Shell vs. Menus for 2.18

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

Hello all,

I'm sure you're all aware about the various issues that have been raised
on other mailing lists about the new control center shell.

Personally, I think the most important problems are the usability and 
accessibility regressions that it introduces. Some of these are simple 
problems, such as it using the incorrect theme colours to draw text. 
However, some of them are more difficult problems, such as when it 
becomes virtually impossible to use with large fonts sizes. Not to 
mention there has not been a proper HIG review of it.

Unfortunately, most of these issues lie in libslab, and I don't see many 
of them being fixed before the 2.18 release. Therefore, I would like to 
suggest that for 2.18 we use the menu system as default, and leave the 
shell as optional. I know many people have worked hard on getting 
various bits of the shell ready, but I don't think this is effort gone 
to waste.

Although I would prefer the idea of having a single window to access 
preferences, I don't think the current shell is yet up to the standard 
and quality that we expect from our GNOME desktop.

Regards,

Thomas