Touch interface - where to start?

[Brion Vibber <brion pobox com>]

Hi all --

I've been using Gnome 3.2 & gnome-shell for a couple months now on my main web development desktop (Ubuntu 11.10, dual 1080p monitors) and am quite happy with it. I've also started trying it out on a smaller touchscreen device (Dell Inspiron Duo - convertible between mini-notebook and multitouch tablet).

Overall gnome-shell is actually very friendly to a touchscreen environment! The activities button is reasonably easy to hit, the app/window/workspace switchers are all very touch-friendly, and application launching is at least ok.

Presence of the on-screen keyboard and large-text accessibility options is a big help, though the keyboard is a bit flaky for me. A few things are hard to get at though -- like the notifications tray -- and there are more general issues such as scroll bars being a bad fit for most widgets (drag-panning is more touch-native).

I found Carlos's slides from <https://desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/towards-multitouch-gnome-shell> covering a little of the current state & issues; if someone wanted to start helping out at improving these things (in the shell specifically and elsewhere) what's a good place to start?

Thanks!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)