this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Hey guys, I'm just an ordinary dev looking for something to work on. While messing around with my hobby projects, I couldn't help but notice that under the surface, there are a lot of places that the libre desktop can be improved. I'd like to take on your suggestions on what I should seriously consider working on and helping out with.

Thanks for any comments and suggestions.

(For those wondering, I'm still working on my other stuff.)

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[โ€“] lofenyy@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Excellent point, it's easy to forget that sometimes. What makes a good gui, in your opinion?

[โ€“] DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I grew up in the XP era so I despise modern GUIs in general, I might not be the right person to ask.

I just want all the information clearly labeled and accessible easily. I want to have buttons and checkmarks for every option possible.

The few times I come across the XP control panel menus or a visual basic app I find it so refreshing and useful. Not having to go through 5 screens to change a basic setting or having to Google how the fuck I access the systems energy plan settings because everything's practically hidden away to keep users from getting "confused"

I just hate the modern trend of "streamlining" and "sleek and modern" designs that just means you have less information, less options and everything is hidden behind 15 submenus.

It's like when you find a web page that hasn't been updated since the early 2000s and suddenly you realize how hostile modern web design is to the user

TL:DR: Not wanting to scare users and hiding away everything just makes users more tech illiterate and makes the experience worse for the tech literate users

Edit: My answer was more of a rant than anything but I really believe a good GUI should be even more practical and easy to use than copy pasting commands in a terminal. It shouldn't be afraid to give detailed Information (albeit in a human readable format) and should seek to improve the user experience not just replicate the backend.

For example if an option that runs a command fails but the guaranteed solution is to run another command first the error sign should say exactly that and have a button that runs the other command with the necessary parameters according to the context of the error