Re: Planning for GNOME 3.0

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

no need to Cc me in: I'm subscribe to d-d-l.

On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 16:02 +0200, Sebastian Pölsterl wrote:
 
> > what do applets provide, nowadays, and are they even remotely useful?
> > what can deskbar-applet provide that cannot be implemented with
> > something that does not sit inside a 24x24 icon on the most valued piece
> > of screen real estate? isn't a gnome-do approach equivalent to the
> > deskbar-applet? why tomboy-applet is so special? it's basically a
> > launcher with a custom context menu. also, starting up deskbar-applet
> > *and* tomboy as applets on my panel causes my desktop more to start up
> > on login; not great turn ons, especially when there are developers out
> > there trying to get the boot-to-UI process down in the seconds range.
> > 

> I agree that the current applet paradigm is outdated and it doesn't do
> well when you have a lot of applets or an applet that takes some time to
> load. But those are the problems we want to solve, right? I'm not saying
> that we should keep the whole applets system, but I want something
> similar to it.

why? why should something continuously live on my panel and occupy
space?

>  I don't care if it's called applet or widget or whatever,
> if it's in the panel or somewhere else. For me the idea of applets is
> that you can access information/functionality with minimum effort. Let's
> say deskbar-applet would be an application started from the menu. That
> would make deskbar-applet useless, because it should help you starting
> applications and doing tasks with less effort. Now if I have to start
> deskbar-applet first, I can just open the application I want to in the
> first place.

then we don't need an icon, but we need something completely different;
something that pops up (say) when you press F12; or something that comes
up when I start typing on an empty workspace.

I just don't see the need to have something constantly visible on a
panel or on my screen, when it's all about user-initiated actions. the
tomboy-applet doesn't need to stay in my notification area (why on earth
does it stay in my notification area is another matter entirely, but
let's overlook that for a second) when I don't need to write a note? why
does it have to start when my desktop starts, when it can start when I
do need to write a note and be unloaded afterwards?

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi,
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi