In Unity applications and windows largely behave more like OS X while the "classic" desktop is more like Windows. There is a dock which represents applications as opposed to windows. It focuses windows of a running application instead of launching a new window and there is a single menubar per application, not per window. This is what I call the application-centric interface. I wonder why it was chosen as the preferred interface design because I can only come up with reasons why the "old" window-centric model works better:
Multiple Desktops: The window-centric interface is a simpler mental model for the user as it is more predictable. No matter what applications are running on other workspaces or monitors a taskbar based interface will always behave the same way. It's less noisy and disruptive because you never get automatically switched to another workspace just because coincidentally another instance of an application is already running there. This particularly applies to such applications as file managers, terminals and text editors that are opened frequently and are used in different "work-flow contexts" say your "admin", "coding" or "personal" workspace. Window Management: The taskbar requires one click to switch to any window in the current desktop, in Unity switching to another window usually requires at least two clicks. Opening a new terminal/file manager window Again, takes more clicks if launcher icon and active application icon are the same. Keyboard shortcuts alleviate this for me but many people never use those. Menubar: The menubar "outside" of windows is probably the most visible aspect of the application-centric design. The main problem here is that 3rd party Linux applications are all written for the "classic" model. It's not just LibreOffice and similar cases though. GIMP and Firefox already have integration in Unity yet it's not perfect: If the toolbox or download window is focused the menubar is empty and keyboard shortcuts don't work. This is nothing that can't be solved as native OS X applications show but my question here, is it worth it? Apart from the netbook user case with maximized windows I can't see any advantage of the global menubar. (If it was speed of access you wouldn't have made hover only.) My question to you: What are the reasons behind moving Ubuntu from a window-centric to an application-centric interface? What are the advantages and are they worth the trade-offs? I want to like Unity, there is much to like about it, the launcher keyboard shortcuts, the compiz integration, the dash, lenses and more but please help me understand why app-centric should be better for me. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
