Hi all, Most of the current big changes in the Unity shell are serious regressions in my opinion. I think Unity as shipped with 11.04 is much better. Here are the reasons why:
It has the 'Ubuntu botton' integrated in the top panel. I thought that this was a very good idea, because it is in a way the 'window' into the system. With the 'Ubuntu button' inside the launcher, there no longer is a clear distinction. I also think it looks more pleasing to the eye, as it makes the launcher look more or less 'locked' into the top panel. The dash now has close/minimize/maximize widgets, just like regular windows. Very bad idea. It is /not/ a regular window, and should not be treated as such. Using the 'Ubuntu button' (or the 'super' key) to open/close the Dash made perfect sense When an application is maximized, the close/minimize/maximize widgets are hidden by default. To make them appear, the user has to hoover over the top panel. This means aiming twice: once to make the widgets appear, and then again to click on the desired widget. Seems very counterproductive to me. The same is valid for the global menus by the way, but I never found this to be problematic myself. Still, it would be a good idea to at least provide a user setting to keep the global menus displayed by default. The application name still gets clipped (with a 'fade out') when the global menu is displayed. I think that this looks extremely bad. I'd keep the application name fully displayed at all times, and have the menu next to that. Okay, this would mean that the position of the menu is no longer absolute, but that's not a big deal I think. In relation to the previous item, when the application name stays displayed at all times, it could be turned into an indicator-like button, sporting all kinds of 'services' for the current application. These services could include eg. 'kill application', 'take snapshot', 'move to workspace', 'hide', 'tile left/right'... It would also be nice if the user had to option not to use 'global' menus if they want to. Anyway, I've created a couple of mock-ups to make clear how the panel ideally would look like in my opinion: http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_menu_maximized.png http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_menu_windowed.png http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_window-menu.png Please let me know what you think. -- Look, the thing about my family is there's five of us. Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn't talk, and the fat guy. How I loathe him. ~ Homer J. Simpson _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
