Re: Thumbs up!

[Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com>]

On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 15:01 +1000, Bojan Smojver wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 19:29 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > This mail could perhaps do with more details. :)
> 
> The gist of it is:
> 
> - fallback mode means two Gnome experiences, so people like myself that
> have a 3D capable desktop and a remote VNC session have to switch back
> and forth between two different modes of operation (i.e. no consistency)
> while using the same computer (really, really weird); Gnome 3 should
> look and work the same anywhere, just like Windows or OS X do; 

Windows doesn't, it has its own fallback mode (it's actually even more
complicated than that, the Windows 7 shell has several levels of
complexity and it picks one based on how good it reckons your video
hardware is). Apple owns the ecosystem, which makes it easier, as
always.

The options here are 'completely screw over anyone who can't run Shell',
'severely limit the Shell', or 'wait years for absolutely every
non-Shell-capable-case to be rendered Shell-capable', none of which
seems attractive.

> - activities "overview" is a mistake; it causes unnecessary visual
> change and it forces users to manage windows half in that view and half
> in the regular view

> - exposé behaviour in overview is compounding the previous mistake (i.e.
> the separate overview problem); it changes position and size of windows,
> forcing the user to visually search for windows yet again
> 
> - windows/applications switch in overview is yet another mistake; in
> windows view, one can't actually see their windows the way they are,
> because they have been shuffled by exposé (workspaces are mostly hidden
> on the right, so that doesn't really count); applications menu should be
> accessible directly from the normal view (users don't need to suffer a
> visual change and forget what their current workspace looks like in
> order to start a new app)

I kinda see what you're saying here, but none of these things seems to
bug me in practice at all, so I don't really know where to go with it.

> - dock (favourites) is in the wrong place, because most desktop screens
> (and Gnome 3 is primarily a desktop system) have a lot less pixels
> vertically then horizontally; in contrast, OS X dock is in the correct
> place (and I'm no fan of OS X at all)

I think the 'dock' is placed on the side precisely because most displays
are wider than they are tall; it uses up space that's often going to
waste anyway.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net