Hi Owen!
In terms of this week and last week, most of the full time GNOME
shell
developers are on vacation, and in some cases entirely away from
computers. Yes, we don't post enough here even at other times.
Actually, I wasn't expecting any updates during X-mas but this
discussion has been on the mailing list in different threads for
quite a
long time. And this discussion doesn't result in anything unless
people
doing the work will lead it in some direction.
Once you are done working through that exercise, the result
doesn't look
much like the current GNOME Shell; you've lost most of the things
that
are distinctive about the current GNOME Shell design, and the
result, it
seems to me, would look pretty much like other current desktops.
Now, the goal of GNOME Shell isn't to be something radically new
and
different, it's to be a great user interface for GNOME 3, so
maybe we'll
need to go ahead and make a big switch to something more
conventional;
maybe the current ideas just aren't right. But we definitely want
to
finish our current design ideas and get some experience with users
before we make such a move. (The message tray is probably the
last large
remaining piece; we're hoping to get that landed next week.)
Sure, user feedback is probably the most important point. (One of
the
reasons that I didn't post here before having used gnome-shell for a
while).
Regarding the task list I am all against a button panel but I still
thinnk there needs to be a fast way to change the window (not
essentially the same as the task) using mouse only without the
overlay.
If you read the archive you will see a lot of post dicussion various
ideas because people are very used to it, even those power-user
keyboards freaks.
Just another idea that poped into my mind: What about having the
alt-tab
chooser as kind of dock that pops up when you move the mouse to the
buttom of the screen?
Thanks and regards,
Johannes
On Sat, 2009-12-26 Reiner Jung wrote:
I guess these discussions can become somewhat cumbersome for
developers,
because they are largely on the same topics. I think it would be
helpful
to distill a set of use-cases and a set of solutions for these
use
cases
on the basis of gnome-shell.
I suggest that we collect ideas on this list for problems we have
determined and send them our proposals. But to get features
into the
shell we should not only propose them, but try to convince the
developers to like them (so they implement them).
Two things I'd encourage:
- When documenting problems, be exceedingly specific; don't say
"the new Alt-Tab makes it hard to switch between windows of
an application" rather say "When I'm writing an email in an
Evolution composer window and want to switch back to the
main Evolution window to look at another message for reference,
I often find myself ending up in a different application"
(or even more detail)
Generalization from a specific problem to a generic problem
often
involves making an assumption about how the situation is best
resolved.
- The most interesting thing at the current time are incremental
ideas - how could the ideas of the shell be extended or reworked
to make them better? Such ideas are more interesting than
complaints about how the shell isn't working. And they are
more interesting than ideas that are massive changes in
direction.
If these ideas can be expressed in a few words that's better.
IF they can be expressed visually, even better.
On Sun, 2009-12-27 at 00:33 +0100, Johannes Schmid wrote:
OK, I created a page in the wiki, it lacks the solutions
currently and
has to be filled with more data of course:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UseCases
This page doesn't seem helpful in the current form; "Netbook" and
"Desktop Computer" are exceedingly general. Depending on how I'm
using
my desktop computer, there are likely hundreds of pros to the
current
GNOME Shell design and hundreds of cons.
I'd like to have a way of documenting "points of frustration" -
what the
user was doing (very specifically) and how the shell was failing.
But
I'm not really sure the best place to do that.
- They might get lost in the noise in the mailing list
- Wikis aren't very good for discussion
- Bugzilla might be the best fit, but I'm reluctant to have bugs
in
Bugzilla that don't correspond to clear tasks - a patch to
review,
a specific change to make to match up with a mockup, a crash,
etc.
I'll discuss this some with Jon when we are both back from
vacation and
we'll see if we can come up with a good procedure.
- Owen
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