Two proposals for Gnome-shell

[David Prieto <frandavid100 gmail com>]

Hi all,

After learning about the new workspace workflow implemented in Gnome-shell, I sent a few mockups to Jakub Steiner's blog proposing a different approach. I really like the current implementation, aesthetically speaking, but my problem with it is, it's just too far. In order to launch an application to a specific workspace you need to drag it all the way through your desktop. My proposal placed workspaces right in the left sidebar, along with the apps:

http://i.imgur.com/pb5eb.png shows the initial state of the sidebar. Two apps are favourited but none of them is open. There is only one workspace, which is empty at the moment, represented by a blue box in the sidebar.

http://i.imgur.com/M1DpJ.png shows the sidebar after you open one app (in this case, totem). You can see how the Totem icon moved from the empty area at the top to the blue box, meaning it is present in a workspace now. The workspace itself changes its size to accomodate totem’s icon, and a second empty workspace appears below.

http://i.imgur.com/CHhU6.png shows the sidebar after you have opened various apps over two workspaces, with a third empty one having appeared.

http://i.imgur.com/phli6.png shows the sidebar after moving the cursor all the way to the left edge. The sidebar increases its width, making it possible to click a workspace in order to switch to it, or drag a workspace in order to change its order.

You can see the very valid points Jakub made if you visit the blog, but after giving Gnome-shell some real use I do think this could be an improvement; it saves space, doesn't force you to move the cursor all over the place, establishes a more tight relation between open apps and workspaces, and makes sure apps in the same workspace are also grouped together in the sidebar.

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There is a completely different suggestion I would like to make, but it's more or less related to the previous one in that they would work best together. When you right-click an app from the sidebar, you get a window list plus a 
couple options like "new window" and "remove from favourites". I think 
it would be good to replace the plain-text window list with some nice 
previews of the open window, same as you get when you press alt+tab.

This would let you use the launcher to select a specific window and perform various operations on it, e.g. closing 
it without closing other windows from that app, dragging it to a specific workspace or even copying contents to it, all without ever leaving the sidebar.

I really would like to hear your opinions about these. I'm not subscribed to the mailing list, so if you reply could you please CC me? Thanks in advance.

Best regards,

David.