Comment 83 for bug 733349

@Roland
I thought I had explained it sufficiently. I do not work for Canonical. I only represent myself and my opinions here. I too am not happy with the global menu for example or the general Mac copying that has been going on in the Unity design team (which I'm not part of). I merely pointed out that a launcher works differently. I personally prefer the old taskbar but I don't see that coming back. The very difference between a launcher and a taskbar is that one has per application buttons the other per window buttons. Hence a launcher can't hide a single window or focus a single window with one single click. It is impossible and that's a fact not an opinion. You can still implement ways of enabling the functionality you want but it will work slightly differently. I and others suggested some ways to improve the launcher for window-centric user scenarios in the ayatana mailing list, the Windows 7 taksbar is another you might be familiar with. I urged everyone to read the relevant threads there (they are all online now at https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/)

That having said you can still use gnome-panel in Unity and when I use Unity I run tint2 and set the launcher to always hide. If you read the mails I posted to the list you'll find that I'm an expressed critic of Unity, not just in the little details but in terms of the general direction it has been going. You'll find that I'm actually on your side, against any (perceived) dictatorship...

Back to the concrete topic at hand:
This bug is about hiding applications, i.e. all windows of one application. If you want per window hiding open a new bug for that, if you want an optional (?) taskbar make a wishlist bug for that. I'll change the description now as I've heard no disagreeing feedback in this regard since I posted #49 several weeks ago.