Comment by fooqux
5 months ago
> Both GNOME Shell in the phone context and Plasma Mobile are evolutionary dead ends.
That's a hell of a hot take. Could you elaborate on why you think so?
5 months ago
> Both GNOME Shell in the phone context and Plasma Mobile are evolutionary dead ends.
That's a hell of a hot take. Could you elaborate on why you think so?
Phone UI paradigm isn't as easy as "Let's just scale down the Desktop/Tablet applications". In case of Sailfish OS development history, migration from clunky, but closer to Desktop, Hildon framework of Maemo 5 to purpose-built Qt applications of Maemo/MeeGo Harmattan was obvious quality boost. Same with webOS and UBports: app ecosystem starting from scratch within their corresponding "DE"s. If convergence-style cross-device applications were somewhat easily achievable, that would've happened in the early 2010s (Windows Phone / Windows RT? Ubuntu Touch getting more attention from investors?). It's the same story why Android Tablets suck and iPadOS doesn't, but in other direction.
And/or, it's a simple matter of time/money being spent on streamlining the experience. It's not like Sailfish OS is perfect (Qt6 migration is way overdue), but Jolla has already figured out lots of integration details which will become teething problems for Droidian and such. Including, but not limited to VoLTE support.
I'm not convinced that convergent UI works either. The needs of desktop and mobile just differ too greatly.
That doesn't mean that the two can't be served by the same UI framework, but at minimum you need two sets of widgets and separate desktop/mobile layouts in order to not either make the desktop experience dumbed down or end up with a mobile experience that's awkward to use with touch.
The padding and control size in GNOME feels completely goofy on a desktop machine for example and reduces the usability of 12"-13" laptops with how much space is eaten up by blank space.
> I'm not convinced that convergent UI works either. The needs of desktop and mobile just differ too greatly.
For the record, I agree. But I've been playing with Apple's new Liquid Glass UI on macOS / iOS and I think they've done a pretty good job of defining platform-agnostic UI primitives and layouts with some platform-specific rules when needed.
It's a big redesign that covers desktop / mobile / tablet / TV. They did a pretty clever job of it, though the desktop experience suffers slightly (of course).
2 replies →
> Phone UI paradigm isn't as easy as "Let's just scale down the Desktop/Tablet applications".
Have you tried modern Gnome/GTK+ 4 applications? You can resize the window to a tiny size and it seamlessly "scales down" to a phone layout. Very handy even on a desktop. Yes, there are real differences besides size (phone UI needs a lot of inactive padding around tap areas because finger taps are imprecise; it greatly prefers swipes to taps, while a pointer-based UI prefers clicks to drag'n'drop; phone UI needs long taps as a secondary action, etc.) but they're minor in the grand scheme of things.
You mean modern in the sense that is no designer any longer, one has to code everything manually, and the designer that was going to be done, was based on Web technologies?
I somehow agree with this statement too. Although I don't dislike current GNOME, I think Mer Linux (SailfishOS and Nemo) as well as its predecesors (MeeGo and Maemo) are much more pleasant to use on a small screen. The others don't look very optimized for that usecase. Actually, MeeGo, as shipped in a Nokia N9, was in many aspects the most elegant mobile UI I've ever seen.