Re: Thumbs up!

[Bojan Smojver <bojan rexursive com>]

On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 10:06 +0200, David Prieto wrote:

> What are the others? Surely not alt+tab, since Gnome-shell also has that
> one.

Mac OS X has dock. Windows 7 has its own version of taskbar, which is
cascading, if I remember correctly.

> When I say that it "doesn't" I mean that it "doesn't shuffle the windows"
> (which is the expression you used later on), as in "it doesn't place them
> randomly on the screen".
> 
> If your problem is that it doesn't keep them in the exact same place they
> were, well, yes, that's the way it works. Can't see how that's a problem,
> though.

People remember things visually, by shape, size and position.

> So it's not really a problem but rather you wanting to have the last word?
> Is it a semantics thing?

Not semantics. If I look at my workspace switcher in Gnome 2 now, my
windows are where they are. They won't move or resize.

> Or just... you know, ignoring it. Really, I open new apps all the time and I
> don't even pay attention to the Overview. It's not like I go all "whoah man,
> what was that? did I just enter hyperspace?" everytime you launch an app.
> 
> It's not even like you have to make a conscious effort not to notice it,
> just... don't pay attention to it. Honestly, I'm not sure what your point is
> or where to go from here.

OK, try to watch a video that keeps changing camera angles all the time
for 8 hours a day. Or 12. See how tired your eyes get. Unnecessary
visual stimuli is not just annoying, it's tiring.

> As I said, you don't even need to "see where your apps are" anymore.

Now you're confusing me. I absolutely want to know where my running apps
are. I want to be able to locate them by their shape, size and position.
Isn't that the whole point of window management?

> Would you put it at the top, then? You know you can actually propose things,
> right?

The first thing I'd change is overview. I'd kill it right away. It
looked like a good idea at the time (admittedly, even to me when I
watched YouTube videos of Gnome Shell), but in practice, it just a fad.

As for dash it could be displayed horizontally (because it could have
more items in it that way) once Activities (which should be called
Applications, really) is pressed or gestured. It would be close to the
mouse and it would go away once used, so that it's not using space like
OS X dock.

Underneath the dash, one could see all other apps, in either cascading
(i.e. standard) or smartphone like menu.

This is just one idea.

> All notifications are at the bottom right. System icons are at the top
> right. Having them mixed in the old Notification Area was an old nuisance
> and I for one I'm glad to have lost it.

Obviously, this is something where we disagree, so let's leave it at
that.

-- 
Bojan