unity-design team mailing list archive

[Nikita Kitaev <nikitakit@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad
<joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >being on the desktop usually implies that you'll start some app , so it's
>> > most logical to have the launcher open
>
>
> I don't really agree with that. You can't use the launcher without either
> point the mouse at it, in which case it's shown, or using the keyboard in
> which case you're likely less dependent on it being visible. It's good to
> have it displayed by default so that new users have an easier time
> discovering it, but I'll personally use auto-hide immediately.
>
> Jo-Erlend Schinstad

What about multi-touch? I remember a time when Planet Ubuntu had
non-stop blog posts about upcoming multitouch support sometime in the
future. I bought a computer with an touch and wacom stylus support
integrated into the screen. It's a flip-screen device: if I'm using
the touch/stylus, the screen covers the keyboard and makes
inaccessible.

Here's my use case: I have one workscape dedicated to a web browser,
one to a text editor. Both are maximized or fullscreen, I use the
keyboard with them. I want the launcher hidden since I can just access
it via keyboard. On some other workspaces I put drawing apps, pdf
documents, etc. - I use mostly the stylus on them, and multitouch if
(when?) there is support for it. For them I'd prefer to have the
launcher accessible.

Granted, the hardware I have is still rare - but only for now.
Reasoning only in terms of keyboard/mouse may make sense for 12.04
(given that there's only a few months before the release), but I don't
think the paradigm will hold on for much longer.

~Nikita