that was alluded to so many times. We're hoping this will be the end of complaints when features get “moved” for design decisions. PS: We copied a Mac app, not because it's a Mac app, but because it had the simplest UI for displaying seemingly unrelated settings, and making potentially complicated settings easy to understand. Thanks guys for making hard things easier.
"We're (re)moving settings again"
21 Comments -
"There's been talks of "TweakUI" type functionalities in the past, with no one ever showing up, and putting their money where their mouth is, and implementing it."
While I've got no horse in this race, that's not exactly true... See: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/
According to Ubuntu popcon data, there are at least 97747 installs of the ubuntu-tweak package.
25 February 2010 at 19:12
Will GNOME finally be beautiful? :D
25 February 2010 at 20:36
Now on this screenshot, the window decoration we can see, is this called "client side window decoration?"
It looks very clean ;-)
25 February 2010 at 20:48
Not having a menu bar can make any app look cleaner, but that is indeed a very nice theme.
Link?
25 February 2010 at 21:32
I could't help commenting that this preferences app reminds me of KDE 3's control panel. Of course, the lack of excessive options still makes a lot of difference!
25 February 2010 at 21:37
Looks like a great idea, keep in mind secrets killer feature, anyone can submit a new secret for review (http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit
) and secrets keeps its db up to date with the online version, that's a great thing.
The mockup theme looks also great, any chance to get it for real?
25 February 2010 at 21:50
If the app is extensible via plugins, easy to write so it doesn't remain unmantained then should be a nice win.
25 February 2010 at 22:14
That looks awesome.
@andrewsomething - that is what happens when an app is developed in a silo instead of being done upstream. No one outside of the silo ever see it.
25 February 2010 at 22:28
Mike, Ethan: you guys need to read the post a bit better...
Andrew: Ubuntu tweak is nice, except that it's not "GNOME tweak"... I'm sure that bits could be reused. I'll make sure that contacting the Ubuntu Tweak people gets on Vincent's TODO list.
Anonymous #1: No technical details have been discussed, but when the app was mentioned, I mentioned the online database as well.
25 February 2010 at 22:28
woo rock on jimmac and hbons!
25 February 2010 at 22:56
I see three things here that seem to reference theme/look and feel type information.
How does this relate to / integrate into a setting the overall system them (something allowing me to download a meta-theme that will update the login screen, mouse pointers, colour scheme/window theming, icons, firefox/wine/etc., theme, etc.)
26 February 2010 at 01:34
While I like GConf, I understand the need for something like this, but this design, while pretty, doesn't seem like it will scale well. In the mock-up there are only a few applications shown in the left frame. On a real system, you could have a very very very long scroll through all the apps that are installed. It makes more sense to use some sort of categorization similar to how the main menu is structured. While boring, it is very easy for the user to navigate and it would scale very well with a careful use of collapsing fields like an accordion. It would also be nice looking and be in keeping with the look of Gnome Shell (I'm assuming this is more of a 3+ thing anyway).
Best/Liam
26 February 2010 at 01:43
But actually, I am curious to see if this kind of window decoration is something that is possible to achieve with the client-side window decoration.
26 February 2010 at 11:42
@Mike: Why shouldn't this be possible with a normal Metacity theme?
26 February 2010 at 11:49
Really, I was just wondering if this kind of cool window decoration is possible to achieve client-side wise. I searched the web for some notes about it, and I found this one live.gnome.org/GTK+/ClientSideDecorations. But I guess it is, and to answer you, I don't wish to see such a decoration on all of my windows, but it can definitely look cool for some special applications (something you run once in a while).
26 February 2010 at 22:47
n't think moving the options away from the application they apply to is never a good idea. they don't seem related and coders tend to not expose options when away from their application. why is it so hard to make an "advanced switch" so you have your default options ui but get to extensive-options-mode via a simple click? kind of like what vlc does. This is a divers mode and people actually use the programs on their pc differently. Taking options away makes each application less universal and creates the need for more applications.
27 February 2010 at 11:40
Anonymous: No offense, but VLC isn't an application I would use as an example of what a carefully designed application would look like.
The application itself is featureful, and a great player/encoder, but not something I would take as an example for how to present advanced settings.
28 February 2010 at 12:59
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
3 March 2010 at 03:14
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
18 March 2010 at 04:37
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
18 March 2010 at 08:04
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
30 June 2010 at 08:42