Re: Some suggestions

[Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>]

Hi Alberto. I'm not a developer for the project, but I'll try to answer 
your concerns:

On 03/21/2011 04:52 PM, Alberto B. wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> I started to use gnome-shell some weeks ago with that in the repo of
> Fedora 14, then I built the newer from git two weeks ago and I still
> using it.
> I appreciate the great work you are doing on GS and I would give you
> some suggestion.
> Due to lack of the taskbar (lower bar in Gnome2) now I'm using more Alt
> +TAB shortcut than overview to switch running applications, but I think
> we need of a mouse action to quick switch them: could one mouse click on
> the upper bar free space raise the switcher (the same behaviour of Alt
> +TAB)?
That's not very discoverable if you ask me. Also, isn't that what the 
Activities overlay is for? Just flick your mouse to the top-left (or tap 
the Win/Super/Meta key) and you get a vertical list of your windows on 
the left as well as a spacial organization of your windows in the 
middle. It works simple enough for me.
> I don't understand the meanings of the icon (near activity button) with
> only the possibility to close the application, there is a redundance of
> "X" button (on window title, in that button and in overview mode). Could
> this icon give more information about favorite or running applications?
There's a difference between "closing" and "quitting" in Shell: closing 
the window is done with the X button on the corner of the window, while 
quitting the application closes every single window associated with it 
(for example, closing a Firefox window only closes that window, but 
"quitting" Firefox closes every Firefox window). If I'm not mistaken, it 
should be possible to add things to that menu like "Preferences" or 
"Help" (if not now, then in the near future), though this is on a 
per-application basis.
> In the dash in overview mode icons becomes smaller, due to the
> increasing number of running/favourite applications; why don't fix
> dimension and make two columns?
I think this could be done with a simple screen height to running 
applications ratio to automatically make a second column when needed. I 
agree, to a point.
> I think the dimension of application icon should have the same dimension
> everywere,
I disagree, but the icon sizes should be modifiable with an 
extension/preference/editing the source code (which is Javascript so 
it's pretty legible if you ask me). Could somebody that knows the 
intricacies of Shell elaborate on the possibility of re-sizing icons?
>   and in the application TAB should have more text below, to
> explain better what they do (similar to tips in gnome2 menu). What about
> the possibility to have icon view / list view  / detailed view, like
> nautilus do with files?
Do you mean the Alt+Tab menu, or the Activities dock? I'm not so sure 
about this one so I'll leave it for others to discuss.
> My system spends some seconds to give list of applications/categories so
> I hope this will be better in the final release of GS. It's not a quick
> way to find applications....
I second this. It's not a huge deal but if the applications menu could 
be pre-loaded instead of being loaded when Shell accesses it, that would 
be very helpful.
> Overview mode should be the easy way to find something, so I think the
> workspaces should be always unhide.
It could be possible to write an extension to do this, though I don't 
particularly mind the current behavior.
> Thanks a lot for your great work.
>
> Alberto
>
>
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I hope I helped!

    - Ryan Peters