RE: gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 13

["Shane.Nuessler" <Shane Nuessler canberra edu au>]

Hi,
A lot of good ideas a pouring in. Good looks, bling, and down right
handy services/features are needed for the shell to be successful. In my
game it's not about the technology, it's about what the technology can
do for the audience, but doing it in the best way possible.

-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Saturday, 26 September 2009 10:00 PM
To: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 13

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Today's Topics:

   1. Conceptual ideas for Gnome Shell (Reiner Jung)
   2. Adding and removing workspaces (Mark Curtis)
   3. Slight rearrangment of space in overlay (Mark Curtis)


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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:36:23 +0200
From: Reiner Jung <reiner jung uni-oldenburg de>
To: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Conceptual ideas for Gnome Shell
Message-ID: <4ABCE377 7020907 uni-oldenburg de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi,

I had recently the time to test the new gnome-shell on my karmic koala. 
First I have to say, it looks nice and has some nice features. And I 
know it is not feature complete right now. But still I have two ideas 
how the experience could be improved.

1. While in the old panel style desktop, users have to click on 
"Applications", a "Category" and then the application to start an 
application, this changes in the gnome-shell to one additional click on 
"Activity". So you need to perform 4 instead of 3 clicks. This is 
unfortunate, but not a real big issue, because people do not start so 
many applications.

However, I found one irritating thing in the process. Right now 
gnome-shell displays (when "Activity" is clicked) a side bar, with some 
shortcuts for applications below the title applications. And a small 
browse button right of that title.

When a user activates this side bar, she/he automatically clicks on the 
word application, but nothing happens, because you have to click 
"browse". I would encourage you to make the whole title of this section 
click-able, so when someone clicks on the title the application menu
opens.

2. In Gnome 2.26 the desktop is provides several workspaces which is a 
good concept. It is used by many people in the following way.
The first workspace is used for communication applications like mail, 
chat, micro-blogging. The second is used for surfing. And the last for 
multimedia applications (e.g. music). In between the workspaces are used

for the daily work.

The old workspace model does not really support this way to work. 
However, gnome-shell is designed with the idea to support activity based

workspace usage. To improve this, gnome-shell should not be too 
concentrated on applications, but on activities.

First it should be able to show different shortcuts below the 
"Application" title in the side bar. So applications for communication 
are shown when the first workspace is selected. This feature would 
require some good defaults, but it should also allow easy 
reconfiguration (especially for the work related workspaces), because 
this is highly user dependent.

Also certain application are used in different contexts. For example: on

one screen the browser is used as a surf tool, while on another 
workspace it is used as head for a web-based desktop application.

And finally when you work on certain tasks you use several different 
applications. Example: you work on a web-application project, then you 
use let say Netbeans on one workspace and on another you have firefox 
running to show the pages produced by the web-application. It would be 
great if for such tasks workspace groups could be created, which 
automatically start the associated applications.

If anybody is interested I could draw some "screenshots" to illustrate 
the ideas.

Greetz
   Reiner




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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:33:38 -0400
From: Mark Curtis <merkinman hotmail com>
To: <gnome-shell-list gnome org>
Subject: Adding and removing workspaces
Message-ID: <SNT106-W6124CCAEF09DA768174B19BBD90 phx gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"


I believe this has been brought up before, but I have a minor issue with
specifically removing workspaces.

The + sign always stays in the lower right, yet the - is on whatever is
the last workspace.

Click rapidly on the +, without having to move the mouse, to add many,
many workspaces. Now remove them.  The mouse must move up, up, up....
left left left... up up etc.

For consistancy's sake why not have the - to the left of the + ?  It
doesn't make sense to constantly move it around since you are unable to
choose a specific workspace to delete.  Also, often times I would try to
click the - to delete it, but accidental click on the workspace itself.

So again, put the - next to the + and have the workspace highlight when
the mouse is over the - to inform the user which workspace would be
deleted.
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:28:26 -0400
From: Mark Curtis <merkinman hotmail com>
To: <gnome-shell-list gnome org>
Subject: Slight rearrangment of space in overlay
Message-ID: <SNT106-W36966AC18305935E819535BBD90 phx gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


When going into overlay mode I notice a large amount of unused black
space above the workspaces.

Why not have this area hold the currently running applications. That way
the left hand side is what activities you want to do and the rest is
what you are currently doing (as in the applications and their
workspaces).

Another idea would be to put the calendar there, current month and
possibly the following month

In either case I do wish the names of currently running/favorite
applications were removed.  It's almost always truncated and obscures
the visibility of the blue dots.
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
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End of gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 13
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