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pop-os / cosmic

GNOME Shell extension. See cosmic-epoch for COSMIC Epoch
GNU General Public License v3.0
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[Feature Request] Top Panel and Dock integration #375

Open usrlocl opened 1 year ago

usrlocl commented 1 year ago

The GNOME top panel seems to be an inspiration from the OSX menu bar, but coming from Windows this interface element has a major UX shortcoming -

Two very common actions one may perform on a desktop are switching between tabs and closing windows. On Windows you can do these very easily with a mouse/trackpad because these elements are snapped to the top and top-right of the screen respectively. This allows your pointer to be "caught" at the top of the screen and reduces the need to aim precisely on the elements. What we effectively achieve is a gesture like interaction as opposed to a point and click which greatly reduces fatigue. The top bar takes away such interactions which is a significant loss given how common these user interactions are.

There are some GNOME shell extensions which help with this but none of them work all that well in the end. Many have been unsupported for some time and not compatible with current versions of GNOME, some of them don't play well with cosmic's own extensions and cause weird visual glitches or replacing the dock altogether but many are just not well written and tend to consume more CPU than should be necessary.

Ideally, this should fit well within the goals of cosmic to provide a specific, curated desktop experience. Since cosmic is providing a customized top panel, I have the following suggestions for a feature -

  1. Provide an option to integrate the top panel into the dock, similar to the dash-to-panel extension. This extension is not directly compatible with cosmic extensions, but cosmic would need to implement the feature along similar lines.

  2. Provide an option to move the top panel to the bottom. This might not make sense with the dock at the bottom, but should work well with the dock on the sides.

I personally always feel this pain point switching between Windows and other desktop environments and hope others can concur. I think this is a pretty important feature overall since it touches upon very fundamental desktop interactions, so trying to make a case for this and plant the seed hopefully.

ljak commented 1 year ago

+1

I just updated an old laptop with Pop OS installed on it. I had moved the top panel in the bottom of the screen but, after the update, the top panel came back on the top and I realized that I cannot move it anymore.

... these elements are snapped to the top and top-right of the screen respectively. This allows your pointer to be "caught" at the top of the screen and reduces the need to aim precisely on the elements.

👆 This. That's the major drawback in my current user experience with COSMIC.

... and hope others can concur.

I confirm. 🌱

mlntr commented 1 year ago

I think that if it's going to have a top bar, it should have the benefit/usefulness of a global menu bar with app options like Mac actually has.

If not, we should be able to "snap/gesture" our mouse to the top. It's less effective to be somewhere in between.

ddetton commented 1 year ago

The primary display on a multi-display system gets a top bar but the secondary monitors do not. The UI settings have a way to put the dock on all displays, so it makes sense to have the option to put the top bar on all displays. The main features that I am looking for here are the drop down that have the graphics options, power options and shutdown options. Plus it would be nice to have the tiling settings button in there as well. The dash-to-panel extension gets close but I want to see this option in the base pop!-os desktop.