I’m sure there will be extensions eventually, but with all these changes, I doubt they’ll be ready in time when Gnome 40 airs on Fedora 34. For sure I’ll give the new layout a try, but my imagination is actually good enough to know that the new layout is a huge step back usability wise. Gnome is all about making use of workspaces… and now you won’t be able to see all of your workspaces anymore in the overview… it’s in the applications grid all of the sudden, where no one would expect it. So how do you switch to workspace number 5 lets say? Until now it was one mouse click away… but with the new layout you need to scroll through all the workspaces in between or remember the number of the workspace and switch to it directly via keyboard shortcut.
Then the dash on the bottom… yes, lets make the mouse cursor travel even longer from the top…
It’s a good solution for having more space for the icons so they don’t get so tiny if you have many favorites, but I don’t want to move the mouse across the whole screen two times just to open an application.
The easiest solution would be to put a dock or panel on the bottom of the desktop. It’s what most people are used to, it’s the most practical… and no, it’s not distracting.
Something I also don’t get is the whole argument about gestures… what do you need gestures for? If you want to open the overview, you can by pressing the super key or by clicking on activities. If you want to have a gesture for it, then simply use three finger scroll down. For switching between workspaces, you can use normal scrolling. So why do we need to change the direction in the overview? It’s a preferable scrolling behavior on touchscreens I’ve read? How? On android the app grid scrolls vertically… on web browsers you scroll vertically, so how is this even an argument?
It’s not so much about changing the scrolling direction in the overview, it’s about the impact it has on the layout and usability. I have no complains about the horizontal workspace layout on elementary os, but it also has previews on the bottom of all of the open workspaces.