Re: Revisiting the GNOME Panel in general...

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 13:32 +1000, Tristan Buckmaster wrote:
> I have made some gimp mock ups of the ideas I posted to this forum in
> early August (the ideas have since been modified).
> 
> http://sng.its.monash.edu.au:9876/18518559/demo1c.png
> http://sng.its.monash.edu.au:9876/18518559/demo2c.png
> 
> All the icons on the bottom panel that have arrows are applications
> that are currently running.  The icons on the left which don't have
> arrows are not running and if you click on them they will launch (Max
> OS X like).   There are three different behaviours when you click on
> an icon with an arrow depending on the situation, they are:

And what is the purpose of this?  The OS X window/application grouping
system is one of the absolute worst designed usability nightmares I've
ever seen.  (Seriously, I'm surprised Apple screwed up that badly.)
Users do not think in terms of applications.  Or, if they do, it's only
because the computer is failing to do its job of making their work
easier.

Work should be grouped by task, and the application(s) responsible for
those tasks is just an implementation detail that should be as hidden as
possible.

I don't see any reason to draw attention to running apps, grouping
windows by apps, or in any other way distinguishing between multiple
apps, ever.

I run into this problem on OS X all the time.  Say I have a couple
tasks.  Maybe a terminal window/X Code window for a development project,
a word processor window for some school paper, and my web browser.  The
web browser has two are three windows (each with tabs); one window has
documentation and such loaded for my coding task, the other window has
research for my school task, and the other has some news sites and blogs
I check.

Wonderful OS X groups windows by task.  It *forces* to think in a very
illogical manner, because I have these three browser windows which are
*completely* unrelated together being grouped, while the individual
application windows related to each browser window (word processor,
terminal, etc.) are forced to be grouped separately.  It's a wretched
mis-design on Apple's part.

Also, an additional reason for OS X marking the app icons on the
launcher when running is because, unlike GNOME, the apps do not shut
down when the last window closes.  GNOME doesn't have *any* need for
identifying running apps on the panel.

Please let's not copy this mistake of Apple's.
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.