Today I made gnome-shell work for the first time, and I have spend a few hours toying around in gnome-shell 2.29.0-3 on Debian. It looks shiny, but I also discovered some problems. I don't know how many of these are fixed in the newest version of gnome-shell, so feel free to ignore selectively.
It would be nice to have a simple and visible way to disable gnome-shell animations. Perhaps the animations should be disabled by default. It is difficult for a new user to guess you can use the "find"-dialog to search for a general string such as "game" or "CD" or "spreadsheet". Therefore it is difficult to use the activities dialog to find a program to burn a CD or to create a spreadsheet. Perhaps the extended application menu could contain a links to a few predefined searches such as "office program", "internet", "video", or "game". If I pressed a link then the coresponding text could be typed in to the find dialog, and I could get the search results. This would teach me how to use the system. If the activities menu is open I cannot open the menu in the upper right corner. Ideally opening one menu should close the other. If the activities menu is open and I then I cannot press an icon on the menu bar to open a minimized program such as empathy, gnotes, or gnome-xchat. Ideally pressing an icon on the menu bar should close the activities dialog. It would be nice to be able to use alt-ctrl-left/right while the activities dialog is open. On my laptop I have to press three buttons simultaneously to use the shortcut alt-f1 to open the activities dialog. The problem is that f1 is a two button combination. Perhaps you could change this shortcut to something like ctrl-esc. Once the activities dialog is open, I would like to be able to use the tab key or arrow keys to select a program or document to open. Right now I have to use the mouse. The menu bar contains a small graphic with the name of the window that is presently open. As far as I can see this graphic doesn't do anything. Perhaps you can replace it with a window-list. I would like the calendar dialog to contain information from evolution calendar and evolution tasks. The menu in the upper right corner allows me to set my IM-status, but it doesn't allow me to send an IM-message. I find that confusing. The menu in the upper right corner has my name as a title. That makes it difficult for me to search for help on google and in the gnome help system. If I type my name in to google I don't get help on the gnome-shell menu system. The sidebar contains the same information as the activities menu, so perhaps it is redundant. It would be nice to have something like the windows sidebar where I can place a list of small helpful gadgets. The workspace selector applet of gnome 2.28 tells me which program is opened in which workspace. This information is always visible, so I do not have to press any buttons to get it, and that allows me to use ctrl-alt-left/right very efectively. In gnome shell I have to open the activities dialog and have a look at the work spaces, before I can make a choice of where I want to go. That slows me down. Perhaps you could solve this problem by adding more information to the popup that appears when I press ctrl-alt-left/right. That is all for now. I am looking forward to seeing how the gnome-shell will evolve. Niels _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list gnome-shell-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list