Re: [Usability] (no subject)

[Jono Bacon <jonobacon gmail com>]

Heya,

I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it is best placed in
a gDesklet. This is because of a few reasons:

 - using the command line is really something that GNOME should be
trying to move Linux users away from. If you are bored one day, try
and do *everything* with the GUI. You will often find holes in the GUI
where you could quickly run a command to do something. It is these
holes where GNOME should try and concentrate.

 - saying that, I understand that many people (including me) still
like to use the command line, and running it on the background seems
perfectly (albeit flawed in usability terms* fine). Running a gDesklet
would solve this problem.

>From an implementation angle, I am not the best person to discuss
this, but creating a gDesklet would help quite a lot. The problem
would of course be focus, and gDesklets are typically useful for
visualisation.

One solution could be to have a dashboard type application that
appears over the desktop when you hit a key (such as F12 in Mac OS X).

Hope this may be useful.

  Jono

*these terms are largely to do with visibility. The background is
intended as a place in which applications are placed upon. If you run
an application in the background itself, it lacks visibility and
confuses the cultural and in-head-knowledge of the desktop metaphor.
So its tough to get at all the time, and breaks the context.