Mastodawn

Radio_Azureus Feb 28

GIMP v3.04

It was this early morning, when I tried to fire up GIMP, I noticed that I had forgotten to install this magnificent gfx tool kit.

I ran apt install gimp immediately

I've been using GIMP ever since it came out, decades ago (spawn 1995). Even though the UI was totally different from what I was used to, adaptation was fast and my fluency in use of GIMP increased fast. I like working in GIMP

The GIMP is 31 years old

Quote

In 1995, Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis began developing GIMP as a semester project at University of California, Berkeley for the eXperimental Computing Facility.[8] The software was originally named the General Image Manipulation Program

GIMP v0.54 was first released in 1996

Over the decades I've seen a lot of users emitting futile complaints about the GUI, the use of many windows / viewports, while I can easily transition from closed source software on client's machines, to the GIMP, just by switching the mindset regarding the UI. The logic behind UI decisions is easily traceable.

GIMP has so many functions, I know of nobody who knows how to use all of them.

You should learn what you need to do, get fluent into those tasks, and learn more when you need more. This mind set also works in VIM, which has a massive ammount of functions and commands to make not only your programming in different languages more pleasant, it also has subtle assist functions which makes your source entries even more enjoyable.

GIMP always gives me consistent performance and I can rely on the keyboard shortcuts without having to use the mouse to select functions brushes, et all.
GIMP is for me a must have in my photo correction work flow. I've never relied on closed source software for those tasks, GIMP always has similar functions, many working even more efficient with your computer's CPU / GPU resources.

For the Love of GIMP

next section moved to seperate toot

Note:
I've always known that Open Source programs can be trusted better than closed source equivalents, something you all know when it comes down to the big photo manupilation suite, which enshittifies everything for its paying users.

GIMP shall always have its users back

You can trust GIMP

Sources:
Mea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP

#GIMP #Photograph #Photo #correction #image #manipulation #OpenSource #TheGiMP #programming #keyboard #shortcuts #Linux #POSIX

Always loved GIMP, but I'm not loving the GTK 3.x look. :/

Putting buttons in the titlebar is a dumb idea, and I'm dying on this hill.

Magitian Feb 28

@rl_dane @Radio_Azureus It might be worthwhile to check adw-gtk3 out - it makes GTK3 applications resemble libadwaita ones.

GitHub - lassekongo83/adw-gtk3: The theme from libadwaita ported to GTK-3

The theme from libadwaita ported to GTK-3. Contribute to lassekongo83/adw-gtk3 development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

@magitian @Radio_Azureus

Isn't that worse? The whole CSD craziness is being driven by the Gnome guys.

Tastes differ. It's clearly a great option for @magitian and many others.

🦋💙❤️💋#Lobi 💙💕🌹💐💙🦋

@Radio_Azureus @magitian

I will respectfully disagree, I think CSDs are broken by design, not only because they break forty years of effective UI design practices and require you to think about where you're grabbing the window to move it, but they make the buttons harder to see, and are a way for the DE and the app maker to exercise influence over the user, by making the application look out of place if they're using it on a desktop other than what it was intended for. The titlebar is something I should have influence over as a user, not have it dictated to me by the dev. There are settings and customizations I rely on for the way I work, and CSDs don't respect those.

If it were simply a matter of taste, I'm all about live and let live. But IMO CSDs are harming user choice and making computing worse. I can't help but view them as UI enshittification in the FOSS world.

But I'm much more frustrated by the trend to use iPad/iPhone-style scrollbars in modern desktop UIs. That is fundamentally broken, and bull-headed.

Dendrobatus Azureus Feb 28

GUI TUI

Your response sheds a clear light on what's wrong, deeply wrong in this matter.

I stick to DE and window managers which feel and look like they're from decades ago. In those I don't face the horrible points you stated. I glanced at the theme on it's own and did not take these points into account.

From the perspective of UI design, many GUI's have been deliberately broken with the thin and disappearing scroll bars which are a *PITA and the removal of the menu bar by default in this bloody browser I work in ATM within standardnotes. There is so much broken in those things I would need to type a whole book full, yet very few would read it.
I always find workarounds which is what I stated in the previous stansa.

You're right that 40 years of meticulous UI design, craft and tweaking should be cherished and expanded. I wonder why this trend started

I loved working in fvwm & twm and did it for years

Are there still Window and Desktop Managers left which are currently maintaned and follow the priciples as strickt as possible? What do you think of KDE in this light?

Note:
I use XFCE as my DE and love the other light one in the MX Linux distro FluxBox. The older it is the better I can fly thorugh it with my keyboard and windows behave in a standard way

@rl_dane @Radio_Azureus @magitian

#GUI #TUI #design #40years #fvwm #twm #Xorg #programming #technology #DE #desktop #environment #WM #window #manager #FluxBox #XFCE #KDE #GNOME #design

Victoria🏳️‍⚧️Feb 28

@dendrobatus_azureus @rl_dane @Radio_Azureus @magitian i also like GUIs designed before scroll wheels were a thing /s

Dendrobatus Azureus Mar 2

SSD not CSD

The nice thing about that period, is that everything was keyboard driven and the mouse was only used when it was handy. The great thing about that period, is that you could do everything literally everything with your keyboard and the user interfaces were much more simple to design, modify and to expand, because it was much easier for the programmers to determine what you want based upon the fact that you are using the keyboard as input.

It started to go downhill when the scrollwheel was added.

Three buttons were enough.

Everything degenerated to CSD, while SSD is the proper way to go, and we now have hacks to force SSD in different Linux distributions. Hopefully the BSD flavours have such hacks too

If you still want SSD as much as possible, you need to use fluxbox as your DM / WM and use the considerable tweaks that @rl_dane has suggested to me in another toot in this thread, get firefox to behave normally again. You should also disable all the silly LLM stuff in ffox...
Im going to put the tweaks at work here on this SBC Pi5, I'm currently on

@tragivictoria @Radio_Azureus @magitian

#GUI #TUI #design #40years #fvwm #twm #Xorg #programming #technology #DE #desktop #environment #WM #window #manager #FluxBox #XFCE #KDE #GNOME #design

Victoria🏳️‍⚧️Mar 2

@dendrobatus_azureus @rl_dane @Radio_Azureus @magitian i cant tell whether you are joking or not.

@tragivictoria @dendrobatus_azureus @Radio_Azureus @magitian

You first? 😂

Dendrobatus Azureus Mar 2

I didn't put on a sarcasm flag so I'm very serious

@rl_dane @tragivictoria @Radio_Azureus @magitian

@dendrobatus_azureus @tragivictoria @Radio_Azureus @magitian

The nice thing about the firefox config hacks is that they work in #Thunderbird, too. It's a little clunkier to find the about:config page in t-bird, but it's there.

Just having REAL scrollbars that aren't inside the page in firefox and t-bird is so dang nice, yo.

Dendrobatus Azureus Mar 2

🦋💙❤️💋#WordsOfWisdom 💙💕🌹💐💙🦋

@rl_dane @tragivictoria @Radio_Azureus @magitian

@dendrobatus_azureus @Radio_Azureus @magitian

I loved xfce and enjoyed tweaking it, but it seems they're following Gnome into CSD madness, along with GTK. I hope this changes.

And honestly, CSDs aren't the worst things in UI design today, not by far.

As far as the scrollbars, there was a huge culture shift in Apple between 2007-2014 or so, where the iPhone "department" (business division or whatever) became dominant and grossly overshadowed the Macintosh group. Somehow (for that reason or because of completely unrelated factors), it became popular for MacOS to copy iOS, and the (arguably useless) scrollbars were one of the first things to come along.

[MacOS copied iOS], Windows copied MacOS, Linux copied both, and welcome to hades, please wait for a daimon to poke you with with his trident. 🙄

Edit: typo

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review

Lion is no shrinking violet.

Ars Technica

Radio_Azureus Mar 1

You're absolutely right there are worse things occuring.

But the following is a bad CSD

CSD In Firefox mobile

Something odd was changed in the user interface; the sidebar it's actually the menu that you get when you tap on the double point in the lower right corner, was transformed into this massive monstrosity which covers the whole Android display.
It distracts
All the extra information is useless
it takes many more GPU Cycles to throw that big thing on the screen
no one was consulted within the user base would tell them that it just makes everything worse, because you don't see anything underneath

CSD Enshittification Factor

Instead of going on I'll just stick with what that still works I may need to go all the way back to that MX Linux distro which at least feels familiar and use as many clients that don't abuse CSDs

One more question; what example do you have of something that's worse than client-side decorations

IMHO the one I just referred too, is a very bad one

Quote Wikipedia:

Limitations
If the application hangs, the user cannot close it by clicking the close button in the window frame.[12]

BTW to prove your point;

It took me 15 minutes to compose this lousy small message on the Android. It would have taken me 120 seconds on one of the desktops running here
All because of horrific user interfaces low free RAM and bad CSD choices on the Android

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_decoration?wprov=sfla1

#GUI #TUI #CSD #design #40years #fvwm #twm #Xorg #programming #technology #user #environment #DE #desktop #environment #WM #window #manager #FluxBox #XFCE #KDE #GNOME #design

@rl_dane @dendrobatus_azureus @magitian

@Radio_Azureus @dendrobatus_azureus @magitian

Just FYI, you can remove both CSDs and useless scrollbars from firefox desktop.

Here are my tweaks:

Use native QT dialog boxes
Add "GTK_USE_PORTAL = 1" to env vars for firefox launcher
-- or --
widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker = 1
Scroll bars
layout.css.scrollbar-width-thin.disabled = true
widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled = false
widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style = 4
Disable CSD
browser.tabs.inTitlebar = false
Disable AI
browser.ml.enable = false
browser.ml.chat.enabled = false
browser.ml.chat.sidebar = false
browser.ml.chat.menu = false
browser.ml.chat.page = false
extensions.ml.enabled = false
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled = false
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled = false
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled = false
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge = false
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge = false
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled = false
browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate = false
pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload = false
pdfjs.enableGuessAltText = false
Disable CSD
browser.tabs.inTitlebar = false

Dendrobatus Azureus Mar 1

🦋💙❤️💋#Lobi 💙💕🌹💐💙🦋

@rl_dane @Radio_Azureus @magitian