Re: Window controls for GNOME 3

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

While the close operation is common, it's not frequent, and therefore might not require visual representation on-screen all the time. Similar reason to why we don't want to have application launchers on screen all the time.

Both the application menu in the top bar and the close buttons in the overview are well discoverable. Right now, the application menu has one Quit option, and the user actually needs to make a decision whether they want to fully quit the application with all its windows before going for that option. Having both Quit and Close Window (if applicable) options in that menu would inform the user of the choice they have and allow to use that feature as the central way of closing a window or an application. It's a menu that is visible in the desktop view, so it's more of 1.5 step operation with a click - move to the option you want - release.

So the goal would be removing a full UI concept and centralizing the options related to the operation in another existing part of UI. That would make the application menu more functional, inform the user better, reduce redundant options, AND make for a sleeker look :).

Marina

----- Original Message -----
From: "Federico Mena Quintero" <federico gnome org>
To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" <marinaz redhat com>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:12:41 AM
Subject: Re: Window controls for GNOME 3

On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 21:48 -0500, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote:

> We've added two other ways for closing windows/applications in GNOME
> 3: a per-window close icon in the overview and a quit option in the
> application menu. The only thing that is missing is the UI ability to
> close an individual window from the desktop view. I mostly used the
> Quit option in the application menu for closing single instance
> applications, such as calculator or gconf-editor, but I had to
> remember to go to the overview if I wanted to close a Firefox
> Downloads window or an individual gedit window I no longer needed.

Be careful with this line of thinking.  You are replacing a one-step,
common operation with a two-step one that is not immediately
discoverable.

It's like saying, "well, we could show the current window's title next
to the Activities button, and since you can already move windows with
Alt-drag, we can remove titlebars altogether" :)

In general, sleek looks just for the sake of sleek looks are not good.
Things have to be comfortable to use.  A knife's handle has an awkward
shape, but the bump in the front is so your hand doesn't slip forward
and you get cut; the bump in the back is so you can pull out the knife
easily; the bump in the center is to accomodate the inside of your palm.
A knife with a sleek, cylindrical handle wouldn't be very nice to use.

  Federico