[Deskbar] new deskbar UI

["Colin Walters" <walters redhat com>]

Hi,

Just took a look at the latest iteration of deskbar (2.19.90 on my system).  As some of you may know we're embedding deskbar in our sidebar prototype for the online desktop.

So I guess from a high level I'm not sure I understand where deskbar is going.  The mode of having a persistent entry with attached popup results seems to be gone.  Instead deskbar seems to be moving more towards a transient "search" interface.  Kind of like the Beagle search dialog.

Another way to phrase this is - why is there an applet at all?  It seems strange to have an icon that one clicks to pop up a window where one then types.  The workflow makes more sense when there is a keybinding (as exists now in Alt-F3) to show the window, then one can continue typing.

The default deskbar config (on Fedora at least) seems to be oriented mostly towards launching programs.  Why not just replace Alt-F2 instead of having both Alt-F2 and Alt-F3?  In other words, deskbar is a "daemon" that is always running.  The selection of plugins would move to a capplet instead of a right click on the applet.

I completely understand the removal of multiple UIs; having them pluggable on that level seemed kind of unmaintainable.  But the UI other than the one we use in the sidebar was chosen, so I'm a bit stuck as to what to do for the search UI in the sidebar.  

To summarize here - there is a functional difference between always-visible-entry (old deskbar Entriac UI) and keybinding-pops-up-search (Cuemiac), the primary one being discoverability.  How would someone new to the system know they can search?  There's no way to know beforehand that typing Alt-F2 or Alt-F3 will bring up a dialog; nor would I be able to guess that clicking on the applet icon as it is now would show a search dialog.

So, are there any plans to keep the ability to have a visible search box?