Re: Two proposals for Gnome-shell

[Florian Müllner <fmuellner gnome org>]

Hey.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer, not a designer - so my reply should in no
way be considered authorative on the matter :)

On Thu, 2011-03-10 at 13:51 +0100, David Prieto wrote:
> So, considering that the Switcher has two rows or layers:
>       * An top layer that shows open applications, using their icons
>         to represent them, and separating them according to the
>         workspace they're in.

Not entirely correct - the workspace separation of both icons and
thumbnails only covers "on the current workspace" / "on another
workspace".


> And considering that the Dash only has one layer, using icons to
> represent applications; but it doesn't separate them according to
> workspace, and doesn't show thumbnails to represent each app's open
> windows.

I can only guess, but I'd say that one major point is to make the dash
more stable - the alt-tab switcher is at least stable during each
invocation (there may be a workspace switch when leaving the switcher,
but never while it's up), but applying the same logic in the dash would
not only mean that the icon order changes between overview invocations,
but also while the overview is up.

In my opinion there would also be some issues with the dash displaying
not only running applications, but favorites as well - favorites being
listed first in a user specified order, followed by non-favorite running
apps. Bringing workspaces in would necessarily require mixing favorites
and running apps (and breaking the order defined by the user).

Adding thumbnails to running applications would double the functionality
of the window picker (which should be the primary mean of selecting a
specific window in the overview) - using the right-click menu to select
a window gives another selection method, in case the previews are not
distinct enough to pick the right one.

I'm not saying that your suggestions should not be considered, just that
I think that it's a lot less straightforward than you make it sound.


> I have to wonder: where's the difference? Why does this logic, which
> seems valid for the Switcher, not apply to the Dash? If you think
> about it, that's basically what I was proposing in my first mail.

Both are application based, but they are not the same (if they were, one
of them would not be needed and could be removed).

Florian