Re: Just show me my window

[hills <hills o2 pl>]

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 4:28 PM, hills <hills o2 pl> wrote:
> I think we are actually very much in agreement about a lot of things.
> We do want one way to do things as much as possible.

Thank you for you time and well thought out answer.

> Anyway, these are just some of the questions you need to try to answer
> as you go deeper into the design.  You may already have answers for
> them but they aren't clear to me.

I do not have any strong opinion about what this design details should be. This
could be done in many ways. For example, if you imagine that black left sidebar
in Activities Overview is filled in Workspace background, then you have
something similar to iPhone 3 Home screen. When user click on application icon,
then it expand and become application window. The most important fact of this
approach is lack of two distinct areas and contexts: left black sidebar and
workspace.

> This means that every workspace will need to have duplicated launchers
doesn't it?

It is rather a workspace problem not my design. For example, icons on all GNOME
2 workspaces are the same. I would like rather a “screenshot” idea instead of
workspace. By “screenshot” I mean this behavior: when user use some windows,
he/she could save this windows state, dimension, position and then reuse it,
switch between them on *one and only one* workspace. The all idea is to stop
thinking about a workspace and begin thinking about running applications and its
windows settings. In other words: “what and how” not “where”. It make more sense
instead of workspace idea and “always on a visible workspace” window option.

A great idea to design user interface is to remove every widget that can be
removed. This is usually a reliable way to become more popular among typical and
novice users. That is why, in my point of view, most of Top Menubar is
unnecessary. It displays many widgets *all the time*, but users use these
widgets very *seldom*, if ever. These widgets should be removed from view:
1) Active Application Item - No strong arguments to see application name all the
   time when this application is in front of user's eyes.
2) Clock - No need to display date since this may be checked usually once a day.
2) System Status area – No need to watch my computer's status all the time.
   Usually users need to know only about events that need *they* action, for
   example, to charge laptop's battery, but this is notification area job.
3) User Status Menu – It is useless to telling user's name continuously, he/she
   already knows this. Moreover, users not going to look at they status all the
   time.

Instead of all this options I think there should be two buttons:
1) Activities (left top),
2) user and system status (right top).
Clicking these buttons should show all those details mentioned above that should
be hided in standard view. I hope some day I open on my computer e-book and
start reading seeing mostly black text on white background without all
these lights and glows on Top Menubar or whatever.

One last thing: Gnome should start in Overview Activities mode rather than
showing empty screen.