unity-design team mailing list archive

[Anthropornis Nordenskjoldi <anthropornis@xxxxxxxxx>]

I *strongly* support your mockup, or something similar.  At a minimum I'd
appreciate the ability to separate out what the system determines is "*
frequent*" and what I explicitly "*pin*". Moreover, as for "frequent" apps,
places, or files, Zeitgeist also seems to have a short memory span (maybe a
week?).

Another core feature I would to see in Unity is the fundamental ability to *
toggle* between a desktop/laptop *mode*, and a tablet/netbook *mode*. I will
never ever use the latter or any touch-oriented features, so I don't need
huge icons anywhere in the interface. Really, I don't even need any
touch-oriented stuff even loaded into memory at boot, so if this could be
akin to recompiling your kernel more than toggling between different things
always resident in memory, that'd be great.

Really, if I could just assign every app a short nickname in the Main Menu
editor, I don't need to see the Icon and the name, so I'd like to be able to
customize the *desktop/laptop mode* to restore as much screen real estate as
possible, by choosing to see either icons, nicknames (not lengthy full
names), or both, just as  toolbars in many apps currently do.

(To restore some screen real estate I'm currently using a compact Nautilus
drop-down indicator for places and the Cardapio menu for "pinned" apps.
Prior to that I'd hacked a static Quicklist to have my pinned apps, with the
least possible amount of screen real estate used for each text-only entry in
the list. I just need something my pointer can hit, which doesn't require
much space at all.)

Another point of contention: if I could get all of the Springboard
functionality into the Dash AND disable the Springboard altogether, that
would be perfect. I don't use the apps and places lenses, I don't pin
launchers to this dock, and the current *window*-switching functionality of
launchers is not intuitive. The window (not app or workspace) switching
capability of both the Gnome 2 Talika applet (you had to get this through a
PPA) and Windows 7 is more intuitive to me, but I suppose hovering over a
launcher to pop out a mini-window showing all current windows of a given app
clashes with Quicklists? In any event, I'd rather have all switching stuff
(windows, apps, and workspaces) moved to separate pages of the Dash, docks
are just clutter.

Alas, before that happens, it would be nice if bug
#807141<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/807141>was
fixed, since Ubuntu now relies so heavily on Unity and Compiz.
Currently
my Dash intermittenly stacks behind other windows, making it useless. The
Compiz maintainer states that stacking issues are near impossible to triage.
If that is the case, it's unfortunate that Canonical hitched their wagon so
readily to such a window manager. If you can't see a core piece of the user
interface, that is pretty much a showstopper, especially in an LTS release.

I'd love for the Dash to A) be the center of attention, B) be configurable
and C) work without issue though, as I think it's a good paradigm in general
if its design potential is fully realized and the bugs are resolved.



On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Josh Strawbridge <holyknightjoshua@xxxxxxxxx
> wrote:

> i had a lot of the same thoughts a few weeks ago and i drew up a mock up of
> what i thought dash should be.
>
> dash is very keyboard friendly but when I'm using a mouse (or tablet
> actually) it's not a very pleasant experience. i only use the first page of
> the dash to get to the second page.
>
> this is what i'd like to see on the first click of the dash button.
>
> https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b0nFEjg8IUU/TjfzbXjLQsI/AAAAAAAAAE4/9WjTUSCdq2A/s912/Dash1.png
>