Re: Gnome-Shell - questions and opinions

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 11:21 +0000, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-01-02 at 08:50 +1100, Bojan Smojver wrote:
> > > For expose, I'm sorry that you don't like, but before we remove the
> > > feature or make it optional, we need to understand why you feel it is
> > > wrong.
> > 
> > The problem with expose is that it moves your windows around and resizes 
> > them, many times unnecessarily.
> > 
> > When one uses workspaces, it is often not required to have windows that 
> > overlap each other. In other words, one sets the windows on each worspace 
> > so that they are fully visible. That's the point of having workspaces - you 
> > get much more screen real estate. The eye and the brain "remember" the size 
> > and the position of windows.
> 
> I'm somewhat worried by the seemingly exclusive focus of Shell design on
> a workspace-based method of window organization.

What make you think that we are exclusively focused on workspaces? Our
expectation is really that a lot of users will never use them. (*I*
don't use them any more except for specialized things like working with
the GIMP)

We removed one way of switching windows and applications (the task list)
and added several more:

 - The window images in the overview
 - The app buttons in the dash in the overview
 - Keyboard search

If you *don't* want your windows moved around when selecting them (you
don't want that feature of the overview), then wouldn't you just click
on them?

Alt-Tab, either with keynav or mouse is also expected to be a common way
of switching windows for advanced users.

- Owen