Xfce Forum

sfammonius

Member

Registered: 2022-07-07

Posts: 25

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

I gladly appreciate CSD on Xfce, sorry but i am GNOME & GTK+ fanboy. I don't hide and I'm not ashamed to admit it

Reported. (just kidding)

Arcaner

Member

Registered: 2022-03-16

Posts: 2

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

I gladly appreciate CSD on Xfce, sorry but i am GNOME & GTK+ fanboy. I don't hide and I'm not ashamed to admit it

Hopefully this is bait, but if you're serious why not just use gnome instead of xfce? A toolkit effectively forcing a particular style wont live long, thats not the job of a general purpose toolkit!

StJimmy

Member

From: De Lage Landen

Registered: 2022-06-27

Posts: 7

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

At the risk of "fueling the flames", I personally also highly dislike CSDs - which is why I most definitely appreciate the addition of a switch in Xfce 4.18!
For now I use a combination of gtk3-classic and a few CSS rules that hide the remainders of the now useless/empty headerbars.
N.B. The headerbars in e.g. dconf-editor are *not* affected by this, so they will appear as normal.

/* Hide empty header bars from Xfce applications */
dialog.background headerbar image, dialog.background headerbar, dialog.background headerbar entry,
dialog.background headerbar spinbutton, dialog.background headerbar button, dialog.background headerbar separator {
	-gtk-icon-transform: scale(0);
	min-height: 0px;
	min-width: 0px;
	padding: 0px;
	margin: -24px;
	background: none;
	border: none;
}

This worked for me with the Greybird theme; depending on the theme, you may have to adjust the margin value as different themes may use different margins.

Last edited by StJimmy (2022-07-15 07:07:46)

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Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.

KBar

Member

Registered: 2021-11-05

Posts: 689

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Hopefully this is bait, but if you're serious why not just use gnome instead of xfce? A toolkit effectively forcing a particular style wont live long, thats not the job of a general purpose toolkit!

To each their own. There's nothing wrong if one person prefers something different to your taste. Xfce is a desktop environment; maybe they're using it for its light apps, modularity and configurabability, which GNOME doesn't provide in full?

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Nili

Member

Registered: 2022-06-29

Posts: 20

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Hopefully this is bait, but if you're serious why not just use gnome instead of xfce? A toolkit effectively forcing a particular style wont live long, thats not the job of a general purpose toolkit!

I run Gnome on Fedora, also i run Nautilus/Disks/gThumb on Xfce, Understand that CSD destroys linux user interface and freedom which are essentials for many peoples or apps devs, but i like clean gui without menubar cluster title, wasted spaces. A matter of preferences it is.

Reported. (just kidding)

Thank goodness it was a joke

Last edited by Nili (2022-07-15 14:42:12)

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Devuan/XFCE

Shifu

Member

Registered: 2020-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

It is difficult not to form the view that the initial decision to go CSD has been a significant waste of time and energy for such a small project. There has been user and developer angst, significant work is now being done to unravel it somewhat, and there were very debatable benefits in the first place. I suspect there is a lesson in all of this.

Last edited by Shifu (2022-07-21 08:58:07)

File Manager

Member

Registered: 2019-11-01

Posts: 62

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

People who don't like Gnome might actually be using it wrong... wrong device. I think libadwaita will give these "optimizations" for free. The new libadwaita About dialogs seem to be "mobile first". They are not displayed in this video, but gtk is being optimized for "convergence" - which means loss of desktop functionality and conventions.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QhkvlgOiNYk

Last edited by File Manager (2022-07-22 16:52:08)

Jordi

Member

Registered: 2022-09-12

Posts: 6

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

I want to give my support to those who are against CSD. I think it must be avoided. Not even optional, because it will cause the proliferation of inconsistent designs that escalates up to the WM level.

I’m not saying what other WM must do. After all, tiling window managers without titlebars give all the rectangle to the app, not only the titlebar. But a WM must decide for one side or the other, and never mix CSD with standard titlebars.

Why CSD is an UX mistake?

Because WM titlebars provide a common mechanism to manage windows. Different WMs will provide different functionalities that applications must not care nor interfere with (iconify, tile, fullscreen, shade, move, sendToBottom…). Likewise, applications use the internal Window space and WMs must not care or interfere with it.

This clear boundary make things easy for novices, and improves workflow mechanization for pros. Mixing application UI with WM gives confusion to novices, and unproductivity to pros, by inconsistent behavior and visual incoherency.

The mistaken arguments in favor of CSDs:

* “Mac/Windows are using CSDs”: No comment required. Proprietary software will switch to another design or maybe back to no-csd to justify future releases of their products. Just like bell bottoms are a new fashion every several decades.

* “It’s cool”: It’s a matter of taste. I think WM titlebars are cool and CSD are terrible looking.

* “Waste of vertical space”: False, because a WM can provide options like fullscreen, toggle titlebars (like herbstluftwm), etc. With this options no one pixel is used by the WM. Also, good WMs provide a tiny titlebar, or at least configurable/ theme height.

Final thinking:

Going to the psychological, I think this kind of designers, usually Mac fans, want to have the Mac looking in their software, the Mac style menus on top of screen, and so on. But as it is patented technology, they must invent ways of doing things similar without copying. Their frustration on cloning the Mac is our usability nightmare.

Truemancocker

Member

Registered: 2011-05-09

Posts: 3

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

It is difficult not to form the view that the initial decision to go CSD has been a significant waste of time and energy for such a small project. There has been user and developer angst, significant work is now being done to unravel it somewhat, and there were very debatable benefits in the first place. I suspect there is a lesson in all of this.

I hope the lesson learned is "consult the community and listen to the users, don't make massive redesigns just because GNOME told you to, make it optional so people who want it can enable it and people who don't can disable it"

janp

Member

Registered: 2016-02-05

Posts: 27

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Glad to see that CSD is gone in 4.18. Thank you for listening to us. Very good Work!

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Glad to see that CSD is gone in 4.18. Thank you for listening to us. Very good Work!

Its not really gone, its just optional now. You can choose whether to have CSD windows on Xfce apps & components. Note that this change doesn't affect gnome apps - those will still use CSD/headerbars.

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janp

Member

Registered: 2016-02-05

Posts: 27

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Glad to see that CSD is gone in 4.18. Thank you for listening to us. Very good Work!

Its not really gone, its just optional now. You can choose whether to have CSD windows on Xfce apps & components. Note that this change doesn't affect gnome apps - those will still use CSD/headerbars.

Yep I know. Anyway the Xfce settings dialogs appear to be deCSDfied. I haven't found any mean to turn CSD on there (not that I want to). This is good ;-).

Thanks ToZ

tunsoffun

Member

Registered: 2020-12-29

Posts: 16

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Glad to see that CSD is gone in 4.18. Thank you for listening to us. Very good Work!

Its not really gone, its just optional now. You can choose whether to have CSD windows on Xfce apps & components. Note that this change doesn't affect gnome apps - those will still use CSD/headerbars.

Upon upgrade to 4.18 I was happy to find that I could unset CSD for Xfce4 windows. However, I noticed what I think is an unintended consequence of this change.

Once CSD is turned off, the Xfce4 windows on my systems stop responding to window placement keystrokes. Example, Super-NumKeyPad6 no longer shifts the window to take the right half of the screen.

I can think of no reason for this to be deliberate.

Otherwise, so far, my experience with 4.18 in Void musl has been excellent.

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My most successful patches have been applied to the knees of bluejeans.

Truemancocker

Member

Registered: 2011-05-09

Posts: 3

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

Glad to see that CSD is gone in 4.18. Thank you for listening to us. Very good Work!

Its not really gone, its just optional now. You can choose whether to have CSD windows on Xfce apps & components. Note that this change doesn't affect gnome apps - those will still use CSD/headerbars.

Yep I know. Anyway the Xfce settings dialogs appear to be deCSDfied. I haven't found any mean to turn CSD on there (not that I want to). This is good ;-).

Thanks ToZ

Yeah, agreed. I am really thankful to the developers and the XFCE community for making it an option. And although I personally really can't stand CSD, I'm glad it remains an option, because I know some prefer it and it works better for them.

But yeah I'm so happy CSD can be turned off in XFCE now. I want to give something back, or at least I want to make my gratitude noticeable in some way. I want to see if I can send a donation to XFCE project and/or the developers, with some sort of message like "Thank you for giving me a choice, I appreciate it very much, as well as your hard work to deliver a good desktop experience. Also sorry for earlier messages where I was rude."

Last edited by Truemancocker (2022-12-29 15:33:40)

PaperNick

Member

Registered: 2013-05-26

Posts: 107

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

But yeah I'm so happy CSD can be turned off in XFCE now. I want to give something back, or at least I want to make my gratitude noticeable in some way. I want to see if I can send a donation to XFCE project and/or the developers, with some sort of message like "Thank you for giving me a choice, I appreciate it very much, as well as your hard work to deliver a good desktop experience. Also sorry for earlier messages where I was rude."

The Get involved page on xfce's website lists 2 links on OpenCollective where you can donate:

For USD: https://opencollective.com/xfce
For EUR: https://opencollective.com/xfce-eu

BenyaminL

Member

Registered: 2019-10-11

Posts: 70

Website

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

I use gtk-no-csd for now, and also use xfce-no-csd for now. Just I don't see any option in xfce settings to turn it on or off. Is there anyway to make the settings shown? or I'm missing the point here?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

As of 4.18, there is an setting in Settings Manager > Appearance > Settings tab, labelled "Enable header bar in dialogs". Uncheck this, and Xfce will no longer use CSDs in it's tools and apps. CSD windows will still be used by other non-Xfce apps (if they are programmed as such), and if you want to get rid of those you will still need to use a hack like gtk-no-csd.

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Please remember to mark your thread [SOLVED] to make it easier for others to find
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davecs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-21

Posts: 24

Re: Do you want to use CSD? No please!!

As of 4.18, there is an setting in Settings Manager > Appearance > Settings tab, labelled "Enable header bar in dialogs". Uncheck this, and Xfce will no longer use CSDs in it's tools and apps. CSD windows will still be used by other non-Xfce apps (if they are programmed as such), and if you want to get rid of those you will still need to use a hack like gtk-no-csd.

To me, it looks like XFCE dialogs use CSD, but no longer put buttons in the header, moving them to the bottom of the dialog where they belong! It also helps that the Appearance > Style tab helps you keep xfwm and GTK-CSD window decorations consistent. Applications like "Evince" still carry buttons and options in their header, but then they have done since before XFCE adopted CSDs. I'd say that the devs have done a great job, bringing the pro- and anti-CSD users together.