Poll: Do you want the Ubuntu window controls on the Left Or Right hand side?

By , Published March 5, 2010

In an update to the Lucid Light theme earlier today the Window control buttons once again switched to the left-hand side.

Whilst I’m sure developers are still trying to decide I thought I’d gauge all of your awesome opinions as to whether you want the buttons left-aligned or right-aligned.


Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

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  • http://twitter.com/snwh Sam Hewitt

    As Ubuntu user we’ve been used to having the controls on the right hand side, as in previous releases, they should leave it that way. Besides, if they do put it to the left we can always switch it back with a little tweaking

  • http://twitter.com/madcat1990 Darkchild Heartly

    right way, end of story!

  • Anonymous

    I’ll say what I’ve said on the ubuntuforums. It’s not the positioning that is the problem, it’s the ordering…

    Positioning is easily rectified, but the new themes don’t work when you swap minimize/maximize back to the way it should be. Not only that, but in forcing the button swap, it’s made it so you can only use the official theme or a theme that doesn’t depend on the ordering. The ordering should be minimize/maximize/close then I don’t think anyone would care which side it was because it can be easily restored!

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I’ll certainly agree on that score – i’m really not gelling with the re-ordering. I’m not used to having to actually LOOK at the trio of buttons to decide which i need to press…

    • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

      Can’t this be controlled in gconf-editor? At least in Karmic, you can order your buttons however you like. Apps > Metacity > general: button_layout.

      Default in Karmic is ‘menu:minimize,maximize,close’ but I can change them however I like.

      Since this is a gconf setting, Ubuntu won’t be able to change things for people who update to Lucid, right? I thought that’s the whole issue with the default wallpaper always having the name warty; Ubuntu updates can’t change a user’s gconf settings.

      • Anonymous

        Like I said, you can change the ordering back, but it breaks the new theme. Likewise them changing the default ordering has now broken half the Gnome metacity themes out there.

        • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

          Oh oh oh, I see what you’re saying. With the themes I use (usually Shiki variations), buttons are fairly interchangeable. I forgot that with themes that include ‘etched’-looking background behind the buttons – like the new Ubuntu themes – swapping buttons around can look really, really bad.

          Yeah that sucks, and I really don’t understand that decision. Maybe they decided that logically it makes sense to go in the order: bigger window, hiding window, no window. That would have been an interesting decision to make in the 80s, but it’s hardly worth the confusing the hell out of users 25+ years into the desktop computing era. I’d go with consistency for the win, here.

          • Anonymous

            Yeah I brought up this some issue before in a previous blog post here. Re-ordering the buttons is just a simply horrible idea. Developers shouldn’t be wasting time making cute “improvements” like that that they arbitrarily decide make more sense. Stick with convention (unless it’s a ridiculously horribly bad one and changing it won’t confuse the hell out of people) and work on improving things that actually matter.

          • spiral

            I want to point out that ubuntu-tweak has an option to reorder the location of all items in the menubar so you can easily swap maximize and minimize but that breaks the default theme as already said.

  • spiral

    what enoys me most is that minimize is where maximize used to be!!

  • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

    Grrr, why do all of your recent polls only have two options? What about all of us who want the controls in the dead center of the title bar?? :p

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Hahaha! :p

    • Yi Sun-sin

      It’s not possible :
      “Arrangement of buttons on the titlebar. The value should be a string, such as “menu:minimize,maximize,spacer,close”; the colon separates the left corner of the window from the right corner, and the button names are comma-separated. Duplicate buttons are not allowed. Unknown button names are silently ignored so that buttons can be added in future metacity versions without breaking older versions. A special spacer tag can be used to insert some space between two adjacent buttons.”
      Gconf-editor say NO to button in the middle ;â‹…).

      • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

        That’s funny, I was also just digging through the gconf settings for this – but not because I actually wanted to try it in the middle ;). Functionally, this makes a lot of sense; text belongs near the center where your eye can find it quickly and controls belong in the corners so your mouse can hit them quickly. Still, how cool would it look to have a big fat ‘Close’ control right in the center of your title bar? Waaaay cool. :)

    • http://blog.pansapiens.com/ pansapiens

      Maybe this is not such a silly idea – I wonder if any usability studies have been done testing that possibility ? I can imagine lots of interesting variations on this idea too – lets say the ‘big fat close button’ in the middle of the title bar required a double click to actually close the window – this way hitting it accidentally wouldn’t be much of a problem, but hitting it intentionally might be easier. Another option along those lines would be to put “maximise” and “minimise” on one side, and “close” on the opposite – this way you would be less likely to accidentally hit close when going for the other buttons. (After writing this, I noticed David’s comments about Symphony OS below, along similar lines). Unfortunately no matter how much better a UI change is in a technical or logical sense, familiarity usually still beats innovation.

  • Bill

    aw, no “i dont give a *#&” option? :(

    • Yi Sun-sin

      Yep, I’ll need it !

  • Anonymous

    I will not vote since I’m not using Lucid so I haven’t tried out the left hand sided controls but I think ubuntu users are used to having the controls to the right. I would like to know a justifiable reason to change them; are we having problems with them right now? will users benefit by having them on the left side?

  • Anonymous

    Such an unnecessary thing to change! It doesn’t make Ubuntu look better, it will just confuse previous Ubuntu users (like my grandma). Why bother changing it?

  • http://twitter.com/Nickedynick Nick Stringer

    I’m really surprised by the number of people who prefer it on the left. Why is this?

    • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

      Because my eyes are mostly looking to the left side and because it enables variety.

      • http://twitter.com/Nickedynick Nick Stringer

        Variety’s great, I’m all for it – but not when it comes to things as fundemental as this.
        The purple theming looks great, but why do something like this that will obviously mess things up for both regular and new users.

        If it was just this theme I could cope with it, but it screws up all the others now!

        • http://www.berthon.eu/ice_and_fire/ Huygens

          >> not when it comes to things as fundemental as this
          fundamental ? I hope this was ironic then ;-)

    • Anonymous

      Exactly, most of the time my eyes and my cursor are closer to the upper left corner than the upper right corner, it just makes sense. With them on the right I feel like I’m having to stretch to reach them.

  • Kota

    I prefer having the close on the left side and having minimise and maximise on the right side.

  • w1ngnutz

    Do you actually submit those pools to someone in Canonical? Let me propose one more: where to position the window title – left or center… I’d love to see it centered

    • Anonymous

      Quite a few Canonical folk do actually read this blog :)

      • w1ngnutz

        it’s a pity, this blog rules

  • kaysar

    doesn’t make any difference to i’ll use it even if its in the middle

  • David

    This doesn’t seem like such a difficult problem. The key is that you want to avoid accidentally closing a window. Putting the close button on the left makes it much more likely that you will accidentally hit it when aiming for another control. If it’s on the right, however, that likelihood decreases, since there tend to be few other controls on the top right of most windows. (And, yes, it follows that Mac OS X has it wrong on this issue.)

    By the same argument, it makes sense to put distance between the Close button and the other window controls. You don’t want to try to maximize a window only to find that you’ve accidentally closed it. Therefore, it makes sense either to put a spacer between Close and the other buttons, like KDE 4 does, or to move the other buttons to the left of the titlebar, like Symphony OS did. Both options are already doable.

    • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

      Woo! Symphony OS reference! Those happen much less frequently than they should when discussing interfaces – Symphony did a lot of things right.

      • David

        I know!

    • http://www.berthon.eu/ice_and_fire/ Huygens

      >> “much more likely that you will accidentally hit it”
      I’m occasionally using MacOS X, and such an accidental behaviour never happen to me :-)
      Actually, the opposite did happen to me. At work, I have a dual screen, and when I try to reach the “File” menu on my right screen, it did happen a few times (2 actually, so really little) to close the window that was open on my left screen. This was on WinXP.

      However, the left placement saves me lots of long movement when I use the trackpad/mouse on Mac, I love it.
      And furthermore, as my mother tongue is left-to-right, I find it more logic to have those control on the left.

      PS: I happen to use MacOS from time to time, but somewhat seldomely. I’m working on XP and use Ubuntu at home. (just to put my message in perspective)

  • http://identi.ca/cruelangel CruelAngel

    dual side d: (maximize on the left, close on the right)

  • Kjell

    I always more mine to the left (cl,min,max), but the default should stay to the right. I sure that they want to entice windows users to linux and something as small as windows controls can be a very important thing.

  • Anonymous

    What really sucks is that I use Chrome and it window controls are as they are supposed to be, but when I use any other app they appear all in the wrong side.

    This makes no sense, i don’t care if the buttons “break” I’ll use the good ol’ config. In the end, I’ll change my theme soon, when many re-imagined light themes arrive I’ll start experimenting or I’ll end up using elementary (again) and tweak the panel icons to match ubuntu’s icons.

    Danrabbit should do an ubuntu elementary icon theme and put it on a ppa, because the “e” icon on the menu and the non ubuntu icon on the GDM window is a deal braker. It’s not that hard!

    • Anonymous

      Likewise, Ubuntu should drop their branding and just use the Gnome logo. It’s not that hard!

      BTW, the Ubuntu elementary theme is called Humanity :p And it does have an Ubuntu logo ;)

      • Anonymous

        Ubuntu will never use the Gnome logo anywhere visible, because they don’t want to confuse new users with all this talk of window environments like Gnome and KDE etc.

        As far as anyone is concerned, Gnome IS Ubuntu and Nautilus is part of Ubuntu and not standalone etc.

        • Anonymous

          hehe, did you read the comment I was responding to? I guess I forgot my “/sarcasm” tags ;)

    • http://blog.pansapiens.com/ pansapiens

      vs8: You can make Chrome / Chromium use the window manager (metacity) title bar and borders by going to “Options -> Personal Stuff -> Appearance -> ‘Use system title and borders’” . This way you get consistent positions of your max/min/close buttons between Chrome(ium) and other windows, at the expense of just a little screen real estate. Even though this won’t put all the buttons back on the ‘right’ side (like various fixes in these comments discuss), at least everything will be consistent.

  • Yfrwlf

    There are three needs here as I see it: what general computer users are used to, design practicality, and making Linux stand out in comparison to other OSes. As a below commenter said, the close window button should probably be separated a bit so you don’t accidentally close a window, so it’s good to have it on the right side far away from the other controls. I think the minimize and maximize buttons should go on the left side next to the window icon which contains a “close” any way. This would make Ubuntu a little more unique at the expense of breaking user expectation and habit.

  • Anon

    Right please! Think of the kitties!

  • Anonymous

    Place them on the left!!!

  • mike

    how about having the buttons in the center so no one say’s it looks like mac or windows
    :)

  • peter

    Sorry, I just tested it. It is much more easier on left. I undo my vote.

  • http://twitter.com/Ferrantonovsky Fot Angúnia

    Is simple, i need only the option for change the disposition with my desire.

  • http://thamesbeat.tumblr.com/ Charlie

    It looks mac enough already – let’s not do things in half measures.

  • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

    After the massive amounts of criticism they received for putting the window controls on the left side in the screenshots, they STILL decided that it would be a good idea to have them there? I would like to see the rational behind it. I can only come up with one good reason for putting them in on the left side, and a whole bunch of reasons why they should be on the right side.Also, why rearrange minimize-maximize? That is just dumb and destroys a lot of other people’s work.

    • Anonymous

      Well Chuck Norris wants it on the left, and you can’t argue with Chuck Norris

      • Anonymous

        +1

  • Anonymous

    To flip them from the left to the right:
    Alt-F2 Then type “gconf-editor”
    Go to /apps/metacity/general tab
    Edit button_layout to “menu:maximize,minimize,close” omitting my quote marks.

    If for some odd reason you want to go from the right to the left:
    Edit button_layout to “maximize,minimize,close:menu” omitting my quote marks.

    Read the tool tip section, it gives some good tips. “:” (colon) separates the left from the right.

  • DoR

    Won’t some of the other included themes (like Dust) break with the buttons on the left? Hell, yes they will. But given that someone in charge thinks these themes look good to begin with, they probably don’t care that the Dust metacity looks like crap with the buttons on the left. >:(

  • Dean Wallace

    Whatever they do, just give us the choice to set it ourselves
    ?

  • Anonymous

    I am used to having the buttons on the right, but I can see why people like them on the left.
    One of the biggest advatages of having the buttons on the left is that notify-OSD is on one side and the buttons on the other side.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/105705293887826322118 aL3xa

    They messed Ubuntu completely with this new “look”… terrible!!! loathe it! makes me puke! so ugly it hurts!
    But as @Dean said… just give us the choice… and fix that damn notification applet (or give us choice to bring back an ol’ one)

  • Anonymous

    i just dont get the ordering. who actually pushes maximize more often then close? order them according to importance. it just makes since.

    of course, i just have one button, close. i use screen edges + right click for minimize, maximize, and even close most of the time. so i dont need any buttons.

  • mike

    Gnome Shell right (yeah, right in the top right corner).

    Or use this applet: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=103732

  • http://twitter.com/leveliv Chris Goodman

    I wouldnt actually mind the option to do both.

  • Anonymous

    I would like close on the right and min/max on the left. reduces the change of accidentally closing an app

  • Anonymous

    I like my window controls like my politics: far right ;)

    • noway

      YES WE CAN,
      YES WE WILL
      welcome to the new world where control is on the left

  • http://www.thekiplingconspiracy.co.uk christiegrinham

    i usually hover my cursor in the bottom right of the screen so, having the controls top right seems like the best place.

  • hansioux

    it would be nice if it is an option for users to decide themselves. personally, i use the mouse with my right hand, therefore it is easier to have the window controls on the right hand side. i am sure if someone who uses the mouse with their left hand would rather have it on the left side.

    i am left handed, i find it easier to use the mouse with the right hand and have my better hand at the keyboard typing. i am sure a lot of left handed people don’t feel the same way. if other left handed people prefer to use the mouse with their left hand, i think the poll simply shows that most people are right handed or that they are right handed mouse users.

  • http://chromestory.com/ Chrome Story

    Looks like right is winning :)

  • SJ

    If Microsoft had it in the left from the beginning, we’d all be hating the right side. Come on guys, grow up… Just because a little change is happening, doesn’t mean we bash it up and prevent it from taking place.

    Left or right doesn’t matter to me, but they should offer user level customization there…

    • Anonymous

      Just because microsoft has them on the right it doesnt mean we will have to do the exact opposite

      • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

        and just because apple has it on the left doesnt mean we should follow suit. The biggest problem of Linux is lack of constitency. Not even Apple or MS would wake one morning and decide to move the location of the windows button. I mean from the pull it shows people dont want this change. oh wait Ubuntu is not a democracy, its a dictatorship.

        • Anonymous

          So when you put some buttons on the left of a window bar you are “following suit”. Now come on, how much options do you actually have? Oh, right: 2. Left or Right. So you’re always “following suit” when you are choosing between one of the two?

          • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

            Look this is not just a question of putting the window button to the left, Its about how the whole process was done, the lack of transparency. Up till now we are yet to know the rationale behind this change. No one has come up to say why this change is necessary. Mark came out to just say oh Ubuntu is not a democracy and the expert as made the decision so everyone can go to hell, its either u like it or u take a hike. That is against the spirit of FOSS. User ought to have a say and a good design team always listen to the users because the purpose of design is to ease the interaction of the user with the OS and where the user complains (overwhelmingly) about this issue. A good responsive design team goes back to the drawing board and makes a change. Like I said consistency is the biggest problem of Linux. and this change does help matters in that regard. It breaks compatibility with upstreams and other window manager in Linux, if I use emerald my windows button are back to the right, same thing for kwin and openbox. seriously this who windows buttongate is a solution looking for a problem.

          • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

            Look this is not just a question of putting the window button to the left, Its about how the whole process was done, the lack of transparency. Up till now we are yet to know the rationale behind this change. No one has come up to say why this change is necessary. Mark came out to just say oh Ubuntu is not a democracy and the expert as made the decision so everyone can go to hell, its either u like it or u take a hike. That is against the spirit of FOSS. User ought to have a say and a good design team always listen to the users because the purpose of design is to ease the interaction of the user with the OS and where the user complains (overwhelmingly) about this issue. A good responsive design team goes back to the drawing board and makes a change. Like I said consistency is the biggest problem of Linux. and this change does help matters in that regard. It breaks compatibility with upstreams and other window manager in Linux, if I use emerald my windows button are back to the right, same thing for kwin and openbox. seriously this who windows buttongate is a solution looking for a problem.

        • Anonymous

          So when you put some buttons on the left of a window bar you are “following suit”. Now come on, how much options do you actually have? Oh, right: 2. Left or Right. So you’re always “following suit” when you are choosing between one of the two?

    • Anonymous

      Having them on the left leaves the title bar off balance, visually.

  • http://twitter.com/NtynRuben Ruben Verhack

    One of the biggest rules in software engineering: “Never surprise the user”. Unless there is a really good reason why left is better, (aesthetics is no good reason), you should not change it. Every improvement is a change, not every change is an improvement.

  • http://mastropino.deviantart.com/ MastroPino

    I hope that they will switch to left side, the right side of the windows are covered more easily.

  • Anonymous

    I could not be more delighted to have them on the left side.

  • niabot

    I would say, the best option is:

    * Buttons per default on right side
    * Integrate this as am option into Windowconfiguration

  • Anonymous

    IS luicid’s goal to make a mac clone?

    Any way my scrollbar is on the right i am right handed and think it would be an annoying extra step on a laptop

  • Anonymous

    They whent ahead and changed it. It’s now left by deafult. -.-
    How do I change this?

  • Connor

    With some things it is worth doing something new, but not this!

    • soopa

      since the scroll bar is on the right, the logical thing is to put buttons on the right..
      If it was on the left the logic would be to put them on the left…

  • http://leftyfb.com/ leftyfb

    Again, the point isn’t as much what the default setting is and more about the fact that the end user has no easy and intuitive way of setting it back to normal.

  • http://twitter.com/TheAxlord Leon Morgado

    it certainly looks awkward in the left… but i think we can get used to it. i mean, when we started to use the pc we got used to the buttons in the right. and mac users use them on the left and they don’t complaint. i say i’ll give it a try.

    alas, there are themes anyway. god bless customization

  • Anonymous

    Have they moved it to the left for a good reason or are they just trying to be different? Is it normally on the right for a reason? In the western world we read from top to bottom but that can’t have an effect can it?

    If you are going to break the mold and try something new but this time for good purpose, how about this… A lot of screens are now wider than they once were. Vertical space is now at a premium. How about they move the menu bar to the side? then we can have the three buttons vertically. I mean if you are in the mood for changing stuff lets get a little more radical…

  • Anonymous

    I agree, personally I don’t care what side the buttons are on, but for those who do (or who get bored and fancy changing it) I think it should be easily configured in the Appearances screen.

  • Anonymous

    ok so we have minimize maximize close on the left then under it under file we have the same thing

    i really hate this by the way seams like a big pain to me most right handed peoples mouse is usually idol on the right which vast majority of people are right handed also my scroll bar is on the right the iconifyed running programs are on the right that are meant to be quickly accessed

    and on a touch pad its going to drive me nutty and it doesn’t even look anyway close to normal and ads more clutter

    also by the poll results they are basically saying screw the users

  • Hybrid

    The important thing is arranging them a decent order (the close button MUST BE IN THE DAMN CORNER!)

  • spiral

    ok after using lucid for a while, I want to revert my opinion in the poll and I would vote “on the left” now! We will get used to it, the only down side is that it breaks themes, I think themes should be able to put the controls where it needs them.

  • Anonymous

    Where’s the “I don’t care” option?

    • http://leftyfb.com/ leftyfb

      If you’re running Lucid or OSX, it’s the “X” button in the top left of your browser window. If you’re running anything else, it’s the “X” button in the top right of your browser window :)

  • http://twitter.com/Mawoon Jeffrey Vandenborne

    I voted left, I like change. I don’t know why there is so much criticism about this. I never use windows anyway, so I honestly don’t care that they’re changing it to left, I think it’s nice as a matter of fact, it’s different, and it’s not going to take years to get used to, not to mention, we’re taking even more distance from windows, and other operating systems, Ubuntu will be even more unique with the buttons on the left, I just tested lucid daily build and noticed they were on the left, so I got to say, props to the developers :)

    • Anonymous

      I don’t like change for the sake of change. It’s really unnecessary to do this kind of change, it will just confuse users. Take my grandma for instance; she has been using Ubuntu since 9.04, and had a hard time learning where to find things. Now, she would be forced to relearn this (which isn’t easy for her).

      If they do a change which can be motivated by usability I’m not against it, but I’ve seen no evidence this is better from any aspect.

  • Anonymous

    In most instances, I vote for the Left, but this is one case where I’m coming down hard for the Right.

  • Anonymous

    In most instances, I vote for the Left, but this is one case where I’m coming down hard for the Right.

  • http://tech.mahesha.com/ Mahesh Asolkar

    I don’t really care if the buttons are on the right or the left. Just keep ‘close’ as the outermost button, then ‘maximize’ and ‘minimize’ as the innermost button – the way it is supposed to be.

  • http://blog.pansapiens.com/ pansapiens

    I configure my window controls to be on the right, and yet *I voted left* – I always thought part of the rationale for choosing left over right as the default was providing some UI familiarity to Windows users who might test or switch to Ubuntu. There are more Windows users than OSX users (OSX puts window controls on the left), and the convention for Ubuntu/Gnome has always been ‘right’, AFAIK. For these reasons alone, there seems no reason to change it. Familiarity is half of usability, and using the right side for window controls is more familiar to more people.

    This seems to be another of the recent examples of “OSX envy” in Ubuntu, which on the whole are great – nothing wrong with copying the best bits of the UI – but this particular OSX-ish feature is mostly just a bad idea (or am I missing some very sensible usability reason for doing this ?).

  • http://blog.pansapiens.com/ pansapiens

    I configure my window controls to be on the right, and yet *I voted left* – I always thought part of the rationale for choosing left over right as the default was providing some UI familiarity to Windows users who might test or switch to Ubuntu. There are more Windows users than OSX users (OSX puts window controls on the left), and the convention for Ubuntu/Gnome has always been ‘right’, AFAIK. For these reasons alone, there seems no reason to change it. Familiarity is half of usability, and using the right side for window controls is more familiar to more people.

    This seems to be another of the recent examples of “OSX envy” in Ubuntu, which on the whole are great – nothing wrong with copying the best bits of the UI – but this particular OSX-ish feature is mostly just a bad idea (or am I missing some very sensible usability reason for doing this ?).

    • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

      Did you mean to say you configure your controls on the *left* but you voted for the *right*? Because you said you voted for the left, but then you wrote two paragraphs about why the controls shouldn’t be on the left. ;)

      • http://blog.pansapiens.com/ pansapiens

        You are correct. I’ve never been good at telling my left from right – and I was so careful too :)
        I meant (double triple checking this) – I voted *right* (Traditional Ubuntu / Windows-style) but my own configuration uses *left* (OSX-style).

        • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

          Haha, I figured as much :) I’ve never had problems with lefts and rights in real life, but on the computer, for some reason I always think left-aligned should go on the other side… :p I checked my own post several times just to make sure my response was accurate.

  • Guest

    … comment deleted, Disqus let me down …

  • Anonymous

    Yeah but it’s orange and it doesn’t look good with the rest of the elementary stuff. I modified the icons once, but whenever a new elementary update comes along my mods get overwritten so I stopped doing it. The GDM thing I did looked awesome but for some strange reason only worked on one computer and that computer is dead now.

    It was just a suggestion. I like my Ubuntu to have all sorts of branding and stuff.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks, I know, but space is a concern and doing that will take some real estate from my 11″ screen.

    Also I could plug my laptop to my HDTV via HDMI but I’m using Lucid and my Intel GPU has a massive bug and I’ can’t connect it at the moment, hopefully it will be fixed soon.

    Also I changed Metacity the way it was.

  • Anonymous

    The only real reason I see for switching the place for those three icons, is that their new beautiful notification system often is blocking the min, max, close buttons.

  • http://www.berthon.eu/ice_and_fire/ Huygens

    One note: if you are used to something, it does not mean it’s ergonomic! And it does not mean do not change it! For instance, everyone is used to click “Start” to actually “Shutdown” Windows (also in recent release, this is no longer call “Start”). I would welcome the change when like with my TV or HiFi, I just simply (and only) have to press the shutdown button which is a physical button.
    (btw, this is the usual case on Mac OS since ages, I mean already 20 years ago!)
    Another example, everyone is used to go into a car, put the key in, turn them on and start the engine. Well, if you buy a Renault car, you get a card (no key), when you are in your car with this card, you can simply press a “Start” physical button to start the engine. That’s a nice change, although I’m sure everyone is used to the other old way.

    So a “poll” is not going to tell you: is it better for the user to be on the left or right? However, a user conducted survey, where ergonomists would analyse how the users are interacting with those buttons, would do it!

    By the way, I sometime read on blog posts about this topic that “human beings” won’t be able to cope with such a change! Come on, everyone’s back on earth with their two feet. Natural science is telling me that evolution got all of us a brain that is more than adequate to cope with left or right side window control button. I’m not a genius, and this thing never got me into trouble (when going to MacOS for instance).

    PS: my wife switch from Windows to Mac OS some years ago, and she was kind of grumpy with the new system for a month or two, because all those habits she had were kind of in conflicts with the new system. However now and even though she is still accustomed with the Windows way, she just love how easy most daily tasks are on her Mac. And she’s cursing each time she has to use Windows again (like at work). (albeit she never tried 7, so it’s not about a flame war or troll, but XP – with its venerable 9 years old interface – has a kind of old fashion user experience compare to recent OS, and Vista was really not a success. So perhaps things have changed too on this front!)

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/110067375901855465830 Ben

    I’d vote ‘meh’, but it’s not an option…

  • Olivier

    Too bad about all the work for the new themes! Most users won’t use it because of the strange button positions. The fact that changing ordering spoils it and the fact that other themes are also affected makes me believe that the new themes were created by professional designers that have only minor experience in developing themes.

  • Stephen Thomas

    *And* in menu:minimize,maximize,close order, if you please.

  • Anonymous

    If you don’t like the controls in the new left side position for Radiance and Ambiance, you can download slightly modified versions of those themes entitled Radiance_R and Ambiance_R. I have modified these thems and posted them on Gnome-Look.org for people who would like to use them.

    Here are the links to the themes.

    Ambiance_R (Ambiance Right Side)
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Ambiance_R+%28Ambiance+Right+Side%29?content=123927

    Radiance_R (Radiance Right Side)
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Radiance_R+%28Radiance+Right+Side%29?content=123931

    I hope you find these beneficial and enjoy them.

    - Jack Thomas / zipperback

 
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