Re: Gnome-Shell - questions and opinions

[Alessandro Crismani <alessandro crismani gmail com>]

Il giorno mer, 29/12/2010 alle 23.50 +0100, Giovanni Campagna ha
scritto:
> > But I sadly, I agree with those that think the use
> patterns/work-flows 
> > of Gnome-Shell is not right. I really like the "control center" and
> the 
> > lay-out under your user name. but the whole, activities, pop/zoom
> thing 
> > click click click. just does not work. it would force you to create 
> > shortcuts on the desktop. just to avoid that mess, the idea of a
> desktop 
> > environment is to help the users with their work-flow. I am not
> saying 
> > Gnome should copy OSX or windows. but, don't go off the deep end 
> > different just to be different from them. when flipping around the 
> > shell, the constant changing and zooming started to give me a
> headache.
> 
> While being different is a marketing point, as it marks the reason for
> switching to GNOME, gnome-shell is not different for the sake of beign
> different, every design decision (including the most discussed ones,
> and
> including those still under discussion) have been made for its merits.
> Moving in particular to the zooming effect exposed by the Activities
> button, this has been reported many times by various users, but it is
> explicitly part of the design, as the purpose of that mode is to give
> an
> overview (hence the technical name, "Activities Overview") of active
> windows, applications, and tasks 

I think that the more you use the overview the more you get used to it.
I was sceptic at the beginning, but after using the shell for some time
(not a lot) I really do not feel the need of a taskbar. I arrange
windows on predetermined workspaces so I know where to find them, and
when I need them I know exactly where they are. Specifically, I put all
the necessary windows that I need for what I am doing on one workspace,
hence I do not have to change it and a jump to the overview gives me a
peek on the project situation. This is quick, easy, and it doesn't
disrupt my flow since I move between workspaces only when I need to do
something else.

> (in the future, > 3.1, it will have
> contacts, desktop search, zeitgeist logging, etc.).

The only thing that doesn't work yet as I expect is desktop search. It
is currently difficult to open a folder or a file since they can't be
reached through the overview. I am relying on links to folders on the
desktop now. I know that there are some plans (bugs #636891, #593580),
still I think that Tracker should be included in 3.0 as a solution. I am
not a developer so this is just my stupid opinion (and please do not
take it as a rant, I really like the shell), however I think that having
a 3.0 *without* a desktop search wouldn't be a breaking release as a 3.0
with Tracker. Are there any plans for this that I may read about? I
tried searching everywhere but I couldn't find news on this.

Cheers,
Alessandro