On 04/13/2010 04:53 AM, David Mulder wrote:
May I point out that with my current understanding of the
Gnome Shell, a Rythmbox implementation you describe should be
relatively easy to be created using an extension.
David Mulder
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 3:19 AM, Ryan Peters
<sloshy45 sbcglobal net>
wrote:
Hello
everyone,
In the while I have been testing GNOME Shell, there have been two major
problems that me and other people have noticed.
Problem 1: How do we handle minimized windows?
Problem 2: How do we handle the notification area/system tray?
Problem 2 has been officially decided upon, and the notification area
will be "system only", meaning that it will only provide indicators for
system-related things such as internet connectivity, bluetooth, volume,
etc. This makes the section much more organized than before, where it
was a mostly-random pile of icons for unrelated programs. This brings
up one more problem, however.
Problem 3: What if I liked the old functionality?
The old functionality had several uses that could be considered useful.
For example, lets say Rhythmbox doesn't fit into any of my workspaces
and I don't want to shove it away to its own workspace. I could
minimize it to my system tray, and if I needed to skip a song or turn
notifications on/off, I could right-click it and a menu would pop up.
Or if I wanted to run a Bit-torrent client in the background without
having a window up; I could minimize that to the tray as well. This
functionality is missing in the new, yet more organized system tray.
I made some very crude mock-ups to illustrate some of my own ideas
about how this could be fixed. This is the first time I have ever used
Inkscape for actual work, so don't expect them to be
professional-looking. My first mock-up is as follows:
http://imgur.com/BoLcm.png
This mock-up shows how minimized applications could be handled. It's
similar in a way to a popular program, DockBar or DockBarX. When
mousing-over the program icon, it could show a menu similar to this.
First the title of the program, then the windows of that program that
are minimized. If a minimized window wants attention, the text
referring to it could change color and/or italicize. Hovering over a
window on the list could have an "X" in a circle on the right side
which, when clicked, could close the window.
This still leaves the problem of having programs run in the background
and being easily accessible. When working with programs, I noticed that
programs with a tray icon usually had it visible all the time,
regardless whether or not you had one of the program windows open. This
mock-up shows another way to do it while still remaining organized:
http://imgur.com/vJ1dP.png
When you right-click a group of minimized windows, a custom menu
similar to how the old system tray icons worked could pop-up. This
menu's contents are dependent on the application, and it returns the
old and useful functionality in an organized, more-useful way. It
reduces the redundancy of having options you can access with the window
you currently have open by limiting you to using them when the
program's running in the background.
I'm sorry that my mock-ups are rather mediocre, but I hope you
understand and/or like my ideas! If someone wants to talk about this
post or any of those images somewhere else, you have the permission to
do so under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license (just in case). For
attribution, the minimum required is "some person from the GNOME Shell
mailing list".
- Ryan Peters, GNOME Shell tester.
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gnome-shell-list gnome org
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Yes, I know, but I'm talking about having the functionality integrated
with the rest of GNOME Shell. Restoring the old functionality on a
program-by-program basis is very messy and confusing in the long run.
Let me clarify what I'm trying to suggest: In GNOME 2, applications
often have a notification area icon as a more compact way of
minimizing/controlling the application. However, this makes the
notification area VERY unorganized and confusing. GNOME 3/GNOME Shell
makes this better by restricting its indicators to "system-only" ones.
Some of the old (yet unrelated) indicators were useful though.
Lets say you use a feed reader, for example. With GNOME 2, you could
minimize it to your notification area and have it sit there quietly as
an icon, running in the background. You don't need to un-minimize the
program to control it; just right-click the icon. In GNOME 3, this
functionality is missing according to the current official design, but
to make things more organized.
Those notification area indicators only make sense when you do not have
a window of that program currently open! It's redundant to have an
application window open, like pidgin for example, and have its
notification area indicator visible at the same time. It should only be
visible/accessible when the application is minimized, since when the
application window is open, you can access all (if not most) of the
functions provided by right-clicking something in the notification
area. The menu that pops up when something is in the notification area
when you right-click it is meant as a way to control an application
that you do not intend to un-minimize. With this in mind, my
concept makes a little more sense.
Once again, sorry for this being very long. I just thought I'd clarify
what my thoughts were.
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