On Thu, 2011-10-06 at 08:37 +0100, Martyn Russell wrote: > [...] > > I love the shell generally though, this is really just where I think we > could improve things. > Hi, I second Martyn's proposals and I'd like to name a few things that at least in my case, could be improved. The worst part of the shell for me is the bottom tray area (sorry if this is not the official name for it). Besides being visually ugly (with the gradient background) IMHO, the windows' names expanding when the mouse is over the icons is disconcerting for me. I have to be extra accurate with the trackball in order not to miss the exact icon or it will expand the another one, etc... This is especially terrible when I have 10 telepathy buddy icons and have to go expanding them all when I try to find a specific buddy this way. (Of course I can just open the contacts list but anyway, the use case I'm talking about is also valid IMHO) I think that a good way to fix this is to remove the expanding thing and to show the name on top of the icons on mouse-over (as tooltips). Something like when rests the mouse on top of an opened app's icon in the opened apps list on the left. Another thing I think could be given some thought is the notifications. I understand how convenient it is to show them on the bottom of the screen (it's a "clean" side and helps integrating the chat). The problem is that I am often writing on the bottom of the screen (on a terminal or chatting with a friend) and a notification comes up, blocking my text. This is especially annoying when that notification is a chat window and it gets focused, receiving the text I was writing before... I don't know a good way to fix it but perhaps it could be given some thought by the designers. Still on the bottom area, I wish that when my status is available, notifications would stick in a visible area. It often happens that I'm far from the keyboard for 5 minutes, meanwhile a notification came (say someone is trying to chat with me) but timed out and is now hidden in the tray area. I end up answering those notifications much later when I happen to notice them. Maybe this could be configured so when the status is "available" and a notification comes, the tray area would be visible constantly until one focus another area. I think it'd be also useful if the opened windows' previews (when accessing activities) showed their icons, for example on a corner of the previews or the the left of their name. Finally, I think that the inclusion of a "close all" option in the apps menu (when right-clicking on the left area's icons) would be useful. Thanks, -- Joaquim Rocha
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