Fornight [Was: We want task bar back. Pretty please.]

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 09:40 -0500, Ryan Peters wrote:
> 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.
> Because your blog won't let me directly comment for some reason (maybe 
> it's an add-on), I'm responding here:

Huh, I thought that was enabled.

> 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.

Agree, those arguments are what I specifically hoped to counter.

> About minimize/maximize, the reason minimize was removed was due to it 
...
>Also, the critics saying that GNOME Shell is "one size fits all" must 

Agree.  For clarification I've added the following update to my post:
<quote>
[UPDATE: I should have included a link to sloshy's very helpful post
"How To Tweak GNOME 3 To Your Needs". So I've now rectified that error.
Please note that I don't actually tweak GNOME3 much or install the
various GNOME Shell extensions which are available. I recommend you
really give GNOME3 vanilla an honest try. His post "10 Things I Love
About GNOME 3" is also an interesting read - and helps explain some of
the GNOME3 ideology. I should also point out that there are at least two
ways to maximize a window in vanilla GNOME3 so the removal of maximize
button seems reasonable. Minimization in GNOME3, lacking a task bar, is
awkward - so removal of the minimize button in order to discourage the
behavior seems reasonable as well. As I said originally: I never
minimize anyway.]
</quote>

> no desktop icons (that could be done better by a favorites list/recent 
> documents list/zeitgeist), and accessing minimized windows in GNOME 

Yes,  I'm really looking forward to zeitgeist.