Re: Trying the shell

[Reiner Jung <reiner jung uni-oldenburg de>]

Greg K Nicholson wrote:
> No. The sidebar is planned to replace this functionality. (Mind, the
> sidebar is not even fully designed yet).
>   
This is good to hear. However, what will happen to:
- gnote/tomboy
- system monitor applet
- Kill app
- Keyboard selector
etc.
> > *  Is there a halfway point between showing on the currently active
> > window name next to "activities" on the top bar and the Windows style of
> > showing all open apps on the bar?  Sometimes I need to remember what I'm
> > actually doing or have an easy way to flip back and forth among windows.
> > Alt-Tab isn't quite it.
> >     
>
> The overview is supposed to do that. Click Activities or just point at
> the top-left corner.
>
> Showing only the current activity is intended to reduce distractions
> from other apps when you're focusing on a single task. It also removes
> the need for certain programs to “hide out of the way” in the
> notification area.
>   
I think this is not a good idea, because when you think task oriented 
you have more than one app open on a desktop. For example, when I work 
there are sometime multiple shells open side by side, as well as some 
notes from gnote. However, the screen is too small to show them all and 
it would be too time consuming to switch desks just for the notes. In 
these cases it is important that you can select the right window by 
clicking on a button (e.g. window list)

This also happen to be a good idea in other scenarios, like working on a 
text document and having additional infos in a note taking app. So you  
want to have the notes and the document on the same screen, but you need 
not to see all notes at once.

As the title-bar of the gnome shell is still empty (except for the 
activities thing and some other stuff in the upper right corner) a 
window list would be quite nice.

Using the activity button is not as good for switching apps in these 
cases, because it always shows all desktops shrinked. This is too much 
change in scenery just for information lookup in a note.

As modern UIs tend to become more integrated they also jumped back to an 
old Unix philosophy small tools each designed to solve one problem. And 
even large applications start to have popups and extra windows to hold 
additional information. So I think it is important to help people to be 
able to make these short lookups in a fast way. And these lookups 
include, file browse and search, notes, events, short messages.

I have not a perfect solution for that. Maybe a bar could appear on 
purpose showing a list of apps/windows on one desktop. BTW: The Alt-Tab 
cycling is a typical Windows idea. It solves the window selection 
problem in the worst way, because you have to remember your position 
(the position of the current window in the list of windows) and you have 
to known how often you have to say Alt-Tab to get o the target window. 
You are faster with a clickable list.

Even though a classic window list (like in gnome right now) has some 
disadvantages when many windows are open. So maybe a dropdown list in 
the title-bar would be a nice asset.

Greetz
  Reiner

p.s. And I have to say I am really impressed by the good work you have 
done so far on the new gnome-shell. So do not take my critic as a troll 
post I just want to share my thoughts and if you like them or if it 
triggers an even better idea (i hope so) than it would have served a 
purpose.