Every once in a while, somebody makes a design decision that irritates a very vocal portion of their users. The other day, we did that by removing the preferences dialog from Files. We moved the cheese. We didn’t get rid of it though, and we think that's important to note. Here’s the logic behind the move.

The elementary Human Interface Guidelines have recently been updated to include some newer widgets available to developers in the latest versions of Granite and found in the upcoming elementary OS Luna.

Lately we've been making our way through the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) reworking old bits and writing new sections. We've been focusing on making the HIG the best it can be, rather than limiting it to what's currently out there. Take a look at the updates that've been made and what's yet to come.

It's the stuff of epic flame wars. "My button position is better than yours" surely gets the blood boiling. So let's take a second and talk window controls. What do they do, why do we have them, what order should we put them in, and on what side of the screen.