I originally posted this to the gnome-list mailing list in the hopes of reaching
some type of authoritative response.
So far there has been no response from anyone close to the developers in question.
This “bug” was brought to my attention when I recently tried out Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 to see what new improvements Ubuntu and Gnome in general had. Upon going through my usual routine of setting preferences to my liking, I could not find the option to put back the menu icons in the 3 main menu’s provided by Gnome in the top panel. Only some of the icons
are shown, others are not. There used to be a setting to bring them all back. This was previously just an annoyance to have to complete the look
of the menu’s.
I went to #ubuntu+1 on Freenode and asked if this lack of preference was just a temporary setback in the alpha developemnt of Ubuntu. I was
pointed to this “bug”:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592756
Reading the first comment:
“Discussed many times. We should remove the interface tab. Basically
everthing there is a user experience design cop-out. It only belongs in
a tweak UI tool – - but only if someone cares enough to write one.”
“Discussed many times”
Discussed where? Were Gnome users asked for feedback on this decision?
“It only belongs in a tweak UI tool – but only if someone cares enough to write one.”
User experience preferences for gnome should now be the responsibility of third party developers who might or might not develop tools to put
back user experience preferences which gnome developers created and then removed in the first place?
The rest of the comments in “bug” are people disagreeing with the original developer in his decision to remove the preference competely.
Save for 1 developer who agree’d and implemented the descision stating “majority of users”. What majority of users? So far I’m seeing most
people disagreeing with the descision. Not to mention, I don’t see the majority of users requesting preferences be removed regardless if they
are of interest to them or not. Why this descision? Is this preference really that much of a bane on the system resources? Why are we removing
half the icons from the menu’s making them looked half finished and unpolished? Why not remove all icons and be done with it?
I voiced my opinion in the comments of this bug just like the “majority of users” were doing. My comment and one other was removed and my
account on bugzilla disabled.
So, where does a user go to voice his opinions on this type of developer decision where said developers will read it and hopefully impact the
descision? Where can a user submit feedback on bringing back a preference that was removed?
Can we please get this preference put back? I don’t care where it is, but we shouldn’t have to wait for a third party tool to reimplement
preferences to finish the look of the menu’s that have already existed but were removed.
I’m glad that the icons are removed. Looks much nicer now.
About the icons thing, I find it interesting that your screenshot from Bugzilla[1] claims that the previous looked more “complete”.
[1]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/102233/Bug592756.png
In this design, icons are used very consistently: when they refer to a device, application or file.
Previously, they were used everywhere we had an icon. This results in something amazingly ugly: the odd menu item without an icon only lacks an icon because no artist has made one. THAT looks incomplete, because lack of completeness is in fact the principle reason why the screen is not smothered in tiny icons.
I think this design will make a lot more sense if GTK+ and themes start to approach menus differently, putting less emphasis on the icons (maybe shifting them to the right) so users don’t pop between seeing icons and seeing text when they scan a menu. MacOS does these nicely.
The rest of the reason is that icons tend to be horrible things that steal attention from the considerably more meaningful written text (which can be localized). I for one would be very glad if GNOME hated them.
After twenty years I think it’s a given that the bizarre visual metaphors icons try to convey don’t make sense.
The role where they CAN make sense is when they aren’t trying to be metaphors, but properly describing the object they refer to. That is what this is doing.
I’m afraid spamming bugzilla with things that have been said many times before leads to this sort of action. GNOME developers are not here to be abused.
>GNOME developers are not here to be abused.
Nope. they are here TO abuse.
I mean, bugzilla is not a forum. But it’s the only forum we can communicate directly to them, apart from spamming their blog.
And unlike other communities, where people get banned for being offensive, they tend to ban people just because they disagree, and they won’t just drop it.
I think if you change something, and there is a strong user reaction to it, you should at be polite enough to enter into an actual conversation about that choice.
Sure, it’s free and all, and they don’t have to do that. But if THAT’s their attitude, it’s time to fork.
Hell, it’s been long overdue. I don’t think any opensource project has such a bad reputation for who they interact with their users as gnome does.
It’s just borderline abuse.
We know what’s better for you.
We won’t talk about it.
We will claim afterwards to represent everybody.
But in the end, I think they are just fooling us.
They represent nobody.
And it’s not the actual developpers, it’s the dictorial regime surround them, that creates this atmosphere.
I think, when a project requires their contributers to engage in civil debate, is a project that worth fighting for.
Unfortunately, i don’t like KDE very much, but perhaps the run-away gnome-users have more luck communicating with them.
nnonix :
That might have been true in 3.x series, the 4.x series tries to not overload the ui as someone noticed it’s not the best thing to do.
Not to mention the threatening manor their ‘admin’ take. Talk about stifling the discussion, they don’t ‘want’ a discussion. I fail to see how that fits with the CoC he pretends to be protecting.
Bah .. KDE. Rather than talking about one missing check box in Gnome we’d be discussing 20 arbitrary ones in 7 different places, some of which are redundant. (Obviously I’m exaggerating .. but the point still stands, one extreme to the other).
If we just had KDE with sensible defaults, and extra functionality hidden in plugins, we could all just drop gnome.
Why don’t you start or join a “Tweak UI” project?
http://ubuntu-tweak.com/
But the point is, I shouldn’t have to start a project just to put features back into a product that were there at one point already. If the feature demands a 3rd party project to bring it back, then obviously it is worth not removing it in the first place.
This is why I prefer the KDE community.
Settings and personal styles are important.
I totaly agree with, I don’t think that the maority of users like the no icon look. Makes sad to see such ignorance. Maybe it’s time to look for alternatives…
I got more or less the same response when I asked about the same issue a few weeks ago and I can understand the logic behind the decision, but I still do not agree with it.
I think oversimplification is starting to become a problem with Gnome. It’s one thing to keep things simple but simply removing options like this is going to driver users away – especially is we’re left having to use gconf just to get icons or change the toolbar layout.
Well, i totally agree, they remove gui options which is a shame. When i complained that GNOME devs keeps removing options instead of adding them in freenode irc, i was kicked. Nobody really cares about what users think. But theres a way to get back those icons:
open gconf-editor, and then go to /desktop/gnome/interface/ . Then you will find something like menus_have_icons, so mark it.
Thankfully i’ve discovered kde, and since kde 4.3 kde4 looked acceptable to me, and the new 4.4 is awesome, but the best fact is kde developers keeps adding features instead of removing them
You should consider using KDE.
This is just how Gnome is. This is not a first time something like that happens. Gnome devs know better what’s best for their users and they stick to it/force it.
The behavior of Gnome developpers which systematically ignored the users is the reason why I am using KDE and I think that it’s a big mistake from ubuntu to not push it more. Their developper are listing to users and I never see a bugzilla account closed because of a comments in a bug report.
Try gconf-editor keys /desktop/gnome/interface/
There should be key named “menus have icons” with checkbox. At least in Karmic is. Also you could somehow support this bug to wake up GNOME developers…
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/496138
I don’t get why they remove icons everywhere either.
Esp. diabling icons in buttons was a very bad idea. I’ve seen many developers creating custom buttons with ICON_SIZE_MENU icons instead of using available stock buttons just to get their icons back. This is going to make gnome apps very inconsistent.
The GNOME devs argument for removing icons from buttons was that icons make buttons too large in height. SO why don’t they just change the size of ICON_SIZE_BUTTON to that of ICON_SIZE_MENU instead? Much cleaner and improved usability (buttons can be identified quicker again).
“Discussed where? Were Gnome users asked for feedback on this decision?”
There were several posts about it on planet GNOME. There is the original bug report and discussions in #gnome-art on irc. The decision was made in the open.
“Can we please get this preference put back?”
If you do that for every change that (vocal) users will resist at first there will never be any progress.
Because users ARE NOT gui and hig experts. Those decisions need to be made by people experienced in GUI design. Not be pro-users which are able to use bugzillas and have will to do so.
Let GNOME developers do this and don’t troll just implement your “tweak UI tool”. If GNOME users will start to design GUI then we will end with unusable KDE-copy…
Gnome developers are NOT hig or gui designer experts, they are standard programmers with the arrogance of a petty art student. Not with anything approaching the skill of one.
I’m completely with you.
They probably will find usability improvements to be their excuse. (remove functionality to make it more usable is NOT an enhancement)
This sort of decision has most likely been “discussed many times” on desktop-devel-list and probably others. I find this thread for example: http://dy.fi/orw . The preference of “majority of users” is most likely an educated guess, like in all design.
No, users never get to vote on GNOME’s design. This is a good thing. Really.
I do see a couple of comments have been removed from the Bugzilla thread, pointing to their lack of relevance or inconsistency with the GNOME CoC. I have no way of forming an opinion on those decisions, as it happens I can’t see the comments. Their Bugzilla, the call is theirs to make.
For the record, I very much like to have icons on my menus and buttons. I hope the options currently in the Interface tab will still exist in gconf, even after they’re removed from the user interface!
Yeah, strange that the tab was removed; I don’t think it was a burden to any users. OTOH I don’t think many users actually care.
Anyway the settings are still there. See the patch in the bug report: apparently the tab only edited gconf keys under /desktop/gnome/interface/…, which are also documented if you look in gconf-editor. It shouldn’t be too hard to add this to an existing “tweak” application, or to use Quickly to put together a small tweaking panel.
My (conspiracy-)theory is that they’re doing this because Gnome sometimes takes a long time to load menus because it jams on icons (like on slow optical media). Unable to fix that, they just decided to remove icons altogether.
“I voiced my opinion in the comments of this bug just like the “majority
of users” were doing. My comment and one other was removed and my
account on bugzilla disabled.”
Now I’m wondering what your comment was, exactly. Was it inflammatory or otherwise improper? If not and you can somehow retrieve your comment, I’d post this to slashdot & digg, etc.
http://dropbox.leftyfb.com/Bug592756.png
Those are the 2 comments that were removed from the bug report. They removed them due to stating:
“Bugzilla is not a forum”
+1 !!!
if we already remove a few of the icons by default, there should AT LEAST be an option to put them back. Agree, the menu looks pretty unpolished and unfinished right now, when half of the icons are lacking. i am actually quite happy with fully “iconized” menus..
it’s kinda sad your comments got deleted and your account suspended. what’s opensource, if people don’t care about the opinion of single users as well, or at least comment on them?
Coming from the same people that leave around easter eggs everywhere, making user experience a nuisance, making bug reports and then don’t give a s about it.
Brainstorm should probably be integrated into the Ubuntu Software Center for every application and package in Ubuntu.
…At least with closed source software you can walk with your wallet.