Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 3rd May 2010 22:04 UTC
Remember how Mark Shuttleworth justified moving the window titlebar widgets to the left by claiming the space freed up on the right side could now be used for something else? On his blog, Shuttleworth unveiled what, exactly, Ubuntu's plans are: window indicators, or 'windicators'. In a nutshell, it comes down to having a tray area in every window.
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Member since:2006-01-02
I saw that blog post before I saw this.
Even if Shuttleworth wants "windicators", it can be done using the existing system and adding an extension to the window manager using D-Bus or a similar technology. I can't think of a good reason for client-side decorations that doesn't result in its own set of problems.
It seems that these days, innovation means doing things differently for the sake of being different, rather than making solid UI decisions. Here we have yet another example of "innovation" that's just going to be a waste of time and resources.
Member since:2005-07-06
Those millions could be spend on cool upstream development 
Especially Nouveau (FOSS NVidia drivers).
Get this: If Red Hat alone can't make Nouveau's 3D drivers work stable enough with Mutter in time for fall, millions of NVidia owners will be greeted with the classic Gnome 2.x desktop instead of the new Gnome 3.0 Shell.
How embarrassing would that be for Canonical if they had to tell all their users that sadly instead of spending money for an additional Nouveau developer, they spend it on a Mac-using new design team (Google the interview for proof) and stupid "windicators".
Btw: Why can't the windicators be on the left side? Did the window buttons really have to be moved to the left to make room for windicators on the right side?
Edited 2010-05-03 23:43 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
drivers work stable enough with Mutter in time for fall, millions of NVidia owners will be greeted with the classic Gnome 2.x desktop instead of the new Gnome 3.0 Shell.
Did we learn nothing at all from the blunders with KDE4's birthing process? The *last* thing I want to see distros do is rush out with Gnome 3.0 as the default just because it's shiny and new.
As for the subject at hand, my mind immediately goes to netbooks as the likely inspiration for this.
Member since:2005-07-06
Or maybe a Intel GMA500 Poulsbo driver that works?
Ref: https://edge.launchpad.net/gma500
./nalle.
Member since:2010-02-08
System tray recently went through transition from client rendering and XEmbed to host rendering - client just provides icons and menu descriptions using dbus to the host (plasma in case of KDE). Why Shuttleworth wants to go in opposite direction with window decorations? His 'windicators' could be done with server-side decorations and some EHWM additions.
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Member since:
2006-01-04
Kwin devs says it best:
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2010/05/why-you-should-not-us...
OT: And why is Canonical paying the MPEG-LA for H.264? Those millions could be spend on cool upstream development