Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 15:03 UTC (Mon) by Zizzle (guest, #67739)
Parent article: Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

You sir are a hero.

One click application launches and being able to use our "spatial" memory to locate our apps across static desktops is a massive productivity win.

Don't let the GNOME mafia shoot you down. Keep up the good work.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 16:37 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (13 responses)

"GNOME Mafia"? Really? The capability to build these type of extensions is part of the design of GNOME Shell. So things seem to be working as intended. One could be thankful to the extensions developers *and* GNOME project.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 17:27 UTC (Mon) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (7 responses)

One _could_ be thankful... if they hadn't arbitrarily gutted the useful functionalities in the first place. Relying on third-party extensions who could be broken anytime just to restore a bit of sanity reminds me to much of other systems.

That said, it's nice that these extensions do exist and I'm thankful to _their_ developer.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 17:46 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

I don't think it is arbitrary. One could disagree with the design but it is obviously a result of a design first approach (the mockups were developed and released much earlier than the code).

I heard similar things when Mozilla Firefox became more popular than Seamonkey but the system of extensions have flourishes and Mozilla has in turn facilitated development, providing hosting and made them easier to develop. Since these are the early days, extensions are hosted at

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions

Whenever the API of GNOME Shell changes, the extensions can be quickly fixed. (Think Linux kernel here) I have packaged all these and they are available in the Fedora repo. In time, perhaps as the framework matures, one can expect the API to become stable.

If one agrees that extensions are useful and extensions not only allow adding some features from a previous release but also provides opportunity to add more features easily than ever before (compared to applets for instance), then we implicitly are thanking the developers who provided the framework for these extensions automatically when we thank the extension developers. One doesn't go without the other and certainly doesn't warrant calling a free software project "mafia".

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 21:00 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

If the Gnome folks didn't intend people to much around and modify the Gnome shell environment in different ways they would not of bothered to include a built-in Gnome-shell javascript debugger.

People who think that somehow Gnome folks are being desktop fascists or something like that really need to open their eyes and relax.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 23:19 UTC (Mon) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

This as an opt-out feature in Gnome3, vs an opt-in true option.
The problem with this approach is that over time you end up using more and more 3rd party scrips and at one point you do not feel at home.

Stable API myth

Posted May 10, 2011 6:04 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (1 responses)

From the document: "The kernel to userspace interface is the one that application programs use, the syscall interface. That interface is _very_ stable over time, and will not break."

Stable API myth

Posted May 10, 2011 6:35 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I was referring to the way the other kernel interfaces are treated obviously. If there is a break, all the consumers are fixed in the kernel along with the change.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 12, 2011 3:42 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (1 responses)

Mozilla extensions aren't that important. A tiny little handful of uber-nerds uses them. The rest of the human race uses stock Firefox. Which is designed to be usable for them and not require extensions to make up for the "designers" (read as "idiot hobbyist ex-web-developers playing at being real designers who conned what used to be a UX-oriented and technologically competent team into making the biggest pile of bafflingly poorly designed crap since Microsoft Bob").

I'm getting sick of hearing how GNOME 3 was design-first. It's a _bad design_. I don't care how it got there, what went first, who did what, or what the process was. The fact that you all were conned into implementing a crappy design after seeing mockups is not a redeeming element of the GNOME3 story in any way. Especially when all the other neat mockups from back then are still unimplemented. Why bother implementing all those when you can instead sink a couple years into rewriting all your working code from scratch, in JavaScript?

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 12, 2011 4:31 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Mozilla extensions aren't that important. A tiny little handful of uber-nerds uses them.
Uber-nerds or not, that tiny little handful seems to have downloaded more than 300 million copies of the top three extensions alone.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 23:04 UTC (Mon) by vladimir (guest, #14172) [Link] (4 responses)

I think the issue here is what appears to be arbitrary changes to the desktop that are not fixable by run-of-the-mill users, i.e. the vast majority of us who don't write JavaScript and don't know the GNOME shell API. I almost went back to GNOME 2.32.

* Why can't I get the panels to hide?
* Why can't I move them or delete them.
* Why are the elements of my panels different?
* Why doesn't GNOME 3 honor my choice of session applications (i.e. those that used to be specified by gnome-session-save)?
* What happened to the shortcuts in my panels?
* Why are the menus different.

I wasn't consulted on the changes ;-) but had I been, I would have insisted on an installation procedure that optionally moved my entire setup to GNOME 3 seamlessly.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 6:39 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

"I think the issue here is what appears to be arbitrary changes to the desktop that are not fixable by run-of-the-mill users, i.e. the vast majority of us who don't write JavaScript and don't know the GNOME shell API"

The vast majority can install and use Firefox extensions just fine even though they don't know how it works usually. As long as they are readily available as easily enabled, users can install them just fine. Extension developers will have to understand it but we have dozens of gnome shell extensions already within the span of a few weeks and are already providing capabilities not available in GNOME 2.x. This is just the beginning.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 16:34 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link] (2 responses)

Installing extensions for Firefox is a bit different and always was pretty simple even from the start. For gnome shell there's no UI for installing or managing extensions and no obvious way to know that any exist.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 17:31 UTC (Tue) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link] (1 responses)

Not yet. That's something the Gnome folks are working on and hopefully will be ready for 3.2.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 11, 2011 8:35 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I think this is a big enough feature omission that GNOME should apologize and retroactively call 3.0 an alpha.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 20:23 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

Don't let the GNOME mafia shoot you down. Keep up the good work.

That is easy, as there is no GNOME mafia. Nor do we "shoot down" anyone. You might want to read up on http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct.

There are various people within GNOME. My impression that they're all friendly. Though sometimes people assume that friendly means 'do what I want'.

You said "don't let the GNOME mafia shoot you down". I'd like to understand why you say this. Did you interact with GNOME and got a bad response? If so, can you give a link?

I have no problems giving this person a Git account on GNOME so these extensions can be hosted on git.gnome.org. Further, I doubt you've really interacted with GNOME.

Or in other words: seems you're saying things you seemingly do not have any experience with.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 16:06 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

The Gnome Mafia killed off focus-follows-mouse, right?

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 18:47 UTC (Tue) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link] (1 responses)

It is available via gconf. Nobody got rid of it.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 11, 2011 14:14 UTC (Wed) by sbdep (subscriber, #13282) [Link]

This is the answer I find the most ironic. The philosophy from Gnome 1.4 to Gnome 2 was "simplify; kill off all options; if we keep an options, there must be a very good reason and not just a single person complaining". The options that were removed were removed from gconf as well since, "all options that are available require more ongoing maintenance" Slowly over the life of Gnome 2, some options reappeared as people made better arguments for why they should exist.

Now with Gnome 3, it appears to be: kill off the user configurable options; hide them in gconf where they are virtually undiscoverable to normal users; but we will keep the code maintenance burden around.

Anybody else think there has been a large scale replacement of maintainers between the Gnome 2 transition and the GNome 3 transition?

All I can say is that at some point I switched from Gnome 2 to KDE3. When KDE4 was a disaster that tried to change the desktop metaphor I switched away to XFCE. No idea where I would go if XFCE follows up with a major change in the desktop metaphor.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 18:52 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Hope you're being sarcastic. This as I already indicated it made no sense and furthermore I dislike the use of emotional arguments. So continuing to behave the same would be a bit sad.

For anyone else: focus follows mouse is available.