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Classic mode, cool!Classic mode, cool!Posted Mar 28, 2013 0:15 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)Parent article: GNOME 3.8 released I am happy to see the references to "classic mode" in the release notes, and happier to see that it isn't being called "legacy". Thanks for listening. This isn't just something the old-school geeks have been asking for; my daughter was very unhappy about losing the window switcher, because when she's doing homework and researching things on the net, with Gnome 3 she loses track of her windows (when the mouse is moved to the corner to see tiny versions of all the windows they are often illegible, and if a window is minimized to get it temporarily out of the way, that's the only way to find it again). Focusing on one task isn't always what the user wants or needs to do: there might be a couple of documents open in LibreOffice, many windows and tabs in the browser, and maybe a drawing program floating around as well. Or perhaps a writer is documenting the behavior of a program that opens multiple windows. The Gnome 2 window switcher was an effective way to manage this style of work, so thanks for bringing it back. Maybe the right thing to do is have a clean way of making it appear and disappear as needed.
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Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 7:03 UTC (Thu) by Chousuke (subscriber, #54562) [Link]
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Window switcher" since it's been a while since I used GNOME 2, but are you aware that GNOME 3 has OS X -style app-specific window switching? Alt-tab switches between applications and alt-ยง (on my Finnish layout. It's the button above tab) switches between windows of the same application.
I find it very convenient and rarely use the overview.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:01 UTC (Thu) by ssam (subscriber, #46587) [Link]
It is good to have a keyboard and a mouse method to do something. If my hands are on the keyboard then i can use that. If i have a coffee in one hand and the mouse in the other, then its nice to use the mouse.
depending on your work the distinction of applications is not very helpful. Suppose I have a couple of terminals of vim, one that I am compiling in, and one that i am looking at output in, some documentation in a webbrowser, some more documentation in a pdf, some plots in a pdf etc etc. Now i want to get from the documentation back to my editor.
Also I'd like a system monitor in the top panel. It was never there in the gnome 3 fallback. has it been revived in gnome3 classic?
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:59 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
The classic mode in GNOME 3.8 does this by default FYI
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:07 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
I suppose the the initial post refers to Windows-style task bar that enumerates currently opened windows at the bottom of screen using list of buttons with application icons.
Gnome Shell interface is just not compatible with a workflow when one uses a lot of opened windows and actively working on few of them from different or same applications.
In the overview mode the windows becoming tiny rectangles that one cannot recognize. This is not the case with the task bar that uses always recognizable icons and window titles allowing navigate with 20 or more opened windows even if they come from the same application.
Using Alt-Tab and Alt-KeyAboveTab puts extra cognitive load as one has to constantly remember if the window the person wants to access belongs to the same application as current one or different one. Just consider switching between 2 browser windows and an editor.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:44 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]
Gnome changed alt-tab to switch between applications, rather than windows. This is a regression for those who have a number of terminal windows open (software developers) or a number of browser windows open (separate windows, not tabs, so they can use their large monitor effectively). The Gnome 3 approach seems optimized for a small screen.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 29, 2013 7:01 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
For users with multiple open terminal, they can use Alt+` to view them which is convenient for some software developers. As a designer, I have no problem using Gnome Shell on a big screen.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 29, 2013 22:27 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Ditto,
With alt-tab and alt-` I can accurately and quickly choose between any number of application and application windows open, of which I typically have dozens.
Talk of 'oh it's optimized for small displays', or 'it is made for touch screens', or 'it is bad for multitasking' are all statements that do not hold up to actual experience on Gnome-shell.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 30, 2013 11:03 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Switching between apps instead of windows is a nice additional feature that a small minority of users might find useful - KWin has introduced this feature a long time ago, too, but I never used it.
What I don't understand is what rational argument there is for forcing people out of their entirely reasonable habit and pushing the extra cognitive load on them to bother about a detail ('this window happens to be part of that same application')?
I really wonder how a decision like this gets made - it is quite the epic failure. And then not deciding to revert this when it becomes clear that, for no reason, you switched shortcuts and destroyed the value of years of muscle memory - that makes it even more epic...
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 31, 2013 13:16 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Surely by this time you must be aware of:
1. Design team 2. Mac OS X 3. Resorting yet again to summarizing things as "forcing" and "epic failure" is not really respectful 4. Extension that changes this
For someone who is supposed to be understand communities this is really weird behaviour.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 31, 2013 15:06 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
I'm asking because I understand communities and don't get how this decision could be made in a bottom-up, open community that cares for its end users.
None of your points explain that process.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 31, 2013 18:32 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Pot calling the kettle black any much?
Calling things epic fail just does not help to create a discussion. Now you make all kinds of statements. E.g. KDE is the end all of usability. Look, I know you are a KDE fan. But there is something like Mac OS X. Your epic fail does not mean anything.
However, just making things emotional by suggesting that we would not care, or that things are an "epic fail". And the "understand communities", really nice behaviour that you're displaying towards the GNOME community, changing a "meh" into "epic fail".
Community manager means behaving like this?
Classic mode, cool! Posted Apr 3, 2013 0:13 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] 3. Resorting yet again to summarizing things as "forcing" and "epic failure" is not really respectfulTrue, however you should keep in mind the difficulty of maintaining a really respectful demeanor after somebody has just done something really stupid and shows no contrition in spite of widely negative feedback. Just backing out the change and introducing the new idea as an extension would have been a way for Gnome developers to show respect for their users, but what was done instead seems to show more defiance than respect.
Classic mode, cool! Posted Mar 28, 2013 8:44 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
The name of "classic" mode was discussed in the open various times. Once on marketing-list. The fear behind calling it classic mode is that it might cause confusion because various distributions used that name for the fallback mode. It is quite difficult to think up of a name which is clear while at the same time does not create confusion. With clear I mean that you do not want to overpromise things with a name (imply that it does more than it is intended to do).
Participation in these kind of discussions is welcome, just join the relevant list. Marketing team also holds meetings, only requirement is being able to connect and having a headphone + microphone.
Obviously it would be better if we could really get data behind every decision. E.g. like when a company is searching for a name and actually tests various names on their target audience.
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