Feedback on gnome-shell 2.29.0-3

[niels ellegaard gmail com (Niels L. Ellegaard)]

Today I made gnome-shell work for the first time, and I have spend a few
hours toying around in gnome-shell 2.29.0-3 on Debian. It looks shiny,
but I also discovered some problems. I don't know how many of these are
fixed in the newest version of gnome-shell, so feel free to ignore
selectively.

It would be nice to have a simple and visible way to disable gnome-shell
animations. Perhaps the animations should be disabled by default.

It is difficult for a new user to guess you can use the "find"-dialog to
search for a general string such as "game" or "CD" or
"spreadsheet". Therefore it is difficult to use the activities dialog to
find a program to burn a CD or to create a spreadsheet.  Perhaps the
extended application menu could contain a links to a few predefined
searches such as "office program", "internet", "video", or "game". If I
pressed a link then the coresponding text could be typed in to the find
dialog, and I could get the search results. This would teach me how to
use the system.

If the activities menu is open I cannot open the menu in the upper right
corner. Ideally opening one menu should close the other.

If the activities menu is open and I then I cannot press an icon on the
menu bar to open a minimized program such as empathy, gnotes, or
gnome-xchat. Ideally pressing an icon on the menu bar should close the
activities dialog.

It would be nice to be able to use alt-ctrl-left/right while the
activities dialog is open.

On my laptop I have to press three buttons simultaneously to use the
shortcut alt-f1 to open the activities dialog. The problem is that f1 is
a two button combination. Perhaps you could change this shortcut to
something like ctrl-esc.

Once the activities dialog is open, I would like to be able to use the
tab key or arrow keys to select a program or document to open. Right now
I have to use the mouse.

The menu bar contains a small graphic with the name of the window that
is presently open. As far as I can see this graphic doesn't do anything.
Perhaps you can replace it with a window-list.

I would like the calendar dialog to contain information from evolution
calendar and evolution tasks.

The menu in the upper right corner allows me to set my IM-status, but it
doesn't allow me to send an IM-message. I find that confusing.

The menu in the upper right corner has my name as a title. That makes it
difficult for me to search for help on google and in the gnome help
system. If I type my name in to google I don't get help on the
gnome-shell menu system.

The sidebar contains the same information as the activities menu, so
perhaps it is redundant. It would be nice to have something like the
windows sidebar where I can place a list of small helpful gadgets.

The workspace selector applet of gnome 2.28 tells me which program is
opened in which workspace. This information is always visible, so I do
not have to press any buttons to get it, and that allows me to use
ctrl-alt-left/right very efectively. In gnome shell I have to open the
activities dialog and have a look at the work spaces, before I can make
a choice of where I want to go. That slows me down. Perhaps you could
solve this problem by adding more information to the popup that appears
when I press ctrl-alt-left/right.

That is all for now. I am looking forward to seeing how the gnome-shell
will evolve.

     Niels