On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Calum Benson wrote:
> True. I'm fairly sure I've seen studies in the past that show that most
> people prefer static to auto-hiding panels, though (although that was
There are different kinds of user. The typical "PC" type user opens
one application, sets it to consume the whole screen, then works only
with that application until he is done. Typical unix power-users may
quite often switch between applications. I fit into the later
category.
For those who switch between applications hundreds of times per day, a
auto-hiding panel containing the application list is frustrating
because:
* You can't see what applications are already running unless you
unhide the panel.
* The panel unhide animation is incredibly slow, taking at least 2
seconds to unhide or to re-hide.
* Some applications update their title based on events (e.g. mail
received). If these applications are in an auto-hide panel, these
messages can't be seen.
Unfortunately, I find that the Gnome panels cause troubles for X11
applications as well. It seems that the usable screen size is is
reported to be larger than the desktop allows the applications to use
since it includes the panel area that the application is not allowed
to use. This causes considerable headache for applications which
want to use as much screen area as possible, and exposes strange
application bugs.
Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
