19 Jan
2021
19 Jan
'21
11:16 p.m.
On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:00:21 -0600
J Leslie Turriff <jlturriff(a)mail.com> wrote:
"Pros"?
<rant>
It greatly irritates me that the Linux developer community has followed both
Gnome's and Microsoft's leads in dumbing down (and locking down) the user
interface. For instance, I can't understand their shift from Serif fonts to
Sans-Serif, making reading text much harder; and taking away much of the
user-customization options.
Why does Gnome waste so much screen real-estate with large fonts, icons and
borders? Is this because they expect Linux users to follow the Windows
community's habit of maximizing their application windows, even with today's
high-resolution displays?
</rant>
Reason 1: Fashion. There are styles and trends in interface designs just like
everything else. Currently, minimalism and low information density are trendy.
Microsoft, Apple, and Google set the trends, and everyone else either
goes along or consciously decides not to. Gnome is going along, I suspect.
Reason 2: The idiotic pursuit of one GUI to rule them all. Instead of optimizing
one interface for use on devices with big screens and precise pointers, and a
different one for devices with small touch-screens, they want to do it all at once,
and then are surprised when they produce something that isn't a good fit for
either.
Reason 3: Regarding the serif vs sans-serif thing in particular, studies show
that which one you find easier to read depends mostly on which you were
exposed to when you started reading. Younger people are more likely to
prefer sans fonts. Plus it ties back into that silly minimalism trend.
Reason 4: They think their users are stupid. In Microsoft/Apple/Google's
cases, this may actually be the truth for 50% or so of their users.
Reason 5: Again, in Microsoft/Apple/Google's cases, since 90% of their
users will never change the default settings (or will be locked out of them by
corporate administrators), they don't want to put the effort into maintaining
unused code that makes them no money and siphons up no marketing data.
E. Liddell