Re: Suggestions for Gnome Shell.

[Florian Müllner <florian muellner gmail com>]

On sáb, 2009-11-21 at 12:07 -0500, Jason Sauders wrote:
> Gnome Shell seems like a great idea, but with most projects relating to 
> Linux I try and voice my opinion to promote more community involvement 
> in projects.
> 
> There are several things I suggest:
> 
> When you click the Activities button and you see all of your windows in 
> thumbnail format, we should be able to delete the active windows from 
> there. I would like to be able to right click on that thumbnail of that 
> program and have the option to close it. That would make managing open 
> applications so much easier since I could just see what's all running 
> and right click - close, right click - close, right click - close, and 
> bam I have all of my unused applications closed.

Try git master - there now are close buttons on the thumbnails ... there
is also a bug in bgo asking for the window menu on right click, but IMO
the other options like minimize/maximize don't make sense without user
feedback.


> And one thing that is a very small pet peeve that I would like to see 
> changed is the "more" button for applications is kind of small. Look at 
> all of the empty space in between the actual word "Applications" and the 
> word "More". Let's utilize that space a little more. Why not chop it - 
> 50/50. Left side is not a button, just a section to say APPLICATIONS 
> like it currently does. Right side is a bigger button spanning across 
> the entire right side to display "More."

Well, actually it has gotten worse ;)
"More" is no more - it has been replaced by a small arrow button, which
is even more difficult to hit. Don't get me wrong, it looks much cleaner
and imposes less problems on translators - I'm convinced everyone is
aware that the "clickability" needs improvement, and it will get there
eventually. Right now, a lot of the code is changed to be CSS stylable,
once those patches have landed, someone will look into it.
I think a 50/50 split would be problematic for some locales. What might
work is either to let the button extend from the remaining space after
the label, or to have the whole section header clickable.


> I'd also like to have the option to expand to the right the options in 
> the Places menu. When you hit more for applications, your available 
> applications kick to the right. I'd like to be able to right click and 
> have a menu kick out to the right with the contents of "pictures" or 
> "music" or whatever I right clicked. That would allow the single left 
> click to still be the real controller on launching that window in full 
> screen. I think that option would be a nice one to have.

Mmmh, I'm not sure about the right click - it's not that discoverable,
and would be used for context menus (which I assume will be added
eventually, e.g. for removing bookmarked places). But I like the idea of
a "mini browser" for the places items - would be useful for opening
several files from the same location. Probably we should skip subfolders
there to avoid implementing a full fletched file browser ... anyway, I'd
suggest a feature request in bugzilla.
 

> And lastly, that top panel - I'd like to see it be customizable. I want 
> to add my system monitor there. I want to see what my activity is on my 
> computer as I use it since it also doubles as a backup/file server. I 
> want to add some simple widgets there for my own customizable purposes.

There is ongoing work on an extension system, probably these things will
be possible once it has landed.
(Well, at least I wouldn't worry about the system monitor - this is
Linux, after all - I'll bet that it's among the first ten extensions
written for the shell! Right after xeyes, that is)

> These are just a few suggestions I have. Just trying to do my part as an 
> Ubuntu/Gnome user to help out where I can.
> 
> Thank you for your time!

Thanks for yours!