Baking with BreadCrumbs



I finally bit the bullet and started putting some serious efforts into
trying to remove the bottom taskbar from gnome-shell.  I worked a bit
trying to integrate gnome-launch-box ( it needs a bit more love but has
potential ) but ultimately decided that was a power users tool.  Then I
saw the email about the breadcrumbs branch regression and needing to be
pulled in with master.  I always liked the idea and decided to take a
look at Sander's efforts a bit more closely.

I liked the simplicity of the menu system but it felt a bit out of place
with out new shiny gnome-shell desktop.  I have hacked up a more gui
intensive version of breadcrumbs that solves a bunch of the problems I
was having with gnome-shell and window switching.  Here are the screen
captures, this is all coded and working ( although needs some polish ).

http://picasaweb.google.com/jon.nettleton/LiveBreadCrumbsGnomeShell?feat=directlink

1)  I can still get to any window on my desktop in 1 click.  Click on
the window breadcrumb move mouse let go, done.
2)  The workspace breadcrumb kills 2 birds with 1 stone.  I can easily
switch between workspaces/activities with 1 click.  The workspaces also
act like the overlay workspaces so you can switch directly to any window
on any workspace.  This is a bit small and can use some usability love
but it has made my life much easier and really makes the idea of many
workspaces activities simple and easy to use.
3)  The integration with alerts and window notifications is much easier.
I haven't finished it yet, but if a window demands attention you are led
to it through the windows breadcrumb if it is on the current workspace,
or through the workspaces breadcrumb if it is on another.  If the window
that demands attention is on another workspace you can easily see
identify it and move directly to that window.  No need to switch
workspaces and then find the window that demands attention.
4)  Thanks to all the excellent work already done, all the windows are
live clones and work well.  Very little extra overhead, great work
everyone!!!

I know there are questions if breadcrumbs are a good fit for
gnome-shell, perhaps they turn into a plugin.  I am not interested in
that discussion right now.  I am more interested in feedback, possible
design changes.  What I have done is very much geared to fixing the
problems I had using gnome-shell day to day on my desktop without a
task-bar on the bottom of the screen.  

I also don't have a public git repository but if people want to try it
out perhaps I will get one.

Looking forward to the feedback,

Jon



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