Re: [Ayatana] Thoughts on Unity design

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Phong Cao <phngcv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> About Unity & Gnome Shell... none of them is better than the other. It
> depends on the users.
> I am the kind of user that never open less than 5 windows at a time.
>
> As I explained above:
> 1. Try to open 3 maximized windows of Chrome, 3 maximized windows of
> LibreOffice, 2 Terminal windows and 1 Nautilus window.
> 2. Now switch between the windows of different applications. You can easily
> see that:
> - In Gnome Shell: I hover the mouse to the top-left, which takes almost 1
> second. Then all 9 windows are shown on the screen for me to choose from.
> This makes things simple and easier.
> - In Unity:
> + The best way to switch between applications in Unity is using the
> keyboard.
> + Other than that, I will have to hover the mouse to the left and then
> "guess" "Where is my Chrome/Terminal/LibreOffice icon?" to click on.
> + This causes lots of confusion and time consuming since everytime I want to
> switch between DIFFERENT applications I have to "guess" the icon position
> again.
> + This should not be a problem if you keep the left panel always visible.
> However, Gnome Shell does not sacrifice any horizontal screen space and
> still achieve the result I need.

There is perhaps a design flaw in Unity that this feature is not more
discoverable, but if you move your mouse to the top-left corner then
the launcher appears on top so you don't have to guess. This makes the
process almost identical to that of Gnome Shell:

1) Move mouse to top left
2) Pick application/window

regardless of whether you're using Unity or shell.

> Lastly, please do not use the age of Unity as an excuse. I am tired of
> people saying that "Because Unity is just ... months old and Gnome Shell has
> been.... decades old so Gnome Shell is better".
> Gnome Shell will always be older than Unity and Unity will always use this
> statement as an excuse for its weaknesses. Unity will hardly improve if its
> developers use age to say it is better or worse than Shell.
> Weaknesses do not come from age. They come from the design philosophy of the
> developers.
> If the philosophy is wrong from the start and left unchanged, Unity will
> hardly gets any better regardless of its age.
>
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Phong Cao <phngcv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > I am too have been for a long time a Ubuntu's fan. However, I am not
>> > trying
>> > to be negative but... I would say that Unity's design is way far behind
>> > GNOME Shell in Fedora 15. I recommend anybody in this email list try out
>> > Fedora 15 & GNOME Shell and learn from their simplicity. (Just my
>> > thought,
>> > no offense). After couple days get along with Fedora 15 & GNOME Shell I
>> > feel
>> > that GNOME Shell is more newbie-friendly and productive than Unity. I
>> > think
>> > Ubuntu should reconsider going back to GNOME...
>>
>> Ok im not being negative or anything but both emails you put in on
>> this thread haven't explained why you think shell is better.
>> Also it has to be said that Unity (compiz) isn't around very long
>> compared to Shell since it was made for 3 years and all and
>> Unity compiz anyway is only 6 months of work ish. The reason why im
>> mentioning that is there are still many many changes
>> and iterations to come for Unity in which it will get better. What you
>> can bank on though is Unity is faster and more stable.
>>
>> The cool things about Shell are the really nice looking animations on
>> things there is a lot of nice finishes on everything and
>> that stuff comes with time. In terms of Unity and why it is better is
>> the simplicity you can do a lot more with the search in the
>> dash than you can with Shell and the sky is the limit on lenses and
>> all that nice stuff.
>>
>> --fagan
>
>
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