Thoughts on the left hand sidebar

[David Stansby <dstansby googlemail com>]

I've been trying out gnome-shell today, and I must say that the
concepts and designs behind it are all very good. I just thought that
I'd like to voice my opinion on the left hand sidebar, as it is the
only thing I don't particularly like. In the attached screen-shot, I

have outlined in blue an area of the desktop which is currently
unused. I believe this is because the sidebar is

1. Claiming the whole vertical space that it occupies,
and
2. Is not overlapping with current windows.

To me, that empty space looks like a  waste of desktop space, which
could be used for something else. I have thought up a couple of
solutions that could remedy this problem:

1. Expand the functionality of the sidebar, so it has enough

interactions to fill up a whole sidebar, that stretches the height of
the desktop
2. Integrate the functions that the sidebar carries out into either
the top or bottom toolbar, thus allowing for the sidebar to be deleted

altogether
3. Make the sidebar hide away off screen when not being used, but pop
back on when the mouse nears the left hand side of the screen. This
would allow windows to stretch the whole width of the desktop.

These are just my ideas on how gnome-shell could be improved, and I
would love to hear some feedback on them.

Attachment: Screenshot.jpg
Description: JPEG image