Deluge 1.1.x UI (a little bit of "wtf" rant)

[Spaceman]

Hello guys,
please don't think of this as trolling, more like a pretty serious question, but - what the heck happened to my beloved Deluge? I just upgraded from 0.5.9.3 to 1.1.0 (took that long, as FreeBSD's ports tree was frozen for a while because of the recent 7.1 release cycle) and after the start, my jaw literally dropped (well, actually a while later, as without fully wiping out the 0.x configuration files, the 1.x wasn't even able to start and simply locked dead while drawing the main window).

While I can see the benefit of some new features (new features are always good, especially if you can turn them off when you don't want/need them), was it really necessary to turn the former slick UI to the current mess reminding of, I don't know, the way KDE applications are 'designed'? To be a little more specific:

This is my wife's "original" Deluge, as she loves it (and as a girl is pretty fine in operating it without a help):
http://i39.tinypic.com/16q4ir.png

Now this is my new Deluge 1.1.0-the-uh-scary-something:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2cmrzft.png

The first thing that one gets to think after launching it is "For christ sake, when did i start working for NASA?!".

And what's with those illogical tab icons? Heck, for what reason are there -any- icons at all now? Did computer users forget to read in the past few months?

- Lightbulb as a "Status"? What exactly happens when I click there? Will my lights go on? off? Would my monitor explode?

- "Details" with a picture of a wrench? I'm going to beat someone with a tool to get a detailed info from him, or what..?

- What are those funny cubes in "Files"? Oh, I see, that's like a pretty sexy squared piece of paper. Clever. Except it does remind of anything else but a piece of paper. Not so clever.

- Two networked computers in "Peers"! Hey, everyone knows that, that's the icon from Windows you click when you want to setup your network properties, let's go t...what the hell? It does something else. Doh.

- "Options". The first law of repetition says, there is nothing as good as a good piece of repetition. I have the same icon twice on my screen. What it will do when I click there? Shoud I expect the same result from both, the one on top and the same one in tab? And why the heck do I have two of them for a start? I can see it coming:

Wife: Stuff Foo isn't working as I want, what should I do?
Me: Well, check the settings and enable the Bar thingie.
Wife: It isn't there.
Me: It is, are you sure you're in the options?
Wife: Well oh sure I'm not stupid, I clicked the "control panel" looking icon, dummy.
Me: Yeah, so it's there, enable it and you're done.
Wife: No, it isn't!
Me: It is, I'm looking at it!
Wife: It isn't in mine!
Me: *moves over to her, beats her to death with a shovel and buries in the backyard*

No, seriously guys. Did you let some ex-KDE core developer design the new Deluge GUI, or what happened in the past few months?

What's with that "No-incoming-connections!-Reactor-Breach-Imminent!" idiot-certified alert in the status bar? Sweet zombie jesus, I'm behind a triple'NAT'ed community wifi network and pretty aware of the fact that there is no way an incoming connection could get in even with an industrial hammer. Now I'm being sentenced to look at this this every fricking time I switch to Deluge, burning into my eyes, In case I might possibly forget about it?

But that's still nothing to the torrent-adding process. No, I won't be commenting the whole Windows 3.1-ish feeling (well, stinking) dialog, the terrible out of touch buttons, the huge "plus" sign that looks like an "add" button, but does nothing (hey, it's an art!) and the "real" add is the "file" button, the "what the **** is Infohash" that my wife will really love while hopelessly struggling with the 'add a new torrent' process, I wont start about the whole dialog being named "Add Torrents" and in true Microsoft Vista fashion, a frickin "REMOVE" button right in middle of it, no no.. That whole thing is so painfully obvious that there really can not be a single soul needing pointing that out.

But.

By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, what have you done to the "Download Location" dialog? I used to download tons of torrents at a given time, I simply opened a torrent, picked the download destination that immediately popped up, movies to movies, tv series to tv series, music to music, dj mixes to dj mixes, albums to albums, software to software, games to games (everything only the legal stuff, you know). "Hey, but you can still do that, it's like, it's really intuitive now!" Yes, it is. through the stinky-dialog, I have to open the "Options" tab (clever, clever), I have to roll out the "download location" dropdown, and uh, my desired dir is heavy hardcore custom, so obviously it's not there in a default list, so I am picking "Other..." (while half-asleep through the process), and, oh, finally, my download location dialog pops up and I can finally choose my destiny..eh, destination.

And that's it, I haven't been able to find enough life force to check any further and that's probably only a good thing for everyone involved.

I've been a Deluge user since the early 0.2 days, I have been recommending it (later as it matured) to everyone as "the ultimate" Gnome torrent client with great, slick, unobtrusive and very intuitive interface, while at the same time beating the crap out of cripples like Transmission and the rest of the crowd. Basically for me, up to 0.6, Deluge was a non-optional part of Gnome and I would break hands if I found other clients installed in someone's system. Now I feel like while I was sleeping, someone turned my computer into MS Vista installation with Firefox and a bunch of KDE apps thrown in for the complete set. I feel raped.

Is there any chance that some day, Deluge will return back to it's Gnome (as in user interface principles) roots and stop behaving like it came long time ago, from a galaxy far far away?

[johnnyg]

Firstly, the new UI is still a GTK UI which means it varies according to your GTK theme.
You could probably change the icons through your GTK theme.
I suggest you look at "View" in the menu: it let's you disable the sidebar as well as (all or just certain) tabs.
The new add torrents dialog is a response to the fact that adding multiple torrents in 0.5.x was a nightmare.
The remove button is to remove a torrent you were going to add and the infohash is the hash of a torrent - it lets you add torrents without having the actual .torrent.
You should also have a look at labels plugin: it lets you automatically download torrents to a certain directory according to their label: you could use this to download certain torrent types to the usual location.

I'm sorry that you feel like you've been raped but try to keep your feedback constructive: this is an open-source project meaning that no one here is paid to take time out of their day to help improve deluge.

And lastly, if you prefer 0.5.9.3 then use it, no one is forcing you to upgrade.

[Spaceman]

[...] You could probably change the icons through your GTK theme.
[...] I suggest you look at "View" in the menu: it let's you disable the sidebar as well as (all or just certain) tabs.

These are fair and valid points, but arguing this way, we could continue ad absurdum and say that I can simply go hack up a new glade scheme and use it "if I want the old look that much". And why stopping at that, I can keep a set of local patches for my very own Deluge, we are open source after all. Or well, the ever so popular "go make you own fork, silly".

But my rant wasn't about that. For example, imagine my situation that I just gotten into. I've been advocating Deluge for years, I've been personally using it exclusively for the -way- it worked, for the experience I had. Other people were using it for some of the points I presented them (or well, because they didn't want to get killed, but that's a minority). All the time Deluge experience was "superb", one would almost think that there really is someone in the wild reading Gnome human interface guidelines.

Now fast forward a few months through the FreeBSD ports freeze and upgrade from 0.x to 1.x. I find myself with a strange new Deluge branch with the whole interface thrown several years back in time (and I'm not a Microsoft Windows user, so UI consistency is something that really matters to me). It's not just about a bunch of half-assed icons, or the organization of elements (item's options in a same tab structure as the item's details, status, and various additional data? Any User Interface Desing instructor would strangle the guy that came up with that idea). It's not just about a big red scary alarm stating the, uh, obvious infromation about my (non-existing) incoming internet connections (well, thanks Deluge for letting me know what I know from the very first moment I connected to the network, but now please shut up, I'm here to download torrents, not to promote you to my personal network monitor).

And I still remember how Deluge started, it wanted to be a clean and lightweight "just the torrents" client. That's why I have chosen it, if I wanted a pile of steaming crap, I could go for, dunno, Azureus (is it still alive? I hope not). You say that:

I'm sorry that you feel like you've been raped but try to keep your feedback constructive: this is an open-source project meaning that no one here is paid to take time out of their day to help improve deluge.

Yes, but thats the basic problem with "overimprovement". I must say that I totally don't know what got changed in the development process, Deluge was always just my "common daily app". I haven't been watching forums except for bug cases, so I really didn't need to care about the specifics, like names of people behind it.. Everything worked perfect and I was happy. So I don't know, maybe the original guys are no longer here, and that could explain some things (like no one giving a damn about interface design and ergonomy). But where I am now? If I want to recommend Deluge to a friend, what should I say? "Yeah, that Deluge is fine, it looks a little funky from version to version, and some parts would make you think you're running Windows for Workgroups, but under the hood, it's pretty solid. And in case you get confused by psychedelic tab icons, you can like, you know, edit the GTK theme and substitute them for something else, it's really no big deal".

But where is the rationale for this? Did someone woke up one day and got the genius idea that stuffing an icon into every single widget on the screen will make the application "more Vista"? Where that annoying connection warning "feature" spawned? And when that happened, why someone didn't point out that running a network without the possibility of incoming connections is a pretty normal operation nowadays (especially if you don't own the network), and that a scary red warning is supposed to draw your attention and pump up the adrenaline, so there is ensured that you will notice it every single time (well, it's a warning and that's the point of it). Why didn't someone point out the most obvious "huh, dude, what you are proposing is, like, totally dumb. If you want a warning, put a network check somewhere in the bandwidth/connection preferences and let it show some fancy results, when user chooses to -run that-". That's the stuff I'm ranting about, not that my life will never be the same with the dumb warning in place, but how was it able to get there in the first place? Why there wasn't anyone to stop the offender from adding such crap to the application? Because, in my eyes, as a Deluge user, that means - it will happen again. And it will get worse. Check this screen with me:

http://i44.tinypic.com/285zbt.png

Here I got a plus icon in the main toolbar for adding a torrent. Even the tooltip says "Add torrent". I click it, what do I see? Follow me:
I see a new window (a window that's now saying "Add Torrents"). In that window, I can click a button - again - to add a torrent!
Deja-what-vu?
Why, what? Didn't I already tell the application that I want to add a torrent? But it gets even better. right to the top, I see the same plus again, the one I already clicked in the menu bar. So it's the same button, or one with a similar function? No, no, silly, that's just a decoration (yes, a frickin huge one). And what it says next to it? Huge "Add Torrents". Huh, what, why? Isn't the window named the same way just a few pixels above it? But it gets better. Now I see an empty area named Torrents. But hey, why it's empty? I'm already running like, five torrents, I can see them in the main window (example not shown in the picture, but you get the point). Why the "Torrents" box isn't showing them? My stuff got broketh or what :( Oh, you say, but it's only for new torrents you are about to add. I say - bad interface, you don't do stuff this way. Not since Windows 3.11. But it gets better. Let's say I'm the really adventurous girl so I'm going to examine the computerishy button that does "change network settings" (labelled "URL"):

http://i42.tinypic.com/ielc81.png

By the mighty naked Barbra Streisand, WHAT. IS. THAT?! Basically, here, I'd have no sane words to comment it, so I'll skip over and go get me some aspirin. But the guy that did this abomination gets a point for adding another "plus" to my screen, I already have three and hope I'm finishing the level when I collect five.

"Infohash"? But, huh, why :( Did I behave badly, offended some religion, or what did I wrong? I was just trying to add a torrent like every other time before, I just want my stuff downloaded. Did I wrongly click some "introwash" button in the main window or what happened? Why is it there when I'm just a plain simple user adding my plain simple torrent? Yes, silly me, I didn't dig through SVN logs before trying to download my torrent, now I'm getting what I deserve. Really.

"Remove"? Ok, don't get me started about this one. One doesn't need to graduate from Nuclear Sciences to understand that putting a REMOVE button into a dialog that (twice) states "Add Torrent" is a plain crime against humanity and by every convention punishable by death sentence.

Well what's left? The previously mentioned most-plain-and-basic-function-ever - simply picking a place where I want to have my stuff downloaded is hidden inside a tab.. Tab named "options", right in the same tab cell where the other tab just lists the contents of your torrent "archive". Like these are two functionally identical elements that need to share the same screen area and cover each other. Yes, they are like two identical pieces of paper containing about the same type od data on them.

The new add torrents dialog is a response to the fact that adding multiple torrents in 0.5.x was a nightmare.

That's kinda open to personal point of view I guess, previously I have been adding multiple torrents every other while and especially liked (well, actually never thought about it, because that's exactly the behaviour I would expect anywhere) that I can pick the destination for every one, as I almost never let my stuff land into the same single specific directory. And If I wanted them to land in the same one - then even better, it's just a simple "OK" without any changes. That's still twice -less- work than with the current approach.

The remove button is to remove a torrent you were going to add

Yes, that's my point. Try to reread the above sentence a few times and don't think of it as Deluge. Imagine text editor. Imagine music player. Heck, imagine a web browser. Then reread the sentence and replace "torrent" with "document, music, website". Tell me, if you really don't find anything strange about it now.

and the infohash is the hash of a torrent - it lets you add torrents without having the actual .torrent.

Useful, and I mean it seriously. But there are facilities to handle such cases, they are called, for example - main menu items (or toolbar buttons, if you want, though in a software as light as Deluge [is supposed to be], I would argue against toolbar buttons too). A user of a "lightweight torrent client" should never, ever see a button called "infohash" when he has just chosen to add a torrent (because as we all know, torrents are little gremlins that reside on the "computer drive" or "teh webs" and they tell the "torrent client" what stuff to download, we are not interested in some washy-hashy geeky magic). Let's elaborate a little: See, for example my wife has to follow a specific drill when operating a computer software connected to -my- network, one of the steps being - to double check, follow and review all available options relevant to the operation she is about to run (that basically means, in this case, to examine every available control in a given dialog and check their states and values)". Now what have we here? She has chosen to add a new torrent, an operation anyone not living in the cave for past few years is pretty familiar with. She checks the bandwidth rates, download destination, the common stuff one can see there, so she can be sure something isn't messed up and the situation won't end up in me throwing out her computer out of the window. And now she has two options, there is a button cryptically called "Infohash", she has absolutely no idea what thut stuff does and why is it in her "add torrent" dialog (and for a good reason, as she will never use it in her life). She can choose to ignore it, while not knowing what it will do and risking I will kill her as soon as she unknowingly starts DoS-ing the network or opens up a security hole, because she was supposed to disable "it". Or, she can launch a few instances of wikipedia, google, make a few phone calls, learn what "infohash" is about and after a wasted hour of life, be a bit smarter and know that it doesn't matter even slightest. And for what reason? Because somebody was thinking that "one combined crazy add dialog for every possible deluge option should be enough for anybody". You can hardly find a worse example of bad UI design than this mess is. Be it a new different application, one could argue that there is no problem, "you don't like the way it works, you won't use it". But this is an upgrade of a Deluge that was fine and designed correctly, and this upgrade is not leaving me with a "different branch" to use (see below). It messes up "my branch" (the only Deluge available), and messes it pretty badly.

You should also have a look at labels plugin: it lets you automatically download torrents to a certain directory according to their label: you could use this to download certain torrent types to the usual location.

Again, handy advanced feature. But fixing the elementary broken design choices with additional plugins that can workaround a basic feature that was present in older Deluge versions and later intentionally broken is...simply wrong, on so many levels.

And lastly, if you prefer 0.5.9.3 then use it, no one is forcing you to upgrade.

No, I can't do that. First thing is that I have no resources to forever maintain a set of local patches to ensure compatibility with newer versions of boost, python, gtk, heck, even autotools (notice: "heck" is really not a software). Second, Deluge is a pure network app, it operates heavily over teh-scary-internet. I'm pretty horrified that you (or anyone) would advise using an outdated (and no longer maintained as a bonus) branch of beta software and letting it connect to a network. That's pretty suicidial suggestion even for a Windows Calculator, and what we are talking about is a networked peer to peer file transfer software. That's really not an option that can one seriously consider as any viable alternative.

So, to finally make som conclusion of this. What's bothering me is not a particular icon or a color of an annoying warning. If it was only that simple, I wouldn't bother to bitch about it, I'd replace the offending stuff locally and get over it. What's bothering me is that Deluge is currently showing a great deal of ignorance towards very simple basics of good interface design and that in the larger sense means that simply 'nobody cares' (or worse, a commando of KDE Special Dev Ops took over disguised as real developers, killed most of the good guys just by showing them QT screenshots and now is steering Deluge towards the cliff as a part of their plan for world domination). And that's a problem for me, as the Deluge's GUI will only get worse over time if nobody is "getting it", thus I can't recommend Deluge to any serious (well, even starting) Gnome user, because I'd get lynched a few versions later when it turns into uTorrent and later definitely morphs into the final stage of Azureus. Heck, with the whole "Add Torrent" dialog mess, even a seasoned Windows user must feel dizzy, even if he couldn't point out what's the thing bothering him.. For me, the whole situation in the long run means, slowly scrap Deluge and redeploy som cripple like Transmission, GnomeTorrent or even QTorrent so my users can add torrents and download them without learning "what the heck is infohash", when they were not explicitely asking the app to open them such functionality. Maybe you think that I overreact and "it's just a torrent client, for fracks sake". But that's really the point of my point - it WAS just a torrent client (the cleanest, most sober, elegant and unobtrusive ever) and as that was a part of my good desktop experience. Turning it into a pile of crap of randomly stitched up dialogs and trigger happy "hey let's put random icons eeeevrywhere, I'm having a great day today" UI choices is not called progress, that's a full featured demolition derby. So for a while, I'll still hope there are, or can be found, people able to steer it back to the right tracks and won't let it melt. It would be a shame and waste of the last two years of having the most polished and clean BitTorrent client available.

[jdhore]

*snipped cuz it's too fucking long*

A few things:

1. The icons are on the tabs on the bottom to make it more user friendly for noobs. I have favicons on my firefox tabs and that doesn't bother me, same sort of thing.

2. I think the "Add Torrent" dialog in 1.1 is MUCH better than 0.5 (and i didn't switch to 1.0...went from 0.5.9.4-> 1.1.0 RC1). The title and cosmetic icon at the top...Amazingly enough from what you say...Fit the GNOME HIG moreso than not having them. So i think the UI people you know may have a problem with their brains being missing.

As for the buttons...Deluge 1.x supports more than just .torrent files.
File = .torrent file on your HDD somewhere
URL = URL of a public torrent file (like this: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/432900 ... PB.torrent )
InfoHash = Some torrent sites support adding torrents to your client with a special hash or some such...i know nothing about this, but i vaguely know it's purpose.
Remove = The Add Torrent dialog supports adding multiple torrents at once...say you don't want one that you're about to add...you don't have to add it, have it hit the queue and remove it again, you just remove it in the dialog.

Also, i'm sure you bloody forgot to notice this, but now there's 1 (or 2 if you count the GTKFileChooser for getting a .torrent file on your HDD) dialog for adding a torrent instead of 3 (select .torrent file, select where you want it to go, select files you want, torrent is added)

As a guy who is a UI whore, i appreciate the new UI and sure, for about a week, i thought it was going to be crappy, but you get used to it. When i was first playing with Firefox 3, i felt that the AwesomeBar got in my way...now i can't use a browser that doesn't have something like the AwesomeBar. When i first moved to linux (GNOME) i was put off by having 2 panels instead of 1 (Windows), but now i NEED MOAR PANELZ CAPTAIN!

I guess what i'm saying is you can learn to get used to it (and i'll bet you'll like it), you can go back to 0.5.9.x or you can stop using Deluge and go use Transmission or KTorrent or something. This is a open-source project...It's not like you using it and recommending it is really helping to pay the developers' bills all that much or making them feel good cuz you may have introduced 0.5% of their userbase to the client...

[halka]

(well, your reply reminds me awfully of this.)

[lvm]

Methinks FreeBSD is for people who care not how icons or toolbars look as long as they can be disabled, and I hope deluge developers will ignore this and concentrate more on the functional side. Or maybe rewrite deluge in C instead of competing with azureus for the crown of the fattest gorilla in the sky. And by the way, KDE is god.

[Spaceman]

[...] you can go back to 0.5.9.x or you can stop using Deluge and go use Transmission or KTorrent or something. This is a open-source project...It's not like you using it and recommending it is really helping to pay the developers' bills all that much or making them feel good cuz you may have introduced 0.5% of their userbase to the client...

Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious. On the other hand - was it really necessary to reply to my post(s), when you clearly didn't read it past the first few sentences (cuz it's too fucking long)?

Methinks FreeBSD is for people who care not how icons or toolbars look as long as they can be disabled, and I hope deluge developers will ignore this and concentrate more on the functional side.

My posts had nothing to do with FreeBSD - after all, this is a Deluge forum. I was talking about (lack of) good GTK user interface in Deluge and turning the former sexy racing car into a redneck chevy truck with aftermarket carbon fiber spoilers and 'phat rims'.

I have no problems with the functional side of Deluge, but the reason I opted for Deluge was interface that enables the access to the functional side, not the other way around. FreeBSD, same as Linux, same as Solaris, is an underlying operating system and while running Deluge, you don't 'see' a slightest bit of it (maybe with the exception that FreeBSD is the fastest one). And not like you could tell from screenshots, on which one they were taken. So bonus points for ignoring every single point I made and picking up something that doesn't matter even slightest.

[johnnyg]

So, to finally make som conclusion of this. What's bothering me is not a particular icon or a color of an annoying warning. [...]What's bothering me is that Deluge is currently showing a great deal of ignorance towards very simple basics of good interface design and that in the larger sense means that simply 'nobody cares' [...]. And that's a problem for me, as the Deluge's GUI will only get worse over time if nobody is "getting it" [...]. So for a while, I'll still hope there are, or can be found, people able to steer it back to the right tracks and won't let it melt. It would be a shame and waste of the last two years of having the most polished and clean BitTorrent client available.

Like I said before Spaceman, this is an open-source project which means there is no "us and them", just "us". If you drop the attitude, YOU could be that person to steer it back to the right tracks.

For a little background info: the original developers (who created 0.5) left and the new developers took over and tried updating it for as long as possible. Although 0.5 looked cleaner and simpler (I don't disagree with that), the backend hadn't been thought out properly and was a complete nightmare (there were bugs that simply couldn't be fixed). With that they started on a complete rewrite (front and back) which is what 1.1.0 is.

You should also bear in mind that most people here have already been using the new deluge for quite some time, so we're already accustomed to the UI and its quirks (not that the transition was as hard as it seems to be for you).

What annoyed me with your original post wasn't the fact that you were criticising deluge as you had some valid concerns but rather the fact that you didn't offer any real suggestions (this is what I meant by constructive feedback). If your mate wrote a program and it was lacking in parts, you wouldn't tell him that it sucked and he's retarded, you would point out what needed improving and more importantly how to improve it.

I suggest if you really care about deluge, to create a new thread (as this one is quickly becoming flame bait), but this time for every thing you don't like about the new interface, suggest an improvement (or even a replacement). If you do this it is much more likely that the developers will take it on board and implement it.