Make Sailfish UI consistent and easy again. Please!

I agree with everything you say about SfOS1 vs SfOS2 all the way through last update. But I actually like the new three part top swipe to access the status menu. Even though I prefer the SfOS1 with events from the bottom and status above I think the global status menu is better (even if it copies IOS/Android).

I love the top menu and had this kind of top menu enabled in SFOS2 with the help of a patch. What I don't like about the new one is the design of the icons. Those are so Androidish. Before in SFOS2 we had the small glooming dots. However those require more space. About the three areas for swiping: I'd preferred distinguishing the actions by the distance swiped. E.g. 20% Swipe just locks screen, 40% Swipe closes app and 60% swipe keeps the menu open.

There is nothing wrong about copying good ideas.

There is nothing right about copying bad ideas.

Copying can be good or bad, that's true. In this particular case I think copying the top pull gesture from IOS/Android is better than keeping the SfOS2 way. BUT(!) I still stand by the opinion that SfOS1 was better than both IOS and Android and that Jolla got lost trying to do something like everybody else. For me SfOS1 was as ground breaking as IOS was, compared to the existing UX then, when it was first released.

The status menu being accessible from everywhere was already a standard feature on the N9, and in fact it worked the same way but from the opposite edge of the screen on Sailfish 1.0. I agree that dividing the top edge in three is a bad idea, especially if your screen is only a couple of cm wide, causing you to close applications when you wanted to open the menu, and opening the menu when you wanted to close the application. Then again, being forced to choose between having either the top menu or swipe-to-close (or swipe-to-lock) available at all times was always one of the weak spots of previous Sailfish versions.

In my opinion the SFOS 3 UI is the best compromise of the most used features. 2.x top menu was overly complicated to navigate into, and I prefer the current top swipe everywhere solution. There could be an option to disable swipe down to close completely, but I already got used to swipe down from the edge too.

@nthn: previous Sailfish version (notice the missing 's'). SfOS 1 had top menu above events view, which in turn was reached from bottom swipe. So to access the top menu you did a bottom swipe followed by a pull down. Easy and quick (even if the top menu had less to offer back then).

SFOS 1 was surely unique in how it utilized the gestures for navigation. In some places, gestures were just slapped where things could be done more simply and intuitively. I think cover actions was one of those things that didn't really make sense with gestures. While I agree that they were easy to trigger, the icons essentially looked like buttons thus making it unintuitive. Also SFOS1 took gestures to the extreme by making it difficult for a new user to understand. In home view, pulling up from center would open up app grid and an edge swipe would bring events view.

What 2.0 brought was a more intuitive and easier to learn solution since in home screen regular swipes were the same as edge swipes in home view. This actually made it more consistent and easier to discover for new users and I believe this improvement was in my opinion the key element that earned Jolla the prize in the MWC at the time. Some of these solutions of course came with the cost of breaking down the structure of the old interface but it also further entrenched some of the main selling points such as multitasking with a globally accessible app launcher.

With Sailfish 3, further improvements for usability have been introduced with globally accessible quick controls which has been probably one of the most used patches since SFOS1 and long overdue. What 2.0 did with the events view quick controls was simply not what the majority of the users wanted as it is way too clunky for a feature used so often. Ambiances have had their prominence reduced but honestly, they've been a bit too prominent considering how often they're used. I bet most people toggle wifi or bluetooth more often than change ambiances.

What I don't really understand is the general hate towards buttons in SFOS. Sure, SFOS has always been a gesture based OS and will always be I bet. However, that doesn't mean there's no place for buttons too. In my opinion, these improvements have made SFOS more usable by using buttons where they make sense, rearranging existing gestures and even introducing new intuitive and useful gestures (keyboard switch and the promised quick app switch). Even the new gallery makes more sense as the split carousel mode was always confusing when you didn't know where to swipe back home. Agreed, a vertical swipe and a cross button are against the old design principles but still, they actually make the element more usable than it was before. Some times it doesn't hurt to break from some design guidelines if they actually make more sense, which it surely does if you ask me.

Now, I agree that having an option to choose whether you want the swipe to close action would be great as it has been configurable before. While I occasionally make the mistake of closing an app instead of pulling the top bar but I guess that's something you can learn eventually and will bring together these two competing standards. I don't think fragmenting edge gestures any further though would make sense as that'd just be repeating Apple's mistake of feature creeping their home button. This solution is still much cleaner than any other alternative. It'll be stuck in your muscle memory in no time.

This sounds pretty discouraging. Elegant 1-handed use is a great feature, still use a BB10 Classic for this reason. Its disappointing to use anything that requires 2 hands to operate, especially when it could be avoided with sensible design.

Consistent visual style is also important, like it or not. I sometimes see people returning to Windows phone for the UX, despite being discontinued. Not to be underestimated.

@cpb All SFOS versions are very easy to use with one hand. The only exceptions are zooming out or adjusting the precise zoom level in regular map applications, and zooming in camera.

I am totally satisfied with the UI except the way we have to close annoying notifications in events view in two steps holding and pressing close icon whereas all other platforms supports swipe action over them. This shows inconsistency in a swipe based UI.

@Mohjive: you're right, I was probably using a patch to show the toggles directly on the Events view.

@Manatus: with a large phone, it's impossible to reach the top of the screen with your thumb, so closing an application is fairly difficult and using the top menu substantially more so given that you need to swipe from the top middle. Also, on version 1 and 2 the toggles were pretty high up on the screen, now they're more towards the middle of the screen, which is much easier to reach.

@p_pahare: that would only work if they made swiping between Home and Events only possible by swiping from the edges of the screen. To me this would also be a lot more logical, because I never swipe from the middle of the screen, but with the way it currently works, swiping away notifications in Events just wouldn't work properly.

@nthn You are correct about reaching the top with large phones. But you can open the top menu from the both main screens just by swiping down anywhere on the screen. Also closing down apps is still possible with long press in the multitask screen. Yes, more steps if the focus is in the app, but it is manageable with just one hand.

I still think https://together.jolla.com/question/1916/suggestion-revised-gesture-to-close-the-active-app-made-relevant-again-by-sfos-20-ui-changes/ is relevant as change to close app gesture. Especially now, with the three-part-swipe made the implemented gesture more complex, I think that the argument that the suggestion in the linked question is too complex is moot.

Thank you @ossi1967 for this post! The image viewer with the [X] for closing has absolutely no SailfishOS-feel.

As a non-Sailfish user I have a question. What happens when you have a lot of opened apps on the home page and you want to scroll through them. Does this trigger the quick invocation of the Top Menu?

@rhodos No, if you have more than 9 apps open, you have to scroll up (if you were further down) before the top menu opens up. Unless you begin the swipe outside of the screen, of course. Then it is instant.

"Make UI great again!" :-)

Yes. Yes. One of the reasons why I'm cooling off for Jolla. Unfortuately there are no alternatives anymore.

I agree with you too. Well, dear Jolla developers, please make UI great again with SFOS1 expectation.

Agree with your call for consistency, it should be a constant reminder to Jolla as they have proven to be capable to mess up the interface under pressure of selling licenses to demanding parties. Hope we can reach the point where "custom Sailfish interface" when really desirable, is some possibility the network operator / phone manufacturer / licensee is dealing with. Instead of Jolla having to change "pure Sailfish" for all and for the better or the worse just to please one contractor, they could focus on developing it consistently so that the world finally will see their vision and idea is the right one , not to be changed at will. Not holding my breath though: Apple is still capable of designing an interface where you launch a camera that will place the floating button over the shutter button actually preventing you taking a picture when you just launched the... camera.. Apple knows what you want to do better than you, after all?

Since Sailfish 2.0 I still regret the disappearance of cover swipe cover actions to show off the power of the swipe based interface. Airport books of the type "All you need to know about Sailfish in 10 simple tricks"could cover this for the 10 yrs users of Android or iOS that find it hard to familiarize with the unknown. Chicken egg comes to mind as the OS should gain more popularity first.

However, and to conclude I have to admit after being disgusted by Sailfish 2.0 that simply started my day by hurting my brain when trying to get my phone out of airplane mode, I feel at least Sailfish 3.0 allows me to use Sailfish without thinking.. And for the first time since Sailfish 2.0, Sailfish 3.0 makes returning to Android 8.1 on Nokia 8 not feel like a relief. Progress of the 2 steps forward one step back kind.

@Toxipglobally accessible quick controls which has been probably one of the most used patches since SFOS1

Where do you know this one from? I know a lot of sailfish users, but nobody of them used this. Butt all of them used "no home carousel" and many used "hide recent calls". They did not download, install and uninstall, they did use it all the time version 2 came over...

@poddl Quick settings on power menu patch has about 5000 downloads and Powermenu 2 in ambiance switcher has about the same while no home carousel for instance has about 1000 downloads. For comparison Ultimate statusbar patch has about 6000, Xperia Clock 2000, Volume control settings has about 5000. I don't know if the original patch for 1.0 still exists so I can't tell the stats for but I remember it being spoken a lot since the day 1 in the fan club. So some hard data shows that two similar patches consist about 10000 downloads so among these examples I gave you it is by far the most popular.

I also presume that one of the reasons why this feature was added was because of how wanted a feature it was. (The feature request](https://together.jolla.com/question/4568/settings-quick-switches-favourites-available-easier/) had some 100 votes and there has been multiple different implementations of the same feature since the first Sailfish OS release. So yeah, multiple indicators point to this being a much wanted feature.