A first approach to modernizing and eliminating menus was with Gnome3. Since then, we have seen tuning and tweaking taking place to improve performance. But we have seen and heard (podcasts, youtube), the violent reaction to its elimination of virtual windows and its style of presentation.
When I compared G3 to Unity, I found that it was six of one, or a half dozen of the other., Either version did essentially the same thing.
However, with Mint14 and cinnamon (Also Cinnamon in Fedora17), there were some clever ideas. One of them was the virtual window that you could make persistent across logoff/logons. Therefore, you could setup one window with your programming, and a second window for your documentation, a third for another requirement and a simple click allowed you to switch from one to the other. Of course you could put all the open windows in one common desktop. So, if G4 adopted this idea, it would help to quiet an noisy crowd of complainers (1 or more makes a crowd).
Suppose we adopt that kind of functionality and we change the display presentation as well. We elect, by default, to always show the icons and the list of categories (as if we clicked on applications, and eliminate from the dialog, the windows application choice. In its place at the top or at some location on the screen, you allow for keying in a search argument. Suddenly we reduce substantially the number of mouse clicks and the carpal tunnel pain I get after a heavy day of coding.
The third change is to accommodate, as Cinnamon has done, a user setting for hover time, for the activities. This delay would prevent inadverdent jumping of the screen from maximized window to window selection. As well, to allow relocating that corner trigger elsewhere on the window frame (to accommodate left-handed people).
And to further help the user, allow him to right click on the icon, and put in his additional tags. For example If he adds the tag maj and searches for maj, he retrieves "software update". (Your French readers know maj is an abbreviation for mise a jour ).
With what I mentioned, by right-clicking on an icon, and setting a new property, we could ask that the icon appear first in the list of icons on the screen. With appearing first, there is no longer a need for the favorites bar.
To conceptualize what I mean, go to your gnome screen showing Window Application. Click on Application, and you will be presented with a list of icons. Now suppose that the first icons in the list are then ones from the favorites bar. Why would you now need the favorites bar?
I have, with F17, installed a few tweaks. Some are very good ones, My proposal in this email is to look at architecture, and to field ideas of how to do things differently, and better, and with less processor and memory overhead
With some guidance, I could work with some others to put together a architect proposal document. Anyone interested in helping to do so?
When I compared G3 to Unity, I found that it was six of one, or a half dozen of the other., Either version did essentially the same thing.
However, with Mint14 and cinnamon (Also Cinnamon in Fedora17), there were some clever ideas. One of them was the virtual window that you could make persistent across logoff/logons. Therefore, you could setup one window with your programming, and a second window for your documentation, a third for another requirement and a simple click allowed you to switch from one to the other. Of course you could put all the open windows in one common desktop. So, if G4 adopted this idea, it would help to quiet an noisy crowd of complainers (1 or more makes a crowd).
Suppose we adopt that kind of functionality and we change the display presentation as well. We elect, by default, to always show the icons and the list of categories (as if we clicked on applications, and eliminate from the dialog, the windows application choice. In its place at the top or at some location on the screen, you allow for keying in a search argument. Suddenly we reduce substantially the number of mouse clicks and the carpal tunnel pain I get after a heavy day of coding.
The third change is to accommodate, as Cinnamon has done, a user setting for hover time, for the activities. This delay would prevent inadverdent jumping of the screen from maximized window to window selection. As well, to allow relocating that corner trigger elsewhere on the window frame (to accommodate left-handed people).
And to further help the user, allow him to right click on the icon, and put in his additional tags. For example If he adds the tag maj and searches for maj, he retrieves "software update". (Your French readers know maj is an abbreviation for mise a jour ).
With what I mentioned, by right-clicking on an icon, and setting a new property, we could ask that the icon appear first in the list of icons on the screen. With appearing first, there is no longer a need for the favorites bar.
To conceptualize what I mean, go to your gnome screen showing Window Application. Click on Application, and you will be presented with a list of icons. Now suppose that the first icons in the list are then ones from the favorites bar. Why would you now need the favorites bar?
I have, with F17, installed a few tweaks. Some are very good ones, My proposal in this email is to look at architecture, and to field ideas of how to do things differently, and better, and with less processor and memory overhead
With some guidance, I could work with some others to put together a architect proposal document. Anyone interested in helping to do so?