Pervasive contempt

Posted Nov 23, 2012 19:11 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Pervasive contempt by paulj
Parent article: GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode

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. :)