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Pervasive contemptPervasive contemptPosted Nov 22, 2012 2:33 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)In reply to: Pervasive contempt by bojan Parent article: GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode
> Consider a simple action of changing a workspace using the GUI/mouse in Gnome 2 and 3, for instance.
Eh, Neither G2 or G3 is particularly good on that front; thankfully they both support the use of hotkeys to page between workspaces so my hands never have to leave the keyboard.
Perhaps the single most annoying thing I had to deal with in the G2-G3 transition was that the workspace paging hotkeys changed from CTRL-ALT-[Left|Right] to CTRL-ALT-[Up|Down].
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Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 22, 2012 4:45 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Eh, Neither G2 or G3 is particularly good on that front
I agree with you here, actually. At least Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 fallback can be customised better.
The annoying bit in Gnome 2 (and Gnome 3 fallback) is the existence of two panels. One has to travel with the mouse up/down all the time. Personally, I have been running a single (top) panel for years now, with workspace switcher right next to the menu. Plenty of space for the taskbar too.
And, if space was not wasted on displaying user's real name all the way to the right (people have to be reminded of their name? seriously?), if applications/places were icons instead of text and Gnome 3 fallback wasn't buggy when displaying status icons (which are too widely spaced), there would be even more space available on that single panel, whether it be on top, bottom, left or right (depending on personal preferences, screen X to Y ratio etc.).
Gnome 2 panels Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:55 UTC (Thu) by jhellan (subscriber, #17103) [Link]
I've also been using a single panel in Gnome 2. Autohidden on laptop screens, always visible on large screens.
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 22, 2012 18:47 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
I've just used one panel for yonks. One thing I used to do with GNOME 2 on my wide-screen format laptop was to use a side-panel instead. The wide-screens so typical these days tend to leave you with a surfeit of horizontal space relative to horizontal. On smaller wide-screens you may even be short of vertical space and not want a top-panel at all (or at least, if you do, have it set to auto-hide).
Configurable side panels and auto-hide have been excised with GNOME3 AFAICT.
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 23, 2012 19:11 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The side panel for Gnome 2 is terrible. I use side panel exclusively when using Windows. I can't stand Gnome 2 one after using one that actually works properly.
With Gnome 3 it's possible to get a decent one through extensions or whatever. At least for my purposes it can be made to work correctly.
Although I find that using the 'alt-tab' or 'alt-~' to access window change dialog combined with arrow key navigation is superior to using the mouse in any situation. I know that lots of people are irritated by the change, but the way Gnome 3 is almost objectively better design.. it's most significant fault is that it's different then the Microsoft style.
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 29, 2012 13:08 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The side-panel isn't as useful as a top-panel. Only things that stack well vertically work well there. E.g. launcher icons, relatively square status indicators (e.g. the temp/fan sensors applets - /if/ you configured them to disable labels), workspaces indicator, notification area.
So I still needed a horizontal panel, for application indicators, menu. However moving what could to a side-panel freed up space on the horizontal one.
The alternative would have been top and bottom panels, both set to auto-hide. With the side-panel, in less precious side-space, I could afford to have it always visible.
This stuff matters on a laptop with a 1200x800 screen. :)
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 22, 2012 19:35 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> I have been running a single (top) panel for years now, with workspace switcher right next to the menu. Plenty of space for the taskbar too.
Exactly! It always puzzles me why so many Linux desktops like to waste vertical space that became more valuable with the spread of 16:9 screens. In fact on a small notebook with a wide screen even a single top or bottom panel takes too much vertical space. I would prefer to have a vertical panel. Gnome 3 panel that contains just clocks and notification icons would be a nice candidate for that. But nope, there is of cause no such option. In fact so far the only working vertical panel that I found is the one in Windows 7...
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 27, 2012 21:21 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
> with the spread of 16:9 screens
This is why I still own 4:3 and 5:4 monitors :-)
But I still prefer the top and bottom panels. They are filled with information. The top has my menu, and startup icons for terminal, firefox, chrome, ding, evolution, and xchat. As well as weather applet, kill-window, screen shot applet, sound, notifications and date.
The bottom has the "clear screen", logout, the task list, system monitors and finally the workspace switcher (note, I just use hot keys to switch, seldom do I click on the workspace switcher).
But I've always disliked side panels. I don't know why, maybe because I don't read up and down?
Pervasive contempt Posted Nov 29, 2012 9:31 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> But I've always disliked side panels. I don't know why, maybe because I don't read up and down?
I have found that as long as the panel is just a source of occasional visual hints or information, like time, network and battery status, it works for me vertically when placed on the right of a wide screen. There it destructs less.
The disadvantage of such setup is that one cannot use the panel for navigation between windows. First there is a problem with a long mouse travel to the right edge from the left where most of my activity happens. Second a task-bar style navigation with ungrouped windows simply cannot work unless one makes the panel really wide to see all window titles. But grouping implies more mouse movements or clicks first to select the a group and then to select a window within the group.
So with a single vertical panel on the right one needs efficient keyboard navigation to switch between windows. I have found that MS solution in Win7 is rather good with big application icons on the panel, ability to pin an application to a permanent on the panel position and keyboard shortcuts to access a particular pin or cycle through its windows. One can emulate that on Linux with virtual desktops, but application icons still offer a possibility of using a mouse with a single movement and click to access single-windowed rarely used applications.
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