I'd like to commend you guys on your valiant efforts to take the Linux desktop in a completely new direction. Kudos to you for what you've accomplished so far. You should be proud of yourselves.
Allow me to point out areas I feel will improve the experience of using your respective shells.
The biggest flaw with your shells is that they eat my screen real estate. My screen space belongs to me, not the shell. For instance, when I maximize a window, I expect to see nothing but the window and its content. Isn't this reasonable? Tragically, this is not the case with your shells.
Your shells demand that I make peace with a statically positioned menubar at the top of my screen. This ugly bar is always visible. My question is, why is something that's virtually useless taking up about 10% of my screen real estate? There's only so much the menubar does for it to warrant such a presence. Most of the time, it just sits there doing nothing and looking cute. That space could be put to better use by something more important and dear to me and most users, our desktop applications!
As an evolutionary step, it'll be nice if the menubar and sidebar, for shells that have one, dynamically hide and reveal themselves as needed using an "intellihide" algorithm. This way maximized windows appropriately use the whole screen as opposed to competing with shell components for screen space. I'm willing to wager 100 percent of your users will appreciate this. Especially users with netbooks or computers with small screen sizes.
As a revolutionary step, can we get rid of the statically positioned menubar? It's 2011 and the menubar hasn't died yet. That's depressing. How about something dynamic and smart as opposed to static and ugly? I'm thinking about a fluid dock system. The dock system will consist of a dock bar that houses dock objects. Dock objects could be launcher objects, notification objects, application specific objects, shell specific objects or whatever. In fact, I can see a huge community of dock object developers and designers if you get the API and architecture right.
My focus however is the dock bar. The dock bar's behaviour should center around a very smart "intellihide" algorithm. The algorithm should ensure that the dock bar is never in the way and never has a presence or visibility priority higher than the window or application the user is currently using. This should be priority number one for any shell component. The dock bar(s) should hide and reveal themselves intelligently and appropriately. This is not science fiction. This works fantastically well today in dock systems like Avant Window Navigator.
What we can't have, absolutely under no circumstance, is any shell component statically taking up any amount of screen space and never giving it up. That's just cold and egregious!
In the same vein, empower your users and developers. Allow them to create multiple dock bars easily and as often as they want. Allow them to move or drag dock bars around the same way they do for windows. Allow them to position dock bars anywhere they see fit. Allow them to change the properties of the dock bars. The same rules apply to dock objects. Allow your users to move dock objects between and within bars. Empowering experiences make users feel in control. And the ultimate user experience is the most empowering user experience.
Currently, I don't feel empowered when I use GNOME Shell or Unity. I feel castrated. I feel as if I'm a shackled slave in a bondage and discipline role gone awry. I feel frustrated. The new shells are beautiful, but they are not empowering. The icons look slick and effects are jaw-dropping, but the shell components insist on being in your face, ostentatious, static and limited.
The shell should be transparent and subtle in its function and behavior. It should be available only when users need it. It should never be the center of attention. Most importantly, it should never steal my screen space. Blessed is the day GNOME Shell and Unity give me my screen space back.
Sincerely
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