Finally, GTK Updates
When I switched to Linux, the first thing I did was play around with the various desktop environments Linux has to offer. Many exist, but KDE and Gnome stood apart from the others as they were much more than just window managers — but full graphical shells with standard native applications like text editors and such.
I started with Gnome. I liked Gnome because the PIM suite I was using at
the time (Evolution) was
written using GTK for Gnome (though, of course, it will run under KDE as well). It was also relatively fast and widely used. The biggest problem I had with Gnome/GTK applications was that they weren’t pretty. And while I have never been one to talk much about GUI vanity, I did find myself becoming increasingly more frustrated with Gnome’s lack of common look and feel, something I later found KDE excelled at.
Take for example the standard GTK file selector. It was plain, and quite ugly. It was not quick to navigate by any means. And it wasn’t terribly intuitive (especially for a former Windows user, and I don’t just mean myself).
KDE, as I noted, has a vast look and feel movement. Applications written for KDE (using the Qt GUI libraries) generally feel the same. Whatever they’re doing — they’re doing something right. Maybe there’s a few things that could be made easier, simpler, or whatever. One of the biggest complaints people make about KDE is that it’s bloated.
Though I’m very unlikely to switch to Gnome from KDE, I’m still glad to see that there is being some development on the GTK+ libraries. There are a variety of mock-ups of what the new file selector dialog should look like in a recent OSNews article.
And of course, the file selector is but a mere example of widgets and dialogues/selectors that could do with some improvement in GTK/Gnome.
Why does this matter so much to me?
While I don’t use Gnome, I still use some GTK applications. GIMP is a great example. While I wish there was a KDE/Qt-based port of GIMP, there isn’t, so I’m forced to use the standard GTK version. Another is XMMS, a relatively good mp3 player for Linux. The only reason that these two applications have succeeded with me is the quality and function of the application itself. There are few
things that I like about their user interfaces (of course, XMMS is skinable, so that helps a bit), and there are even fewer things in common between their user interfaces, despite both using GTK. Two applications using Qt will look and feel the same to me. But two applications with GTK? About the only thing that stands out in my mind is the ugliness of the widgets.
So here’s to hoping for success of GTK+.
