GNOME and the way forward

Posted Aug 21, 2005 8:05 UTC (Sun) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link]

That's pretty much been my experience with Gnome since 2.0 started.
The simplest thing I miss dearly and am no longer sure how to accomplish in any window manager is a floating toolbar at the very top of the screen not aligned with the center or right edge that does not displace windows (i.e. cut into screen real estate).
I preferred to place my clock and a few other system monitoring tools in a spot where they would overlap with the titlebar of a maximized application, and they quite happily fit there without interfering with anything else.
Early on in the gnome 2 cycle this started becoming an obscure option that had to be enabled to keep the 'smart' behavior from fighting me.
Later on, the option disappeared from easy location; it wasn't until well after I threw my hands up at Gnome in general (for other reasons as well) that I learned that the 'power' configuration was hidden away in a place that was totally unobvious.
The last time I used Gnome (Which was admittedly about a year ago) I couldn't figure out how to regain that behavior.. The changlog insisted no behavior was lost, and my attempt to clarify my problem to a developer at that point in time (I can't recall to whom I was speaking) basically gave the impression that there was nothing lost, and if there was, I wasn't doing anything worthwhile anyway.

I'm also curious.. Did Metacity ever develop the 'viewport' functionality that Sawfish/Sawmill had? I personally find the 'multiple desktops' functionality counter-intuitive, and miss the ability to slide a viewport around a larger effective desktop.