Since it was mentioned during the Workstation WG meeting that there may
be some "developer focused UX testing", I figured this was a good time
to point out a few things that I think would make the out-of-the-box
developer (or any other user) experience better. I'm trying really hard
to make Gnome work for me, but I'm constantly tempted to go back to
XFCE. I would much rather stick with defaults (Gnome), since I know it
will always be better supported and offer better integration.
Note that I'm now running the F21 channel (pre-alpha I guess you would
call it) so everything is up-to-date - Gnome 3.13.91).
* Lack of contrast between focuses and non-focused windows
I think this may have actually gotten worse since 3.12
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735779
* Switching to a virtual desktop loses active window focus
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735135
* Keyboard shortcuts launch apps in background
I have the same exact problem with a hotkey to launch konsole
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=699685
* Lots and lots of focus issues. I found a bunch of random Gnome
Bugzillas and I don't know which ones exactly describe the problems
that I experience, but let's just say that window focus behavior
is broken. For example, in Firefox, I open the About Firefox dialog
and when I dismiss it (either by hitting Esc or clicking the X) the
main Firefox window no longer has the focus (no window does!)
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645035
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678320
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=708254
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732762
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690693
Together the above issues make the user experience pretty much unusable.
Random and unpredictable focus changes/problems, coupled with the
inability to easily identify the focused window makes it impossible to
know what will happen when I press a key.
Other things that I think would help, but aren't deal-breakers:
* Gratuitous use of white-space on UI components
As a developer, I want as much "stuff" to fit on my screen as possible
and lots of extra spacing around widgets is wasting real estate
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659647
* Make it possible to not display the shield
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=696330
And a few more things with no Bugzillas that I know of (these problems
mostly arose when I upgraded, since Frippery stopped working, and rather
than fixing it, I decided to use the built-in Applications Menu and
Window List plugins, since they ship with Fedora):
* The Window List is great, except for two problems and one suggestion:
* Again, active vs inactive window has almost no contrast difference
* It always shows windows from all virtual desktops. Not only is this
undesired behavior, but if a window is set to "Always on Visible
Workspace" then it will show the window "n" times where n is the number
of workspaces
* It would be great if the Window list could show the actual tray
icons (instead of a count) as well as the actual virtual desktops
* I wish the clock could go back into the corner (I use lots of other
computers and on all other computers the clock is in the corner, so my
eye always goes there automatically)
* I wish there was an easy way to get an icon bar along the top bar
(like Frippery Panel Favorites)
* I'd prefer horizontal instead of vertical virtual desktops
Sure, most of those issues could be solved by using Frippery (though the
new Window List and Applications Menu is much prettier) but shipping
useful tools out of the box would be better than having to find and
install an addon every time.
It would also be good if the Return to Monitor extension would be
updated and shipped as part of Fedora
(https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/842/return-to-monitor/) since
many fullscreen apps cause all of the windows to rearrange themselves on
multi-head setups.
I know that's a lot, but I'm pretty sure that everything above
constitute basic UX needs. Certainly XFCE (and for the most part, KDE,
though that has other problems) (and also Windows and Mac) handle these
situations nicely. I really think it would be beneficial to Fedora if
the default desktop experience was able to handle this.
Thanks,
-Adam Batkin
--
desktop mailing list
desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
