RE: All GNOME Shell Developers.

[Pierre Wieser <pwieser trychlos org>]

> 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

I fully agree with this analyse of the situation.

IMHO, workspace management should be a separate thing.
Having a global view of all my active windows is "good" (and already
exists today with top-right hot spot), but having this unconditionally
when I just want run another application appears as a trouble to me.

Yes I could get used to that, but getting use to an inconvenience doesn't
appear to me with a goal to be reached.

I didn't ran G-S since august, and I just tried last version.

My comments are:

- the application main menubar is no more detached from the main windows;
  I find this fine

- I'd readen in this list that Activities should be "a big hot spot", but
  it appears to me as just a small one (some pixels or so). The text
  "Activities" is not itself the hot-spot. Shouldn't it be ?

- drag-and-drop a windows between workspaces is fine: I do like this

- when the sidebar is displayed (is that the "overlay" ?), having to click
  on "Applications" to have a menu is just a burden; we should be able to
  open the menu by just move the mouse over the "Applications" text

- the "Applications" menu should definitively be categorized; having just an
  alphabetical-sorted list means we have a potentially very long list, that we
  have to scroll in.. Not very practical

- when the "Applications" list is displayed, I had to explicitely close it
  (clicking on the top right (X)) in order to be able to open Last documents;
  here also I find this is a burden. Moving the mouse over the Last documents
  should close already opened menu and open this new one.

- also display of menus (Applications or Last documents) is too long
  (almost 3 sec. here)

- the central position of the clock in the top bar appears amazing; does this
  mean that the clock is supposed to have a central function in my daily work ?
  yes, the clock was always here since first versions of G-S, but, IMHO, it is
  time to give it a much widely waited placement (e.g. at the rightest side of
  the top bar ;-))

- also not new in this version, but I don't ever understand the function of
  having just the active application be displayed besides of "Activities" ?
  This appears as just an indicator (no menu or so) ?

- The "Find" field is fine, but its behaviour is curious to me:
  when I type 'b', it displays 'brasero', 'blackjack', which is fine, but
  also 'configuration editor' and 'dasher': is this the waited behavior ?

- I've replaced the standard Gnome taskbar with AWN. When I create another
  workspace in G-S, AWN Shiny Switcher displays new workspace below of
  previous one (as a column with two rows), but doesn't let me select the
  original workspace by clicking on it. When I create a second new workspace,
  AWN S-S displays them as a column of three rows (though I hardly see the
  third one which icon is mostly outside of the screen); I am then able
  to switch between second and third workspaces, but the first workspace
  seems definitively unreachable by click.
  So this appears as a compatibility problem between AWN 0.3.2 and G-S ?
  Or doesn't they have the same definition of what is a workspace ?

- another point which appears to me as clumsy is the indicators displayed
  in Activities sidebar, whether the applications are currently active
  or just recently used, or by default; I talk about this sort of three
  small round blue spots, or an extended blue spot.. 
  I find this clumsy from a11y point of view. I believe an emblem would
  be more visible, and it would be easyer to have more available
  semantics that with these spot indicators.

Eventually, I would be very frustrated if I didn't give a very subjective
and personal opinion.
I'm always waiting for a new metaphor of the desktop interaction, which
I believed was one of the first goals of G-S.
What I'm seeing at the moment is rather a new sort of menu
(imho, Activities is just another menu), but only new in Gnome, because
already and long time used in other desktops (since xp I believe, which
is several years old).
So, as a developer myself, I'm very very frustrated to see so much time
of so talented developers almost gratuitously spent in a try to reinvent
from scratch some sort of already existing wheel
(e.g. regarding the thousand of opened issues in Bugzilla, sometimes since
years...).
Though I do understand "politic" needs of having a "full new" desktop,
I regret the choosen way to accomplish that.

As usual, these were my own 2 cents.

Regards
Pierre