Re: Is the Minimize button still useful with gnome-shell ?

[Jon Nettleton <jon nettleton gmail com>]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Florian Müllner
<florian muellner gmail com> wrote:
> On mar, 2010-03-23 at 19:49 +0100, David Mulder wrote:
>> Do I in that case understand correctly that you are suggesting to
>> remove the minimization button altogether and add nothing in its place
>> (with which I have agreed from the beginning) or simply leave it the
>> way it is?
>
> Frankly, I don't really have an opinion on that - I use the minimize
> button occasionally, but can't think of any situation where I couldn't
> do without ...
>
> On a side note, I don't know if you are aware of it, but you can try out
> running gnome shell without a minimize button - just remove minimize
> from the string in /apps/metacity/general/button_layout.
>

I was kind of holding this back for my own project but decided I would
share it seeing as this thread is still going on.  :-)

After reading all the hoopla todo with the Ubuntu decision to move
buttons, and the ongoing discussion regarding gnome-shell and the
minimize button I decided to really look at the window manager
controls and try come up with something that made more sense.  As
stupid simple as it is this has been what I have come up with and I
will never go back.

Minimize in the upper left corner, Close in the upper right corner,
Double click title bar to maximize.  Period done simple.  Putting the
minimize on the left puts it in the corner closest to the Actvities
button or where it will be iconified to.  Currently I am still using
the minimize - image but think keeping the application icon there and
having it signifiy "Make into icon" would be interesting to try.
Double click the title bar to maximize the application.  The
functionality is already setup by default it is silly to have a tiny
button to duplicate it.  The close in the upper right.  This mimics
what we do with tabs and keeps it where it has always been.  It is far
away from most other controls so being the most destructive window
management function it isn't accidentally pressed.  For notification
icons that control a main window clicking the close button in the
upper right will close the window in the direction of the notification
icons.

Basically I feel it balances the window out and logically places
buttons in the a way where they slightly point to way they will do.
Upper left sends window to iconify on the left of the screen, Big in
the middle makes window large, button in upper right either closes
completely or closes to the upper right notification icon.  Then right
click like all right clicks gives you a menu with advanced options.

Looking at those new Ubuntu theme screenshots with everything piled up
on the left of the window.  It just made me feel uneasy looking at
them.  It may just be me convincing myself this layout is better, but
I am usually pretty resistant to changing things that don't feel right
and so far this layout has really clicked for me.  It also has the
nice aesthetic value of no matter what type of window it is, dialog,
application, etc the Middle to Right hand of the titlebar are all
identical.

Some pictures to hopefully shed some light on things.  Please excuse
the WM Theme.  I am recoding some parts and they are not entirely
lining up yet :-)

http://picasaweb.google.com/jon.nettleton/WindowManagerControlPics?feat=directlink

Would love any input.

Jon