Re: Zooming dock

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

webmaster overtech zzn com (2000-12-12 at 1704.50 -0500):
> I admit, the Gnome taskbar needs to be made user-friendlier.  I have still 
> to figure out how to make the taskbar only display small (16x16) icons. 
>  I'm sure the answer is fairly obvious.  However, remember, many people are 
> coming from windows and expect windows stuff to work in Gnome.

Only icons? MS Windows bar does text and icons, but no icons only or
text only, or at least did so in NT. GNOME one can be set to no icons
(my setting). I guess you could request politely that the third
option, icons only, would be implemented.

Or are you talking about panels? Panels are not task bars. Task bar is
an applet that runs in panels. X way of doing things is different to
MS way... for example, I have a full application running inside a
panel via the Swallow applet (consider it an adaptor).

For different panel sizes, MB3 (right click for right handeds) and
search for Panel / Properties / Size, there you can choose 24 pixel
panel. As well a lot of other features, like panel type, that MS has
never heard of, I believe.

OK, what happens with right click? Is people unable to get it? Is
people so scared of investigating? With modern web pages most of the
time (if you allow CSS) is wasted discovering where the hell you can
click (IIRC somewhere said that this is bad UI in webs, BTW, and
underline is good cos it was the de facto standard), so I would expect
people to explore a bit. Or read the manual.

> I would like to inquire about the reason why Gnome doesn't use the windows 
> key as a default shortcut to open Gnome's version of a start menu.

The windows key in X Window is just another modifier key by default,
and can have different meaning depending in the config. If you do not
declare a 104-105 keys keyboard, I think it is unmapped. If you
declare 104-105 keys keyboard, it can be anything, normally Meta.
Other people have set it to Hyper, Super or one of the Space Cadet
keys. Most people has discovered that is nice for window manager
functions when combined with letters, ie, WKey-M minimize.

To launch the menu panel, go to CC / Panel / Miscellaneous / Key
Bindingings. For me it is Shift-Mod1-X (Mod1 = Alt here), and the Run
dialog disabled (Shift-Mod1-T launches a xterm in my config, which is
the same or better if you do not care about being a non GTK+ thing, I
can change font on the fly as well as see output).

BTW, GNOME allows multiple panels and multiple menu, so which one
would you open? As currently is, IMHO, it is great: it open a menu
just below the cursor, ignoring panels (I do no have a foot button
anywhere but I can get the menu).

> I also agree with all you said below except for one thing.  We shouldn't 
> make things like the control panel neither too hard nor too easy to access. 
>  I know in schools, it was easy for teachers to see when a student was 
> accessing the
> "evil" apple menu and give them a long assignment for doing so. 

They could also whip the kids and send them to home for a week, do not
you think? Or maybe talk with them, they are kids, not stupid... for
me a kid is like the rest but with less experience (and it seems that
more curiosity and imagination, maybe cos nobody forced them to forget
that skills... ooops, disgressing). Also choosing a system that allows
security would be nice, you do not let kids play with medicines or
weapons or knifes, I believe.

>  Afterwards, students knew never to touch the apple menu.  If you do that, 
> it makes everyone's life much more easier.  If built well, programmers may 
> be inclined to allow users to access the options window to their programs 
> through the apple menu-clone in Gnome.

Magic, fear. Next time tell students that GNOME is cos computers have
gnomes inside and that oranges is synthetic food produced in chemical
factories. And apples are named apples cos it is the favourite food of
Apple staff. ;]

> Also, novices are curious.  It'd be best to not allow them to accidentally 
> screw with big things like virtual memory when they're just looking around 
> to see what the programs on their system do (who reads a manual nowadays 
> anyway?).

My CC does not allow playing with machine settings, does yours? And
does it ask for root password or can you just happily screw your
machine after login as nobody? Are you running all as root?

I read the damn manuals. And I hate when manuals do not say anything
but the obvious. For example, I am still trying to find the beep code
table of my MoBo ("beep beep is no video or no keyboard?"). :]

UUmm, could you define your bavkground, cos most of your comments are
driving me insane. I dunno if you are kidding, inexperienced or lazzy.
Please, set the bases so I can understand you better. Thanks.

GSR
 
PS: Most of the commetns above should be read remembering that I am
trying to guess what David is saying, aka I am a bit lost with David.