dashboard apparition is not responsive enough

[Palmieri]

The <super> key, showing the dashboard, is very usefull for keyboard navigation. For instance, the user can start gnome-terminal within 2 seconds with <super>, T, E, R, <enter>.

However, there is alway a latency before the dashboard shows. For a fast user, this latency is long enough to type 2 or 3 characters, which are ignored by the dashboard. This can be annoying : if the user type the previous keys too quickly, Unity just handles keys <super>, R, <enter>, and open any document instead of gnome-terminal. In consequence, the user has to slow down ; this is unpleasant, especially in a production environment.

When the user types really very fast, Unity makes a confusion with other combination of keys. For instance, <super>, A is confused with <super> + A, which opens the Applications lens.

So, i guess that this latency is not a consequence of a loading time, but that an internal parameter manages it.

It doesn't look to be sensibly reduced by the following parameters of CompizConfig Setting Manager (Ubuntu Ubity plugin) : Launcher Reveal Edge Responsiveness, Dash Blur (No Blur), Menus discovery fade-in duration. gconf and dconf don't look to give acces to such a parameter.

This latency can be usefull for some users, ill-at-ease with the keyboard.

Solution proposal :

Allow the user to change this latency with a parameter in the Ubuntu Unity Plugin of CompizConfig Setting Manager. The default value should be the current value.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

duplicate bug 891210