"Task Pooper" could revolutionize GNOME desktop

[xp1ode]

Just saw this over at ArsTechnica, some info on GNOME...

Task Pooper

[bjoswald]

Looks like some KDE concepts tossed into the GTK/GNOME environment. Hope this doesn't start one of those "<X> stole <Y> from <Z>!" wars.

[Rob2687]

I am glad they are addressing the panel/dock mess. Gnome panel is like ancient technology now. Especially with wide screen displays much of the panel ends up being empty. Of course there are many applets you can add but it ends up being a cluttered mess of stuff I rarely use anyways. People have essentially created and recreated variations of the same old thing for years and years. Among the many that have sprung up in recent years few have been able to produce a nice polished, usable dock/panel. A lot of times people tried to copy then one up the OSX dock. The worst case being that physics based one (Kiba dock?) which was competely ridiculous. I think the reason for this was because the OSX dock way back then was new and glitzy eye candy with a certain aesthetic wow factor which people wanted to have on their systems too. Now that Windows and Linux have caught up with 3d desktop compositing and people have gotten over the 'I want a pretty graphics accelerated desktop too!' thing and it's time to make some real improvements and finally take another step in the evolution of desktop environments. This was evident in the last few Windows releases too. You can tell with the early Vista concepts that they wanted to add a bunch of flashy looking things to the desktop experience. Luckily they didn't go too overboard with it but one example of a completely useless feature was those Dreamscene things. Now with Windows 7 and that new task bar which seems more like a cross between a dock and the old taskbar features much better management of multiple windows which is a key consideration these days. It remains simple, easy to use and still looks pretty too.

The only project that has me interested is AWN since they seem to be taking serious consideration into the design and functionality of it. In the end it's based on the same old panel/dock idea except it can be made to be very unobtrusive and look quite minimal on the desktop. Gnome Shell seems to be quite different than what we usually see especially considering it's coming from one of the more widely used desktop environments. It has some nifty ideas but still needs a lot of work. I can't wait to see what people will cook up in the near future.

[Growled Member]

Looks like some KDE concepts tossed into the GTK/GNOME environment.

Yes it does and that's not a bad thing. I have no problem with coders getting ideas from other pieces of software and implementing them into their own projects.