Nautilus desktop icons and metacity

["D. D. Brierton" <darren dzr-web com>]

I'm rather loathe to bring this up, as I suspect it has been argued and
flamed over before (although I could find nothing on it in the recent
archives), but I really felt I had to say something about this. I
honestly believe that given the current GNOME default setup, nautilus'
desktop icons should be on the right of the screen, and not the left.

Why? Because metacity's default behaviour is to put the first window
opened in the top-left hand corner. Given that nautilus places its
desktop icons in the top left corner, running vertically from top to
bottom, this means that even opening a single window will likely obscure
most of one's desktop icons, thereby rendering the desktop useless
without minimising many of the open applications.

This is my desktop with no windows open:

http://www.brierton.plus.com/Screenshot1.png

Now, as soon as I open just a terminal this is what I get:

http://www.brierton.plus.com/Screenshot2.png

Note that most of my desktop icons are now inaccessible.

Once I have opened many applications, all of my desktop icons are
inaccessible, even though (on my 1600x1200 display) the right hand side
of the screen is perfectly visible:

http://www.brierton.plus.com/Screenshot3.png

Given the above, it seems to me that there is a clear usability argument
for having nautilus draw its desktop icons along the right hand side. I
have no religious issues about this: I don't care what side of the
screen the desktop icons appear as long as I can access them. If
metacity can't be persuaded to avoid covering desktop icons whenever
possible then there is a clear usability case for either doing away with
the desktop altogether or having the default location of desktop icons
be on the right hand side.

Best, Darren

-- 
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D. D. Brierton            darren dzr-web com          www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
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