Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[Tom Metro]

Mark? Dúlcey wrote:
> One thing I've always found annoying about Gnome 2 is that you can't 
> effectively move the taskbar to the side of the screen as you can in 
> Windows -- yes you can put it there but it misbehaves in various 
> annoying ways. 

Try replacing the stock window list applet with a 3rd party alternative,
like DockbarX. I just tried it with a left-side panel and it seems to work.

Or was the misbehavior with other items on the panel?

The real win would be getting rid of all horizontal panels. That could
take more effort to pull off. I'm not sure how well the notification
area, workspace switcher, and application menu behave when moved to a
vertical panel. And even if they do behave, how comfortable that would
be to use.


> So you're stuck with two vertical UI bars...

There's absolutely no need to have two. The first thing I did when I
switched to GNOME was to get rid of the Microsoft-inspired bottom panel.
I moved the window selector to the top panel. Plenty of room on a wide
screen.


> I HATE the Mac and Windows 7 style conflation of application shortcuts 
> and icons for running applications;

DockbarX supports that, but you don't need to use it. I make limited use
of it.

The visual feedback in DockbarX to distinguish a launcher from a running
app is not as good as I'd like.

I get the motivation behind this feature. If you are a simple user, you
don't really care if the app is running or not, you just want it to appear.

Once you become a slightly more sophisticated user, the distinction
matters. If the UI can save real estate by combining the two operations,
while still visually distinguishing them, then great. If not, then don't
muddy the metaphor.


> I've also never liked the Mac-style menus on the top of the screen 
> rather than in the window title bar. It strikes me as a UI decision that 
> doesn't scale well. It was fine when the Mac meant the beige toaster 
> with its 9" display, but when you're talking about 30" behemoths the 
> menus are too far away from where you are working. Too much mouse 
> movement, and too much confusion because they're so far away from the 
> active window.

Agreed.

Pro: menus are in an absolutely positioned consistent place.
Con: menus are not visually tied to what they impact; menus are
inconveniently located at a distance from where you are working.

Cons outweigh pros.

The Windows XP-style task bar that ships by default on the bottom of the
window is a similar fail. The user spends most of the time interacting
with the middle to the top of application windows, yet to switch
applications the mouse has to travel to the bottom of the screen?

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/