RE: Extending the panel

["Shahms E. King" <shahms shahms com>]

As has been repeated before (I think in the Metacity README, but I'm not
sure) workspaces and the "taskbar" are largely parallel in
functionality, with usability firmly planted in the workspace model
(IMNSHO).  That said, I tend to agree that the "Window List" applet it
mostly useless in it's present form; the well-intentioned (and mostly
successful) GNOME2 "sensible defaults rather than idiotic options"
campaign managed to strip the configurability out of the taskbar for a
woefully under-featured and under-optioned window list that, for all
intents and purposes, might as well not have any configuration options
at all.  The options that are there are either under-powered, or
useless. The "Window List content" has 2 options, which, while more
clear, managed to do away with the all the (as evidenced by this thread,
very useful) "minimized" app options.  The "restoration" options are
just silly.  I can personally not think of any situation where I would
click on a window name in the task list and want it resored to it's
"original" workspace.  The window grouping has been reduced in
functionality by unclear options (when does "when space is limited"
start grouping and what does it group?) replacing the previous very
clear and very explicit "group when more than x" option.  At the very
least that could be added back.  And the size options, come on people,
if anything were screaming for "sensible defaults" it's here.  This is
the LAST thing a user should have to think about, and certainly the last
thing they should see in an otherwise spartan configuration dialog.

Sorry for the rant, the taskbar really is my one major complaint from
G2, and it's irritated me for a while now, fortunately, I've come to
like the Menu Panel and it's tasklist in combination with workspaces to
get anything I used to depend on the taskbar for done.

--Shahms

On Tue, 2002-08-06 at 12:18, Daniel Borgmann wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-08-06 at 00:34, Alex Graveley wrote:
> > > OTOH, Apple takes a little different approach.  Instead of showing you the
> > > program name and icon it shows you the entire window (only when its
> > > minimized though, otherwise it would clutter too much).  This I think is
> > > very cool becuase (1) one it more visual and (2) its easier to switch to the
> > > program I want.
> > 
> > Enlightenment has been doing this for the last two years or so.  I found
> > it remarkably useless when I played with it back then.
> 
> I like that it shows only minimized windows (similar to WindowMaker). To
> me the taskbar is useless atm (I have disabled it now) because it
> becomes really cluttered with a lot of text that is hard for me to
> connect with any running window. So when I'm ten times faster just
> looking around my screen for the window I want, why should I use the
> taskbar?
> IMHO the current taskbar is _only_ usefull if one is running at least
> one window maximized. 
> Personally I think that fullscreen is a waste in larger resolutions (I'm
> running 1600x1200) so the current setup is quite counter-productive for
> me (useless taskbar and useless "maximize" button, also useless
> "minimize" button and functionality because I can't find and restore
> minimized windows easily).
> 
> - Daniel
> 
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