Suggestion: dockable taskbar items

["Alex Jones" <al owns ntlworld com>]

Hello

Disclaimer: not very wise on mailing lists, I'm posting in plain text which
is about all I know etiquette-wise! Please excuse me and point me in the
right direction if this is the wrong list or whatever. I'm also not a
hacker, but I hope someone else with the skills finds this a good idea!

I am just a "normal" user trying to justify his time on the Linux platform
for desktop use, but there are so many gripes I have with it. Rather than
sit back and hope for them to be fixed in the distant future I thought I'd
at least try and help out with suggestions if I can't code.

Among a couple of ideas for the GNOME desktop, the one I think would be most
handy would be to be able to (for the sake of example) middle-click an item
in the window list and have it change to a single icon with no text and jump
to the far right hand side of the window list. I always have a terminal open
and it seems to be just wasting space. Rather than rely on each application
supporting the ability to dock to the notification area like rhythmbox and
Gaim (I'm not sure if that's really a good idea anyway... but that's another
discussion) I think it would be a good idea to integrate this into the
window list.

Perhaps also hack something into Metacity that when you middle click
minimize it docks automatically. Maybe even a mouse gesture! Who knows? But
that's not really all that important.

I have a lot of other ideas that I'd really like to get out in the open to
make GNOME even more fantastic than it is now, but I will spare them for now
as I'm not even sure if I should be posting this one here!

Thanks a lot for your time

Alex Jones