Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.

[Justin Edwards <justin telelanguage com>]

I've been taskbar free for 4 years.  I use workspaces wisely and would never want any taskbar ever again.  People really need to hold their tongue if they have something bad to say and had to subscribe to a list that many people are on and have talked about issues for years.

If you don't like it, don't use it.  Stop being counter productive to the group.  If you want to be helpful, team up with some other non happy people and make an extension.  

Gnome 2 to 3 is a major change.

Justin Edwards
Telelanguage Inc
Network Manager

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 5:36 PM, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net> wrote:

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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