Re: Gnome shell suggestions after a bit of usage

[Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com>]

On Sat, 2011-07-09 at 00:43 +0200, Florian Müllner wrote:
> 2011/7/9 Tassilo Horn <tassilo member fsf org>
>         Well, not that bad.  But still it needs three actions to pause
>         the music
>         player: (1) open overview, (2) activate/unhide player, (3)
>         press pause
>         in it.  With the usual system tray (aka notification area with
>         icon
>         abuse), it's usually just right-click > pause.
> 
> It is not meant as a way to give quick access to applications - that
> should be provided by notifications (e.g. like Rhythmbox does it).

I think the specific case we're discussing in this thread - music - is
an interesting one that could merit some specific discussion.
Controlling music playback as a 'system' function - via a notification
area icon, usually - seems to be a pretty popular method, and this
doesn't really work as well in GNOME 3 as it did in GNOME 2, I think
most would agree. So you could say we should just add it as a system
function, but then, there are plenty of people who don't play music at
all, and this would be one more annoyance for them alongside the
equally-often-useless accessibility and bluetooth icons.

So...I don't have a solution, I'm just pointing this up; there seems to
be a gap (that could be defined as 'quick, outside-current-task
interactions with subsets of the functionality of running applications')
between the 'system area' and the notification system which GNOME 3 just
isn't covering very well at present. Is there a strategy for this? Do we
want people to figure it out with extensions? Do we really want to use
(some would say abuse) permanent notifications for this? Does someone
have a smart solution that hasn't previously been suggested? Do we just
throw up our hands and say 'that's not what GNOME 3 is for'?
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net