Comment 27 for bug 825146

When I first used Unity in Natty I instantly noticed the launcher autohide when I maximised an app. I thought to myself "oh god, not another dock that I'm going to constantly 'edge reveal' by accident". To my surprise when I when to invoke the dash using the button in the top left I realised the launcher began to appear. I thought to myself "wow, that's an incredible idea". Very quickly I get used to 'slamming' the mouse in to the top left corner to reveal the launcher, it was so intuitive!

It was probably one of the best usability features of Unity, and now you've scrapped it. Now to reveal the launcher I have to hold my mouse at the left hand side of the screen. It takes longer, it's only a fraction longer, but it feels a lot longer. It's also now a 2-step process to invoke the dash using the mouse.

Just to quote a description of the change and reason from Mark Shuttleworth's blog:-
"In the panel, you’ll see that the top left corner is now consistently used to close whatever has the focus. Maximising a window keeps the window controls in the same position relative to the window – the top left corner. We have time to refine the behaviour of this based on user testing of the betas; for example, in one view, one should be able to close successive windows from that top left corner even if they are not maximised."

So essentially, the reason the change has been made is to make it easier for people to close apps, and as a consequence more difficult to open them, i.e. more steps involved to invoke the dash.

I won't be upgrading to 11.10, I'll stick with 11.04 for now, and if there is no sign of change for 12.04 I'll most likely consider a switch to Gnome Shell, or maybe Elementary OS if Luna delivers on it's promises.