unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, 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.
>

You sadly didn't reply to any of my points.
The "expose view" in GNOME 3 can be done in Unity too: add a launcher
icon for the scale view (=super+w) and you could do it with two clicks
of the mouse (the keyboard will be faster of course in every case,
exactly as fast as G3). A hot corner is a tiny bit faster but what if
you have only one window of an application open and the launcher could
be set to never hide?
One click, one single straight movement of the mouse to the screen
edge - Unity "wins".

You forgot that launcher icons never move, they are predictable, a lot
more so than the dynamic scale view.

I'm going to represent my ideas for Unity 2.0/Oneiric which among
other things could significantly improve on the window switching in
your particular user case.

> (I am just trying to explain my thought... no offense). I am sorry if any of
> you guys feel hurt but i just say the truths...
>
Oh, if everything was that easy... ;)