Comment 20 for bug 930148

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Aleve Sicofante (sicofante) wrote :

While dodging the launcher by non-maximized windows might be considered gimmicky (it's definitely cool but probably not that useful), intellihide, as it's called in several Linux docks/launchers, is far from a gimmick. It's a real productivity boon, a space saving and very clever feature.

New users don't apply for anything that's not default. If dodge/intellihide is confusing for new users, making it optional instead of default is the the logical decision. "Difficult for new users -> has to be removed", is not logical at all.

Even for newcomers, a slow animation showing the launcher hiding or coming back would have explained very well what's going on. This is very visible when dodging the launcher with a non-maximized window. Making it visible when maximizing a window was the design team task, not removing the feature altogether. (Power users could be given the option to change the hiding/unhiding speed in CCSM.)

Other OSs not having this feature isn't a reason either. We choose Ubuntu BECAUSE it provides features other OSs don't. The best reason for not hiding the launcher is the same for not hiding the global menu: you need to see them in order to aim BEFORE you get there. Since this has been finally understood by the design team regarding global menus (according to MS words on its post about the HUD), it should be obvious that autohiding is not a good solution, while intellihide is.

It's understandable that keeping options makes the code harder to maintain, but that can't be a serious reason either. Maybe the dodge function is too complex? Intellihide is just a switch: show launcher if no window is maximized. That isn't complex by any stretch of the imagination and can't be hard to maintain. Ubuntu is full of much more complex (and eventually buggy) pieces of code no one is thinking of removing just because of that.

So I expect the design team reconsiders this decision, cleans up the code to make this a simpler function (intellihide instead of dodge) or simply keep the option as non-default ("always show" would be the default). I thing that's a balanced response to the user testing. The "just remove it" response is not only harsh and harming to many, it also fails to follow a logical thinking path.