Transmission UI mockup for Linux desktops

[gitSaptarshi]

Transmission is getting pretty dated in terms of UI in Linux. I am proposing a mockup based on recent GTK styling. This mockup makes it look pretty appealing to users and also updates the UI. Here's the mockup I am proposing: Github doesn't let me upload the SVG file, instead I am including a mockup-transmission.zip file of the design.

[ckerr]

The GTK client needs so much love at this point that it hurts to look at the code. 100% agree that a refresh would be good for the project.

Feedback on this version of the mockup --

• I like the menu reorg.
• I like the layout of the action buttons on the torrents themselves. This is very attractive!
• Overall this shows a lot of promise and I'd like to see another iteration of it

Some questions / issues that could be resolved:

• I'm unsure about the filtering changes. Filtering by state has been retained, but filtering by tracker and by substring has been removed. To me the real power of the current filterbar comes from the combination of these three filters, which is lost here.
• Counts have been removed from the filter. This isn't as important as the filtering functionality itself, but the current implementation's filter dropdown is a nice, terse way of seeing how many torrents you have for each state and each tracker.
• This iteration loses the ability to perform actions on a selected set of torrents, since the current "Torrents" menu has been moved into a per-torrent drop-down. Sample use case: filter by seeding + tracker name -> select all -> pause. This is a pretty common use case when permaseeding and this draft is not able to filter nor perform batch actions.
• Compact mode seems to have been removed? This is a real problem for permaseeding, as it's not uncommon to have thousands of torrents. I'd be very interested to see what a GNOME refresh of compact mode would look like.
• From this screenshot I'm unsure of what will be in the sidebar.

Thank you for this draft! I'm very encouraged by this work and hope that you continue to revise it!

[wdlkmpx]

The GTK2 UI still looks more appealing, a utorrent GTK clone would look even better. The problem is that the gtk API changes so wildly that applications are not upgradable to the next major version, the mobile UI becomes and more prevalent, the desktop is dying a horrible death thanks to GNOME.

[illdeletethis]

sorry to say, but i think your suggestion has all the worst aspects of current web mobile and sadly now also desktop design. elements in the list take up excessive space, with obscene amounts of unused space in between. commonly used settings are hidden in submenus of menus, there is too much focus on looking clean over being usable. your mockup already demonstrates the downsides of your design by having to hide everything exceeding 4 torrents, once you get into the double digits it becomes near unusable. the current style may be plain, but it works well. one thing i do like a lot about your concept is moving the start/pause to the individual torrents, layering this onto the folder/file icon of the current GTK interface would be a welcome change.

[bitigchi]

It looks better than the previous proposal, which was submitted some years ago. It is a pretty mock-up for GTK standards, but however those standards aren't so high to begin with compared to other platforms.

[killemov]

Again a design with a lot of wasted screen real-estate. The progress-bar seems to be the common element to most of these designs. It alone takes up a lot of space to display a percentage. I am against the duplication of control buttons for each torrent. Keeping the main menus opening from the top is an improvement. The separation of torrents with different status (downloading, paused, ...) also doesn't work on a single page because of sorting. Maybe try just sorting or filtering by status.

I assume the current web-UI still uses those menus opening from the bottom AND still use right-mouse-button-activation?

And now for something completely different: https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12555 https://github.com/killemov/Shift

[belenos]

I've been using Fragments lately. It follows Gnome's UI guidelines and looks native. Transmission UI at this point is just visually outdated. I'd love to use it again, it something changes.

[H2L29]

please consider the transmission-remote-gtk GUI as a better alternative, clearer, more complete and close to most other torrent clients, I would very much like to see the same design on transmission-gtk

[bertini97]

Please, don't forget to consider people that like good-ol-menubars and don't use gnome!

I understand that since gnome is pushing CSD to all their core apps, in their desktop an old style app looks different, but the same is true in reverse. Gnomifying transmission will make it different in other desktops. Adding to this, I personally find the menubar style applications way more usable, and hamburger menus too simplified; I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just reminding you people who prefer menubars exist :).

Please, read also consider this discussion about CSD in Libreoffice's list, and in particular:

Personally, I don't like the CSD design. I find it much easier to select and move windows around and also to tell which document is open with a dedicated title bar. Screen space is not a problem for me. Therefore, if this feature is ever implemented, I request that it be optional.

I, and i suppose some other non-gnome users, ask the same.

Big thanks to anyone that contributes!

[Pentaphon]

The GTK client needs so much love at this point that it hurts to look at the code. 100% agree that a refresh would be good for the project.

Maybe it's time to drop the GTK client altogether since nobody seems interested in actually fixing the GTK client and the Qt client is so far ahead and works on both Windows and Linux.

There's a dev who made a GTK4 frontend called Fragments which uses Transmission as their backend so if Linux users really want to keep using GTK, they can just use that client and let the main project be Qt-only from now on.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Fragments

[belenos]

There's a dev who made a GTK4 frontend called Fragments which uses Transmission as their backend so if Linux users really want to keep using GTK, they can just use that client and let the main project be Qt-only from now only.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Fragments

I've been using Fragments for a couple of months and loving it so far. Feels more integrated to the system.

[JaneSmith]

Fragments fits the GNOME HIG, but it's an extremely simplified client. I personally want the power of Transmission, together with the clean and beautiful HIG of GNOME. The mock-ups in the OP look great to me, and would be clearly more featured than Fragments with e.g. the sidebar categories.

[Pentaphon]

Fragments fits the GNOME HIG, but it's an extremely simplified client. I personally want the power of Transmission, together with the clean and beautiful HIG of GNOME. The mock-ups in the OP look great to me, and would be clearly more featured than Fragments with e.g. the sidebar categories.

Then you need to vote for this issue and get somebody to do a PR for it.

https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/3038

[GaryElshaw]

This is a really interesting topic for discussion. Generally, i think it's terrible if a third-party is doing a better job of the ui than you are.