Paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3

[Alexander Volovics]

This might become one of those never ending discussions,
if somebody does not end the thread, but I feel like having
'my' last word, so here goes:

I think it is almost impossible to design a "desktop" that the
vast majority of users is comfortable with, certainly if you cannot
arrange for large scale usability testing.

And when you make a (too) big break with the past you are
almost certain to irritate and alienate users who have
acquired certain fixed working habits and who then have
to cope with an unfamiliar environment. And maybe work in
a way that is not congenial to their anatomy or physiology.

As has been remarked upon Gnome3 (and Unity) give the impression
of having been designed for the 'thumb swipe' and 'finger poke' 
habits of "smart" phone users (or the 'hand wave' of touchscreen
users). Thus for people who do not have to sit for hours in front
of a screen and actually work, sometimes on stressful and repetitive
tasks.

For me the break with the past was not great. First of all
I fell in love with the 'empty' desktop (Hurrah, NO icons!).
In the second place I am "by profession" a keyboard user.
Actually I almost only use an 'editor' to write (LaTeX/LyX)'
a 'terminal' to compute and graph (R) and a MUA (Mutt) for mail.
And I could start up all these things with keyboard shortcuts.
I mostly only use the mouse to 'navigate'/'configure' the OS GUI.
I hardly ever use more than one workplace, at the most two.
And I do not leave windows/terminals 'open' unused. I 'close'
everything behind me, even when working on more than one task.
And I do not 'shutdown' with open tasks so as to be able to
'resume' easily on start up. I just 'close'/'save' everything
in different 'folders' and 'restart'.

So my desktop/gui once configured I hardly need to 'descend' to
the 'overview' ('hell' for some users :-)) level at all.

My complaints with Gnome3 are more with the 'aesthetics'.
They make use difficult if you have bad eyesight for example
the black topbar with almost unreadable spindly fonts contrasting
badly with the (shiny) black border of my desktop/laptop screens 
or the tiny text under icons in the overview.
Some things are just ugly to my taste: the monstrous array of
often ugly/brash icons in the Applications compartment of the
'Overview' for example. (And this is not even logical as the
same apps/icons are to be found in the sub compartments Graphics,
System Tools, Accessories, etc. and not even handy/useful given
the vast number of icons and the stupid 16:9 laptop screens so
you have to scroll to navigate).
And last but not least: the missing configuration options!

Maybe Gnome3.x will 'improve' on (some) of these things.
Let us just hope they do not foist what I call the 'Unity Horror'
on us. To save screen space the Ubuntu/Unity designers removed
the menu bar from app windows and placed it in the topbar.
This results in some nice mix ups when you have a large number
of apps open as they only have place for one app menu in the topbar.
If you do this, and I agree in principle, you should make it an
app window option (like with gnome-terminal).

Exit Alexander