unity-design team mailing list archive

[Adrian Maier <syraxes@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 16:29, 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.
> 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.

Hello,

I can't compare Unity with Gnome3 because gnome3 is not available in
ubuntu  ;)   .
But I find that Unity is uncomfortable when switching between many open windows,
and I think that Phong Cao has stated some valid remarks.

I liked Unity on my eeepc (running 10.10)  but on the desktop pc I feel that
it is restricting my ability to manage the open applications  :  it's
a simplistic
interface suitable if the user is using a very limited number of applications
(browser + media player).

The core of the problem is this mixing of "application launch icons"
with "open applications"
in the same area of the screen.
- i find it hard to differentiate the started applications
- in fact i don't need large icons for launching applications  ;  the
icons for frequently used
apps can be small and could be placed next to the "ubuntu" button on
the menu bar .

In order to make Unity  suit better to my usage style/habits  I would
need to configure it this way :
- no application launcher
- bottom panel with classical "open applications".  With "workspaces"
at the right.
- top panel with :
    *  "ubuntu" button at left  , opening a classical applications
menu like gnome2 / xfce
    *  empty place in the middle  for the menu of the focused application
    *  at right : notifications, clock, keyboard switcher, logoff button

Are there any chances that the future versions will become customizable,
or the whole idea of this new interface is to enforce a fixed screen layout ?



Best regards,
Adrian M