RE: All GNOME Shell Developers.

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 17:43 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:

> More interesting things to discuss:
> 
>  - In what cases does GNOME Shell work less well?
>
>  - How could the GNOME Shell ideas be adapted and extended to
>    work better in those cases?

The root of problems might be that you try to solve almost
everything by going to a special place:
- Starting apps
- Opening files
- Switching between windows
- Switching between workspaces
- Organizing windows on workspaces

Whenever you want to do one of these, you are confronted with the means
for all of them. The speed advantage of the hot corner is likely taken
away by having to orientate yourself again.

A solution must be about splitting out at least some of these tasks,
then. Maybe keep the overlay for workspaces and arranging windows on
them, but have a second menu for apps and docs that is present both on
the normal panel and the overlay. Or even a third menu for recent docs
(and creating new ones).

Regarding adaptive menus: http://weblog.obso1337.org/


Now for a take on a confined issue:
Quick switching between windows on one desktop in cases where the
desired window is completely hidden behind another one. Alt-Tab is nice,
but not a solution for casual/novice users, I think.

A taskbar is unnecessary, as long as there's enough to see of other
windows you want to switch to. So, would it be feasible to always make
sure this is the case? By clever placement. Plus showing the titlebar of
a window that is completely hidden behind another one as tab on that
window. In other words: windows that share a space also share a titlebar
via tabbing.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/