In current GNOME Shell design there are seven places where application can be started or activated: 1) applications area, 2) documents area, 3) desktop, 4) Alt+Tab switcher, 5) notification area, 6) top panel active application menu, 7) top panel tray area.
For example, my instant messenger icon tend to be on six places at the same time (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). This is incredibly! I start it on application area, then switching to it on desktop or Alt+Tab, then it show me new message in notification area, then I close it on top panel application menu. Every time I must interact with different widgets and context. Why so many ways to JUST SHOW ME A WINDOW? How newcomers to computers will know what to do with all this way of interaction? I really do not understand why GNOME Shell designers decided to keep complexity of Gnome 2 and even add some more. Please think of some way to join all these options to ONE. This is possible. For example, what is the true difference between icons in applications area and notification area? Minor. So why we need two icons and two areas? What is the true difference between top panel active application menu and regular window menu? Why you do not want global regular menu, but think that top panel active application menu is OK? The center of all user activity is application window. When designing GNOME Shell please do not think about documents. From user perspective document is in fact application window with some content, it is useful because user can open it in some application window. Users most of they time do not think or care about documents that are on they computers but are not open. Therefore I believe that application window should be also the center of GNOME Shell design. So I can look at all of above mentioned places from the perspective of window. GNOME Shell should show me all this functionality in ONE, SIMILAR, CONSISTENT WAY. This could be on my desktop, just like started application in overlay mode so far. All other types of interaction are out of window context and SHOULD BE AVOIDED. Application in all above mentioned places can be shown on my desktop as window (full or thumbnail) + icon + title. No more complexity. Even non-started application can have its thumbnail just like documents. Forget about started or non-started application, users do not care and do not remember what is started or not, what is on tasklist or tray. They just want to use it WHEN AND ONLY WHEN they need it. And this is my computer duty to start application that is not started, and stop application that I no more use at given time, or even install application when I need it and start it for me (just like codec or add-on). Current GNOME Shell design is not as revolutionary as it could be. I would be more than happy if some kindly GNOME Shell developer look at these arguments and give some feedback. _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
