On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:23 AM, Ryan Peters <[email protected]> wrote: > P.S. Maybe KDE is your thing more than GNOME is; they seem to care quite a > lot more about customization. >
Absolutely not the case. KDE liked to leave important, (possibly polarizing) design decisions up to end users instead of making a solid decision and standing by it. They are getting better about this nowadays, but I think it's a mindset that takes a long time to heal. ( Nice blog post on such a subject: http://mystilleef.blogspot.com/2005/12/just-add-option-to-turn-it-off-or-on.html ) However, _where it counts_, Gnome is as customizable as KDE. For example, being able to choose any font or theme that you want, and changing the keyboard shortcut to open the main menu. That sort of customization is important because it lets users fit the desktop environment to their own particular needs, which in some cases is the difference between being able to use the system and not using it. My point isn't really about "adding options," but just that the Gnome project, as I know it, DOES care about customization. The difference with Gnome Shell, so far, is that the customization is intended to happen a bit further from end users, via more rigid extensions that control specific points of the shell interface (instead of forcing the user to define those points). Correct me if I'm wrong, please! If you look at other applications, like web browsers (Chromium), text editors (Gedit), and image editors (GIMP), you'll see that this approach has won over the "an extension is a widget that the user places somewhere" approach, and for good reason. A widget the user places somewhere may as well be a normal application that runs at startup ;) As for the topic at hand, the top right of the screen: there is still a menu (and a big green icon) for controlling your IM presence; setting yourself as online or offline. However, logging in to an IM account and setting up an IM account has nothing to do with that chunk of the screen. This is the problem that the Me menu and message indicator strive to address, and may be worth some pondering. Thanks, Dylan _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
