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.
Posted Nov 29, 2012 13:08 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
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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. :)