Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.

[Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>]

On 05/17/2011 08:18 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 13:55 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 10:48 -0700, Micah Carrick wrote:
> ...
> > > It gives the impression the the core team has not answered (which of
> > > course is not the case) or does not care about what *we* think (we
> > > being the existing user-base and "power users").
> > Doesn't give me that impression at all.  Decisions were discussed, and
> > made.
> > > The point I am making is that while this list has answered some of
> > > these same questions and complaints over and over and over--the
> > > unanswered posts and blogs seem to drown out the answers.
> > And they always always will.  Nature of the beast.
> > This weekend I intend to spend some time writing a very positive BLOG
> > post about GNOME3.
> A bit late, but I finally got around to it -
> <http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com/2011/05/fortnight-with-gnome3.html>
>
> My feedback after using GNOME3 full time for 14 days.
>
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Because your blog won't let me directly comment for some reason (maybe 
it's an add-on), I'm responding here:

I'm very glad that you gave GNOME 3 a chance! It's a well-known fact 
around here that comments like "there's no taskbar", or "you need to 
click a lot", or "there's no minimize/maximize buttons", or even the 
ever-popular "If I wanted to use a smartphone interface, I'd use a 
smartphone" show that the writer of those comments has given 
little-to-no effort whatsoever to enjoy GNOME 3.

About minimize/maximize, the reason minimize was removed was due to it 
being unnecessary; workspaces automatically create themselves, there are 
no desktop icons (that could be done better by a favorites list/recent 
documents list/zeitgeist), and accessing minimized windows in GNOME 
Shell is rather clunky. As for maximize, there's already two other ways 
to do it (double-clicking and dragging to the top), which are easier to 
do due to a lack of specific aiming (especially on touch screens, where 
a couple pixels' difference could mean closing your window and 
maximizing it). Work is being done on a hypothetical "minimization 
replacement" that better fits the Shell design, such as moving to 
another workspace with a button, but we probably won't see that until, 
at the very least, 3.4 (from what I can tell).

Also, the critics saying that GNOME Shell is "one size fits all" must 
have never looked at the extensions or third-party programs yet. There 
are already places menus, drive menus, alternative status menus, docks, 
launchers on the panel, an applications menu, removing the accessibility 
icon, launching applications on specific workspaces... the 
possibilities, like with Firefox's Add-on system, are nearly infinite. 
However, the problem is keeping compatibility between releases, which I 
don't believe is a current goal due to the ever-changing nature of the 
project. It's possible for this to happen eventually, though.

I apologize if this response is rather long-winded. I'm very glad you've 
given GNOME 3 a chance instead of reviving this annoying thread (and I'm 
very thankful for that :P).

    - Ryan Peters