Firefox crippling

[Enrico Scholz]

thacker at math.cornell.edu (John Thacker) writes:

>> 1. The default firefox icons are not "dramatically different" from
>>    the default Gnome2 icon theme
>> 
>> 2. I do not care about the default setting as long as:
>>    - it can be configured
>>    - does not override current settings
>
> But weren't you complaining about the change to spatial nautilus?
> Your complaint there, it seems, is because of the dramatic change in
> behavior between people who had GNOME 2.4 and upgraded. But I know
> plenty of people who *do* want current settings to be overriden,

Then, such dramatical changes should be done in an user friendly
manner. E.g. pop up a dialog box saying "We invented a new feature... Do
you want to use this or do you want to stay at the current behavior? You
can toggle between both by Settings -> ...".


>> 3. What is the meaning of "different"? Different to what? Firefox is the
>>    only Gnome2 application I am using, so why am I forced to see these
>>    ugly icons?
>
> I'm impressed that you're familiar enough with the Gnome2 icon theme
> to make the statement in 1. despite not using any Gnome2 applications.

??? I see the butt-ugly Gnome2 icons when I upgrade firefox from RH
sources. I see the nice looking default icons when I recompile the
.src.rpm after removing patches 25-28.


> I'm furthermore impressed that you can argue simultaneously that the
> icons are not all that different, yet very ugly.

In both, "go back/forward" are symbolized by arrows, "go home" by a house,
...  But the Gnome2 icons are butt-ugly (intrusive default bookmark [1],
erroneously [2], the 4-color icons were perhaps beatiful in the ages of
CGA graphics). Corresponding bug reports and user wishes were completely
ignored by Gnome2 developers.


> (In the same way, there is a reasonable argument for key shortcuts
> which are close to Windows, too.)

That's another problem of Gnome2; it tries to satisfy the novice Windoze
user seeing Linux the first time. But it completely ignores the existing
Linux userbase which learned to configure their systems with ~/.X* files
or by editing files.


> There's nothing forcing you to see those icons, though.

RH/Gnome2 *is* forcing me to see these butt-ugly icons; there is no
simple way to enable the standard icons. Recompiling firefox does not
count; installing the resulting package might be complicated till
impossible (no root perms).


> You mentioned not using KDE; RedHat got a lot of grief for a similar
> decision to develop Bluecurve in order to have a unified look throughout 
> the desktop.  (Bero left around when 8.0 was released over this.)

Yes, he was probably pissed off the ignorance of the Gnome2 developers
who are enforcing their ideas ("we are always right"). Best, what I
heard about the RH KDE is "wow, it looks really like Gnome. But please,
can you restore the defaults?".


> From any usability standpoint, it makes sense.  I'm a little confused; 
> are you complaining partially because you only use GUI apps which are 
> too difficult to make look consistent to be worth the effort to do so?

I am complaining about the arrogance of the Gnome2 developers which

* stops me to use ~/.Xmodmap + ~/.Xresources, without providing a way to
  disable the broken gnome-settings-daemon behavior

* enforces butt-ugly icons in firefox, without providing a way to use
  the default ones

* overrides existing user-configurations



Enrico

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138984
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=106558

[2]  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138986
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=106559

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 480 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20050609/134a00e7/attachment.sig>