unity-design team mailing list archive

[strav <essorcreations@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

Since Ubuntu 11.10, I believe there is an obvious dead-end regarding the
usability of unity's launcher when used in hidden mode and I'm wondering
what could be done about it.

Namely: except for the bottom left side of your screen, when using a
maximized application, there is no zone you can use to unhide the
launcher without interfering with some UI component. On 11.04, the top
left area could be used since there only was the Dash button there and
hence, you had no reason to move your cursor in this area unless you
wanted to use the dash of trigger the launcher panel (which made sense
since these operations are somehow closely related). Now, you cannot use
this zone since it will interfere with the close/maximize/minimize
button set of your application. Then simply using the left area is also
a problem since a lot of applications have menus in this area and you
will also constantly be interfering with them. The bottom left side of
the screen isn't either a great option since the required mouse
movements to reach a launcher icon (usually placed in order of
importance from top to bottom) will be completely unnatural.

So this makes me ask: what could be done about it? Most users I know
usually don't like to have the launcher panel constantly visible and for
space constrained portable touch devices, it seems to me that there
should be a way to unambiguously hide and un-hide the panel.

I'm also wondering: is there a roadmap for the furture enhancement of
unity? (I'd be especially interested to know if it's actually planned to
allow the launcher panel to be placed on different edges of the screen).

Aside from that, thanks for bringing windowmaker back in style!

Mathieu Beliveau
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