Making GNOME really pleasant to use

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

I know this project doesn't like reports in video, but I think this is the exception rather than the rule:

https://youtu.be/vWIwjpE0lx8

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you please write up here what you have discovered and want to get fixed. This way it is much easier to know what this is all about, instead of needing to watch a 15-min video.

[Danial Behzadi (dani.behzi)]

summary:
Turn off animations.
Turn on Dash to dock, better volume indicator, hide activities button.
Remove top panel.
Hide application menu.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

The biggest thing I a missing is the HUD

[Chris Hermansen (c-hermansen)]

I would like to offer a suggestion: perhaps people who are trying out Gnome3 shell and finding it wanting in some respect could state briefly:

1. what task is to be accomplished;
2. how that is accomplished in Unity;
3. what seems to be missing or clunkier in Gnome3 shell;
4. what Gnome3 shell plugin(s) was(were) involved, if any.

I don't know if this bug report is the right place to be addressing this kind of thing but accepting for the moment that it is...

For example @colin-law says he misses the HUD. I guess this means that he misses pressing the "Ubuntu" key and seeing the files, applications etc come up (although the same thing happens in Gnome3, more or less) or the "search" bar (although IIRC there is a search function in Gnome3 shell). But these are just guesses and I'm not able to determine whether I can help Colin with an alternative unless I know a bit more about what he is trying to do with the HUD.

(Colin, by the way this is no criticism!)

[Chris Hermansen (c-hermansen)]

One of the main irritations I find with Gnome3 is that it takes up more vertical space on a short/wide monitor than necessary, lessening the amount of space I have to view my code or documents.

Unity does this nice thing where the top bar on the window hosts the application menu; or when the application is maximized, the top panel on the screen hosts the application menu as well as the identification string. I consider this to be very graceful design, fully cognizant of the vertical limitations of the short screen and considerate of the user's need to see as much of their work as possible.

Gnome3 is not as considerate. The default (I guess, Adwaita theme?) is to show a thick window top bar which provides little value for the space it consumes. There are plugins that try to address this problem, by (for example) hiding the top panel unless the mouse is near, merging the menu with the top panel when the application is maximized, and moving away from the traditional menu bar completely to a set of controls, often placed at the upper right side of the screen.

If anyone who is bothered by the same "vertical waste" could offer their solutions I think that would be great.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

@c-hermansen by the HUD I meant the feature where one can hit the Alt key and search the current application's menu hierarchy. Once one has got used to that it is painful to lose it as one has forgotten where everything is in the hierarchy (at least I have).

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

Probably the upper bar is not necessary at all.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

This bug is triaged because it provides enough information for working on it.

This bug is critical because it's more important that any other bug in Ubuntu right now.

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

I think gnome is perfect by deafult, it is just a matter of be used to it, could be nice if ubuntu could include the gnome 3 classic by default for noobs to not do a dramatic change inmediately and show people a video with an introduction to gnome.