Re: Two proposals for Gnome-shell

[Jesse Hutton <jesse hutton gmail com>]

True, I guess I ignored the fact that running applications aren't shown twice between the favorites and the workspace containers in your mock-ups. And, if an one is only shown in the most recently accessed workspace, that would prevent the scaling issue*. However, doesn't that behavior pose a problem if the goal is to show what's in each workspace?

My personal feeling is that there's no easy solution for showing what's in different workspaces in a quick and efficient way. The current solution, while it certainly isn't perfect, makes the most sense to me, and the large thumbnails actually do help me in this case more than icons, because the configuration of windows tells me something about what is running there (I usually layout different windows differently, in specific patterns, etc). I agree that showing icons would make it quicker and easier to find a given app. But, the proposed solution is less visually appealing to me and can hide more information in the case of the same app running in different spaces (also doesn't show the visual layout/structure of the space).

Jesse

* Disclaimer: not being able to use GNOME Shell yet, I could be making faulty assumptions about the dash's behavior. 

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:20 AM, David Prieto <frandavid100 gmail com> wrote:

Jesse,

I think it's a problem of scaling and an aesthetic judgement. Showing the icons in all workspaces won't scale well with many apps and many workspaces. What if somebody had 7 favorites on the dash and apps open on 4 different workspaces, for example? How would there be room for workspace widgets?

That's a good question. There would NEVER be more icons than we have now. If that person had seven favourites, they would only appear at the top as long as they were not running. If one of them was running, it would appear ONLY in the corresponding workspace (so there would only be six at the top). If another was running on more than one workspace, it would appear ONLY in the most recent workspace.

As for room for workspace widgets, I'm not sure what you mean by that. The boxes themselves wouldn't take any vertical space (I did the mockups based on an actual dash, and didn't have to alter separation between the icons) and the extra horizontal space would only appear on demand.
 

And, to me, it looks cluttered and less elegant than the current solution even in the mock-ups you posted.

It looks definitely cleaner to me, but I guess it's a matter of taste. I'd like to know what the rest of you guys think, does it look more cluttered?