The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Still it is a regression in amount of moves and extra brain work to locate the desired window.

> You should group apps in workspaces instead, IMHO.

Often when browsing and working with various references I keep many browser and document viewer window open with all referenced articles. I do not use tabs since switching using task-bar and grouped windows is much faster. This is especially true when switching between html, pdf and office documents. With tabs I would need to switch first to the corresponding application and then try to locate the desired tab that is often not easy since the name on the tab is cut.

I do not see how using workspaces in Gnome-3 would provide the same efficiency of window switching. I would need to spent a lot of time to maintain the workspace since combination of windows is dynamic. Also it is not clear how should I split the windows in advance between workspaces since it hard to predict what would be used together.

For me the gnome-shell is a clear regression in amount of efforts to switch between windows. Judging by all the comments here I am not alone and this affects pretty much everybody with all those extra mouse moves and screen starring to locate the window.

I am puzzled why this clear usability regression did not became apparent when designing the shell. I do not see how even with a hypothetical touch screen implementation this would not be slower. On a touch screen one still needs to touch the activities button first to proceed any father instead of touching the desired window on the task bar.

The only user case where this would be faster is on a small screen when user works with full-screen applications taking the whole screen. Instead of explicit panel the interface would use a convention that touching the corner brings the activities window. But with such devices the hardware may well provide a more convenient dedicated button.