On 21 December 2010 11:21, Mark Shuttleworth
<mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We definitely need a natural way to move between "full screen" (no
panel) and "panelled" mode, across multiple apps. And perhaps we need a
good way for things like indicators to show up at appropriate times,
when the panel is not being displayed.
Just to clarify, do you mean that there would be a system-wide on/off switch for the Unity panel (my request) or do you mean that entering an app into a "fullscreen" mode would remove the panel (which, while a cool feature, is not quite what I was after :) )
So kudos to the Elementary team for their explorations with wingpanel.
In terms of space efficiency, though, if you maximise a window and have
wingpanel float over it, you effectively have the same thing as the
design goal for 11.04 Unity: maximised windows put titles / window
controls / windicators into the panel themselves. And if you're not
using a maximised window then space efficiency is by definition not your
primary concern.
The obvious difference is of course the global menu. Indicator-appmenu is my only gripe with Unity, and the reason is that I use more than one monitor and focus follows mouse on my work desktop; a global menu isn't a great fit for this. I want a consistent experience across all my PCs and so if I remove indicator-appmenu from one, I'll remove it from all. This leaves me with a rather irritating blank panel stretched across the desktop that I can't do anything with. Wingpanel is for me the ideal solution; hence the bug report, I'd like to run Wingpanel + Unity Dock together (which would be my ideal setup, I even mocked up this exact setup on Ayatana before Wingpanel even existed:
https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04044.html )
I can see that there's a "lightness" of the desktop without the panel,
yes. So I think this idea has merit and is worth exploration. I would
welcome mockups and discussion on the Ayatana list, cc'd.
Mark
Cool :)