unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>]

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 :)