Breadcrumbs in the panel

[Ross Smith <myxiplx googlemail com>]

Hey folks,

I might be a little late to the discussion, but just wanted to say
that I'm not sure about the maximized application idea.

I think breadcrumbs are great, the whole Activities -> Workspace ->
File/Program is a really, really nice touch, especially with them all
being clickable drop down menus.

However, I think the maximized idea needs to be optional.  It's a neat
feature, but I think it might be a case of adding functionality for
its own sake, and I can see two problems with it:

1. I now have two possible places to go to close a window - top right,
or somewhere in the middle, and that means I'm going to have to think
about how to close programs instead of just doing it.  Top-right to
close a window is pretty much universal, and I don't think I'd be
happy if gnome moved away from that.

2. You're blurring the line between the currently running program and
the operating system.  This is going to confuse the hell out of
regular users.  People aren't going to know which buttons control the
program, and which the main system.

I've seen problems similar to this before in Windows.  Users opening
embedded PDF's in Internet Explorer were thoroughly confused about
which menus and buttons to use, they had no concept at all that it was
actually a program within a program.  You get enough people calling
Windows "Word", or "Internet Explorer", and I think you're just asking
for trouble from that class of users with this.

It *may* be acceptable if you're going to make the whole UI document
centric like OS/X, and I think it's definitely a winner for small
handheld devices.  I'm just not sure it's the best option to have as
the default.

The way I see it, you're already gaining space with this layout since
you no longer need a top and bottom panel, do you really need to claw
back that extra line when maximizing programs on machines with screens
of 1280x1024 or larger?

Ross

PS.  Could I request a few choices for how programs are ordered in the
breadcrumb, I can see a few different options that would work here,
and would like the ability to try a few out and pick the best out of:

- chronological order
- alphabetical (by file)
- alphabetical (by program, then by file)

I can see the 3rd option being the nicest - grouping by application
would mean you'd have a batch of icons for that program next to each
other, so visually it would be easy to spot the area you were
interested in, and the names would then identify the particular
instance you're after.

I'm not sure yet whether I'd just want program icons, or whether I'd
want program names:

[firefox icon] Google.com
[firefox icon] GnomeShell
[rhythmbox icon] Now playing:  Artist - Album - Track

or:

[ff icon] Firefox - Google.com
[ff icon] Firefox - GnomeShell
[rbox icon] Rhythmbox - Now playing:  Artist - Album - Track

I think the second would work better if you split it into columns to
make it easy to scan the various instances, but that doesn't fit so
well with the document centric ideas.