I allowed myself to say “most of” mainly because of the long time GNOME experience in my company: about 600 users from very different horizons, so I think pretty representative user base.
I don’t pretending having the right solution or knowledge about UI / UX. But having hundreds of feedback from real life users has contributed to made me think that something is missing in the current workflow of the shell. It may be not a dash or a panel but this MR is an opportunity to fix the most common problem reported to my ears (without using an extension), before maybe find a better solution who may need bigger modifications (like the mockups from Tobias).
Another option I’d like to throw into the discussion:
How about integrating an Ubuntu like side panel in Gnome as an option in the settings?
On the one hand it would solve the usability problem that a lot of people have.
On the other hand it would also probably make life a little easier for the Ubuntu developers if their panel would be an official part of Gnome.
I guess they could also help maintain the source code.
As an Arch user, maybe I’m slightly biased against Ubuntu, but I don’t see what makes Canonical’s downstream modifications more worthy of upstream implementation than any of the numerous shell extensions that create some form of a dock.
The goal here seems to be to create a workflow design that can be shared across both Desktop(keyboard) & Mobile(touch) views and doesn’t burden the developers.
However, I believe that it is quite difficult to do so without the input of some sort of Dock/Panel being upstreamed. That is what Tobias seems to address here by defaulting to application view & removing the Desktop view altogether, thereby eliminating the need for a Dock.
This proposal is indeed going to be quite controversial, as it will remove the Desktop from a “Desktop Environment”
I’d suggest that a dock / panel is bottom-centered with an eye on mobile view like elementary. This ensures that home screen is preserved on both views. Moreover, the user can pick the his favourites that can be shown in both views.
Question: Are workspaces no longer supported here? It seems like we are working with a single workspace view, which is seems counter-intuitive the current Gnome workspace based setup. Where are background apps going to go? Sticky notifications or simply forgotten?
I thihnk thats a bad idea. Every modern App and website is made like a page. So Its quite important to keep top and bottom of a screen free from any junk. Most importantly the bottom part (simply because actions are mostly on the top of the screen and the bottom is useless movement). On touch interfaces you have to keep the bottom also free for touch-keyboards. So if any dock is needed, keep it on the left or right.
I cant say much more about this topic since I’m pretty satisfied with gnome standard workflow right now. Just one thing: Gnome is not MacOS and also not Windows and I hope gnome will go its own way, because I think its really good to stay out of the box of the big 2.
For example: pressing SUPER to show up the windows overview is SO much better, then to open the app launcher. SUPER + type a name is the most awesome behavior you can have to launch anything. Its not a Windows type of thing, and also nothing from MacOS. Its a GNOME one. Please stay like that.
Most importantly the bottom part (simply because actions are mostly on the top of the screen and the bottom is useless movement). On touch interfaces you have to keep the bottom also free for touch-keyboards
I agree with you completely. What I meant by “bottom-centered dock” was the default favourites bar that is displayed on mobile devices. It should naturally auto-hide when any application runs or should be shown in a desktop only. There seems to be some interesting discussion on the what consitutes a home screen experience over at UBPorts as well.
For example: pressing SUPER to show up the windows overview is SO much better, then to open the app launcher. SUPER + type a name is the most awesome behavior you can have to launch anything
This is indeed my favourite appdrawer experience as well. I hope the design team can come with a way that doesnt sacrifice the desktop screen
I like the new mockups a lot. I’m really liking Phosh so far on my pinephone so it looks very familiar. Though I feel like trying to combine the app drawer and overview on larger screens feels forced. It feels like it’s trying too hard to simplify.
Dash to Dock (Dash<3Dock) or some similar dock should be implemented as default within GNOME. Why? The goal is to make it simple for any user to launch apps. Currently we have one extra step to do that (Super key or placing the mouse on Activities).
I really would love if you guys implemented a dock and I don’t care if it is on the bottom or on the left (this is better probably).
Regarding the mockups from Tobias Bernard - this doesn’t look bad for a mobile OS. But…GNOME is not a mobile OS yet. We should try to focus on desktop and then on mobile. But this is only my opinion.
Btw, I use the default GNOME on Fedora Silverblue. No extension…nothing. And I love it!
I would probably install Dash to Dock but I really dislike the extension system:
majority of the time the extensions are not up to date with the version,
Our goal is not to cater to people speedrunning their desktop session. Not everything needs to be done in one step, otherwise we’d put everything on screen all the time.
As I said before, I’m using the defaults and I’m quite happy. It’s not difficult for me to use the Dash as it is.
However, I know at least five people who immediately install Dash to Dock when they encounter GNOME.
I’m interested in your personal opinion, not as a Staff member, wouldn’t it be easier and more functional to improve the GNOME experience for a wider audience with something like a more customizable Dash?
Since 3.0, I was quite happy with the current vanilla design as a home user. 2 or 3 extensions maximum to tweak (and not change) some behaviours.
However, since the covid-19 confinement in my country, I’ve started to use my personal computer for work and that somehow changed my perception.
I rapidly limited Alt+Tab to the current workspace as it is really disturbing otherwise and more coherent with the principle of “one workspace per task”. It’s already an option in gnome tweak tool.
And for the dash, I now think that favorites and running applications shouldn’t be put together. It’s two different things. Maybe replace the “frequent” view (I’ve never found a use case for that view) with a “favorites” view that could be organized by the user.
Also, I would find less disturbing to limit the dash to the view of running applications in the current workspace. That could also help with the size problem of icons.
I’m out.