Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.

[Philipp Mohrenweiser <phiamo googlemail com>]

I can just say right!

I was switching to gnome3 (or shell or how is the awesome desktop arrangement actually called) recently and i love it, but you need to be willing to improve your desktop experience! If not dont do it now! 

I was wondering about the  Alt+[key above Tab, usually `], i read about it, but it doesnt work here (german keyboard german language setting, self compiled shell on ubuntu natty).

things i would have liked to be improved, are not so many:

first please update/generate as much api docs as possible so a lazy programmer like me can easily start over with his improvement ideas.

please dont be rude if your missing something, i would like to see people not complaining "x y or z" isnt there as i want it, but to ask how this things could be done effectivly with g3 in g3 manner with g3 design principles.

I think most of the "missing features" are shared by some people and will be solved in near future.

One of the thing is the task bar and there are several solutions (i have the dock and tint2 running at the same time currently, just to see what i would need)

In the dock i miss something to overlook the different windows of one app at the same time (assume 10 consoles all having identical title, you wont find the right one by right klicking, i would suggest super+click on dock opens expose like view with only these application windows.

The tint2 taskbar is on bottom for me and if there are messages or notifications incoming they hover the taskbar what is also not nice .. but i can click though the several consoles with same title fast.

I just think we are having the posibility to create with the current gnome-shell perhabs the nicest desktop possible, the most productive and and userfriendly too, but there have to be improvements for things some or all people need.

People here have experience with different setups workflows etc and the best common ideas may help improving gnome3 to achive its goals.

But please think out of the box.

E.g. one thing i sometimes liked but the appled was not working so nice was the drawer applet to put several similar things in it (i put there some scripts to e.g. activate a special xrandr conf or connect certain vlans etc...) how could i add such not dayly needed, sometimes used, shortcuts in gnome3 ? (currently i use a terminal but thats not toooo nice.)

Cheers Phil

2011/5/6 Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>

Somebody needs to take this thread out back behind the shed and put a bullet through it's head for the good of humanity, so I volunteer to do so.

Denys, GNOME 3 is a radical change and you have a right to be upset, but your responses have been rather rude. Asserting that the designers made the change for no reason insults their intelligence; just because you didn't read the design documents/pages that outlined what problems GNOME 3 would fix with it's design doesn't mean that they "changed for the sake of it". As Henry Ford allegedly said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.". The automobile was awkward and totally different at first relative to horses, but it eventually caught on because it was a better choice than horses for most people.

Second, imitation isn't always the way to go. If GNOME simply stood the same for years without changing, there would be no innovation. In addition, your claim that GNOME "gives users no choice" is incredibly false: you can enable Forced Fallback mode in System Settings to a GNOME 2-like UI which is meant for setups that cannot run the new GNOME 3. However, it's called "Fallback Mode" for a reason; it's deprecated, won't receive future updates unless they're extremely important, and GNOME 3's default desktop is much better for a variety of reasons. I, as well as the people working on developing and marketing GNOME 3, firmly believe that GNOME 3 is the future, which is a good thing and not bad like you suggest.

You can switch windows with Alt+Tab and Alt+[key above Tab, usually `], the former switching applications and the latter switching windows in an application. It works very well and you should try it! Also, switching windows is much more flexible than in GNOME 2: with the older GNOME, you only had Alt+Tab and a tiny window list. With GNOME 3, you get an "Exposé"-like view where you have nice, easily clickable thumbnails of every window on that workspace (especially useful on a laptop), "fling" gesture support to switch workspaces on touch devices, a dock-like window list on the left, a workspace switcher on the right with drag-drop support, and a search bar that works without clicking it; just start typing! If that doesn't satisfy you, I'm not sure what will. Of course, you can always write an extension that enables the behavior you like, but GNOME 3 should be given a fair chance first.

You can access the Activities overlay three ways: a hot corner (flinging your mouse to the top-left), clicking the Activities button, or a keyboard shortcut (Windows/Super/Meta key, Alt+F1, or whatever you set it to). I use the keyboard shortcut as it makes it much faster for me. I just tap it, click the window I want, and I've switched in less than a second, arguably about as fast as the task list on GNOME 2 (and in some cases faster because you don't have to scan a tiny list of windows like in GNOME 2). Your claim that GNOME doesn't let you add launchers is also false: right-click any running application (or any application in the Applications menu or Search function) and click "Add to Favorites". Then, just open the overlay and click it to launch. It's just as easy as the icons from GNOME 2, and they take up less screen space as well since they don't take up valuable panel real-estate. You can also manually organize them by dragging them up and down, which is much better than right-clicking the launcher, unlocking it, right-clicking it again, clicking "move", then moving the mouse along a gigantic panel to place it in a usable place (this was the GNOME 2 behavior).

Also, it's faster to start an application that you didn't add to favorites in GNOME 2; just search for it by opening the overlay and typing. It's keyboard-navigable so you can press up and down to move through the list. The Applications Menu isn't really intended to be used constantly and is only there for when you either don't know an application's name, don't have it on your favorites list, or are using a touch-device (like a tablet).

If you have any more problems with GNOME 3, please say so, but don't be rude about it. Also, check out gnome-tweak-tool and gnome-shell-extensions for some tweaks that let you customize GNOME 3 to how you want it to be. I hope I've helped make things more clear, and it would be very nice if you tried to wrap your head around the way things are now before going back to Fallback Mode. It might take a day, or even a week, but you might find that it improves your work flow a lot if you give it a chance.

   - Sincerely, Ryan (not a Shell developer; just a user)

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