salparadise said:
> Unity/Gnome 3 broke a number of standards and principles for no good
reason.
>
> The most important one is that GUI standards were pretty much universal,
> whether you used OSX or Windows or Linux, certain aspects were reliably
> similar and so one didn't have to spend time figuring out non-intuitive
> methods. Gnome3 and Unity threw this out of the window.
What "universal" "standards" did GNOME 3 and Unity "[throw] out of the
window"?
A window list? I guess I can give you that; you need to add a window list
with an extension if you want one (of course, there are many such extensions
on extensions.gnome.org). GNOME abandoned the window list in favor of the
activities overview. This wasn't for "no good reason" at all. There are
marked advantages to the new approach: it works with touch screens, it
doesn't take up space when you don't need to see it, and it's easier to know
which one you're looking for at times (don't tell me you've never had the
problem of having two very similarly-named windows and having to figure out
which one you're looking for by trial and error).
The way you launch programs? Can't give you that. There was no
pseudo-standard for how the main menu works to begin with; Windows has
everything in a sub-menu called "all programs", GNOME 2 had different
sub-menus for different categories, etc. How you get to the GNOME Shell
programs menu isn't a whole lot different than Windows 7: go to the
Activities overview and you have your favorites on the left; click on the
applications button and you get the rest of them. This wasn't for "no good
reason", either; you more often need the activities overview to change the
window, and you can search for programs anyway.
I can't even think of anything else that's significantly different between
GNOME Shell and whatever pseudo-standard you say exists. Unity doesn't even
have these differences in the first place.
But even if GNOME Shell were completely different from everything else, it
doesn't follow that it's more difficult to learn. I can't comment on how easy
it is to learn GNOME Shell, but the only way I can think of that someone
would be unable to figure out how to use it is if they have the attitude that
computers are scary, or if they have the attitude that they're "not good with
computers", because as long as you have the bright idea of, you know,
clicking that button in the corner that says "activities", you have a short
list of default favorites, one of which is "Help", a button that gives you
applications, and a box that says "type to search". This is not something
that's difficult to figure out. It's about the most obviously laid-out
interface I know of; anyone who is able to read can figure it out. Saying
that it must be difficult to learn because it is different is like saying
that iOS must be difficult to learn because it was different from everything
well-known before it.
So we're back to square one: the only grievance you have shared is that GNOME
Shell is different. Sorry, but being different is not a legitimate reason to
say that it's a "terrible" design.
