Workspaces sidebar

[Massimo Tisi <massimo tisi mines-nantes fr>]

Hi all,
  in the latest mockups, the workspaces sidebar autohides in the right
side. I'm not very convinced by autohide in general, so I made a
good/bad list about this.

The good points of "always autohide"
- The user is more focused on the current workspace. True, but not so
different without autohide. The current windows have much more
importance than the workspace thumbnails.
- Single-workspace users are not bothered by the workspace concept.
This could be achieved by autohiding the sidebar only when all the
windows are in one workspace.
- There is more space for the windows of the current workspace. This
could be achieved by autohiding the workspaces sidebar (and maybe also
the applications) when the shell detects that windows in the overview
are too small (by some heuristics).

The bad points of "always autohide"
- No global overview before deciding to switch workspace. Sometimes
the user knows exactly in which workspace to move before entering the
overview, but sometimes he doesn't. In this last case he needs to
enter the overview, hover the mouse on the sidebar (in the opposite
side of the screen), and then taking a decision. No autohide makes all
of this faster.
- Consistency. Both the left and right sidebars talk about the whole
system (not only the current workspace). So why the right sidebar is
the only one to autohide?

Did I forget something? Now that the grid seems officially dead, and
the workspaces sidebar should inherit all its functionalities, I think
that it's design gets a bit delicate..

Cheers,
Massimo