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GNOME 3.4 Preview
A couple of days ago, GNOME released the first beta of version 3.4. Designer Allan Day has posted a tour of the major interface changes. Some of them seem good (everything looks shiny and clean), but some of them seem questionable. The big thing to take from this release cycle appears to be improvements to the underlying technology that might help other window managers take advantage of the GNOME 3 infrastructure (leading to a world where hackers, tablet users, and grandma can all get along).
Probably not for much longer ... both the Internet and open surce have ways of routing around the damage.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
And when can I get wobbly windows back on GNOME3?
As far as clones, my local Cult of Apple members spent a lot of time teasing me by placing the Gnome 3 "System Settings" panel side by side with the OS X "System Preferences" panel. I certainly could not defend against the assertion that that feature at least was a wholesale ripoff. Perhaps you could have done better. The categories are the same, the icons look the same, only difference in the end is that the OS X panel seems to offer more options for customization. If you're keeping score I wouldn't count that as a win for Gnome either....
It does reinforce my initial impression after reading about Gnome 3.4 that after trying to adapt to 3.2 has resulted in nothing more than a massive waste of time I could have otherwise spent being productive had I jumped ship immediately upon the first performance hits. The "one task at a time" idea makes me feel like I am performing surgery with ski-gloves on when doing image processing where you are constantly flipping between an image window and menus/terminals which manipulate it. On a 30" monitor I have been fighting how silly it seems that a terminal dragged too far up becomes a 30" wide terminal. It feels unnatural to have to check the motion of the terminal and drop it several tenths of an inch from the top bar, wasting as much space as I was supposed to be saving. I guess maybe it's supposed to be fun -- goof it up and it's just like the guy's nose buzzing in Operation. I used to be able to balance my thoughts using the desktop as a way to keep an overview of my various tasks in minimized windows or iconified desktop switchers (which to me functioned kind of like a heads-up-display) but in the new Gnome, out of sight is out of mind without hands on the keyboard. I tried, with an open mind, to get with the program on the advice of Gnome advocates and out of a loyalty to Fedora which I've used since RedHat 4. But after seven months it still doesn't feel right --it's awkward and keeps me from getting things done.
Now the user experience demands that applications start placing the menu on the top bar? I guess if you run one application at a time that's a strength but I don't nor can I. I see people worried about how sloppy focus pays a penalty for this happening and I believe you've just told me that this concern is a price you're willing to pay for a user experience. In essence this is a big warning that I will end up rewriting code if I wanted to stay with gnome. I was paid to write the code, I am most certainly not going to be paid to rewrite it. I am currently paid to produce with it.
YMMV obviously, but it's a warning I cannot ignore about what Gnome's future will mean for my work...