This is a feature request to re-instate the vertical dash menu bar, vertical scroll of additional desktops and the larger additional desktop preview windows, or to at least provide an option to switch them on for those who wish to use them.
In very recent editions of Gnome desktop:
a) The vertical dash menu bar was moved from underneath ‘Activities’ to the lower centre part of the desktop screen and now goes horizontally across.
b) Multiple desktops now scroll horizontally opposed to vertically.
c) The preview windows of your multiple desktops previously shown on the right of the screen and in a much larger display format when clicking on ‘activities’ have been replaced with far smaller versions at the top of the screen going horizontally across.
I can only assume this decision was to follow suit with Windows, Mac and others and to become more uniform but the only benefit I see personally from the above changes is the potential for more icons on the dash menu because the horizontal space is longer than the vertical space. However the sacrifice from these changes is:
a) When clicking activities (or flicking the mouse cursor on activities) to bring the dash menu up results in the mouse cursor being on the opposite side of the screen from the dash menu icons every time, rather than just hovering slightly below activities to the previous vertical menu.
b) The horizontal scrolling animation has longer to scroll because length is obviously longer than the width which doesn’t feel as easier on the eyes or as natural in my opinion.
c) The smaller preview windows take away the ability and ease for re-arranging any open windows or programs across multiple desktops because of the size difference. It’s barely usable any more because of such a reduction in size though the ability to move open windows across desktops remains.
Hope that makes some sense, am happy to follow up with some screen shots if needed. If most people prefer a horizontal setup because that’s what they perhaps are used to elsewhere then would be at least nice to have the option to switch to a vertical setup and larger preview windows for the benefits mentioned above. Surely the code exists as was present in Gnome for as far back as I can remember. As a developer I typically had four or so desktops open simultaneously, scrolling through them at speed, moving open program windows between desktops from the preview windows to organise them etc was fab and used to open regular programs pinned to the dash much quicker as was so close to ‘activities’ but after these changes this fluidity has been hindered significantly and is very noticeable when you use them a lot.
Would be nice to see these features back, actually would be awesome 
thanks,
Darren