Since it was mentioned during the Workstation WG meeting that there may be some "developer focused UX testing", I figured this was a good time to point out a few things that I think would make the out-of-the-box developer (or any other user) experience better. I'm trying really hard to make Gnome work for me, but I'm constantly tempted to go back to XFCE. I would much rather stick with defaults (Gnome), since I know it will always be better supported and offer better integration.
Note that I'm now running the F21 channel (pre-alpha I guess you would call it) so everything is up-to-date - Gnome 3.13.91).
* Lack of contrast between focuses and non-focused windows I think this may have actually gotten worse since 3.12 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735779
* Switching to a virtual desktop loses active window focus https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735135
* Keyboard shortcuts launch apps in background I have the same exact problem with a hotkey to launch konsole https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=699685
* Lots and lots of focus issues. I found a bunch of random Gnome Bugzillas and I don't know which ones exactly describe the problems that I experience, but let's just say that window focus behavior is broken. For example, in Firefox, I open the About Firefox dialog and when I dismiss it (either by hitting Esc or clicking the X) the main Firefox window no longer has the focus (no window does!) https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645035 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678320 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=708254 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732762 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690693
Together the above issues make the user experience pretty much unusable. Random and unpredictable focus changes/problems, coupled with the inability to easily identify the focused window makes it impossible to know what will happen when I press a key.
Other things that I think would help, but aren't deal-breakers:
* Gratuitous use of white-space on UI components As a developer, I want as much "stuff" to fit on my screen as possible and lots of extra spacing around widgets is wasting real estate https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659647
* Make it possible to not display the shield https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=696330
And a few more things with no Bugzillas that I know of (these problems mostly arose when I upgraded, since Frippery stopped working, and rather than fixing it, I decided to use the built-in Applications Menu and Window List plugins, since they ship with Fedora):
* The Window List is great, except for two problems and one suggestion: * Again, active vs inactive window has almost no contrast difference * It always shows windows from all virtual desktops. Not only is this undesired behavior, but if a window is set to "Always on Visible Workspace" then it will show the window "n" times where n is the number of workspaces * It would be great if the Window list could show the actual tray icons (instead of a count) as well as the actual virtual desktops * I wish the clock could go back into the corner (I use lots of other computers and on all other computers the clock is in the corner, so my eye always goes there automatically) * I wish there was an easy way to get an icon bar along the top bar (like Frippery Panel Favorites) * I'd prefer horizontal instead of vertical virtual desktops
Sure, most of those issues could be solved by using Frippery (though the new Window List and Applications Menu is much prettier) but shipping useful tools out of the box would be better than having to find and install an addon every time.
It would also be good if the Return to Monitor extension would be updated and shipped as part of Fedora (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/842/return-to-monitor/) since many fullscreen apps cause all of the windows to rearrange themselves on multi-head setups.
I know that's a lot, but I'm pretty sure that everything above constitute basic UX needs. Certainly XFCE (and for the most part, KDE, though that has other problems) (and also Windows and Mac) handle these situations nicely. I really think it would be beneficial to Fedora if the default desktop experience was able to handle this.
Thanks,
-Adam Batkin
On Wed, 2014-09-10 at 22:16 -0400, Adam Batkin wrote:
For example, in Firefox, I open the About Firefox dialog and when I dismiss it (either by hitting Esc or clicking the X) the main Firefox window no longer has the focus (no window does!)
It works in F20, so this is a regression.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:16 AM, Adam Batkin adam@batkin.net wrote:
- The Window List is great, except for two problems and one suggestion:
- [...]
- It always shows windows from all virtual desktops.
No, it only shows windows/applications from the current one. However ...
if a window is set to "Always on Visible Workspace" then it will show the window "n" times where n is the number of workspaces
... this is a bug (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=736398)
It would also be good if the Return to Monitor extension would be updated and shipped as part of Fedora (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/842/return-to-monitor/)
That behavior is now built-in in mutter.
On 09/11/2014 05:52 AM, Florian Müllner wrote:
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:16 AM, Adam Batkin adam@batkin.net wrote:
It would also be good if the Return to Monitor extension would be updated and shipped as part of Fedora (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/842/return-to-monitor/)
That behavior is now built-in in mutter.
Awesome. And it even partially works. It's fine for "regular" windows, just not gkrellm.
-Adam Batkin
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Adam Batkin adam@batkin.net wrote:
On 09/11/2014 05:52 AM, Florian Müllner wrote:
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:16 AM, Adam Batkin adam@batkin.net wrote:
It would also be good if the Return to Monitor extension would be updated and shipped as part of Fedora (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/842/return-to-monitor/)
That behavior is now built-in in mutter.
Awesome. And it even partially works. It's fine for "regular" windows, just not gkrellm.
gkrellm is probably using an overide redirect window which means it tells the window manger "please leave me alone".
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Adam Batkin -
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Michael Catanzaro