Today I worked on hiding the workspace switcher if “dynamic-workspaces” is switched off (via tweak-tool) and the number of workspaces is set to one only. So if you apply these settings your overview will look as follows.
Pretty clean huh? This patch is now upstream (merged into master) for everybody to enjoy 
So I noticed less clutter with this patch, and the motivation to try to reduce the clutter even more as well as play with the extension hooks got me hacking more.
I am a big fan of the sidebar since it reduces movement when coming from the top left (after hovering over activities) to move the mouse along the left edge of the screen to open a new app or change apps. But somehow I still get the feeling that left is out of place for me sometimes.
So I came up with an idea (and although I know its wrong and I deserve being stabbed for it):
Why not move the dash into the MessageTray. So I started writing an extension to do so (very early stages). This extension allows me to open new apps and browse through my apps as well as change windows (Windows style 
) by just hovering to the bottom of the screen, so it pops up.
clicking on the “show apps” or “journal” icons takes me to the overview with the proper page selected. (So clicking on “show apps” opens the overview with the application selection)
And when going to “Activities” directly, it looks much more peaceful:
The bad thing is that it mixes notifications with applications. So I am thinking of having some sort of separator.
What do you guys think?
Keep in mind this is just hacks and nothing discussed with designers. I am just playing with ideas here and will try to make an extension out of this if people like the concept and have some feedback on how to improve it.
Seif Lotfy: Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash): Today I worked on hiding the workspa… http://t.co/mygnRqeZ
Seif Lotfy: Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash): Today I worked on hiding t… http://t.co/hTsad4Q1 #LinuxNov
#ubuntu #linux Seif Lotfy: Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash): Today I worked on hid… http://t.co/9xUHJbCM
Seif Lotfy: Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash) http://t.co/hRT4f6Qb
Excellent! I’m happy to see experimentation being done with the shell layout.
I dislike the gesture for opening the 3.6 notification area though. It takes way too long when I want to open it, and sometimes my mouse is fiddling around and accidentally opens it (a huge distraction since every pixel on the screen moves).
Nevertheless, having the dash on the bottom with the notification bar is intriguing.
However, with more apps, more notifications, notifications for dash apps, or a smaller screen, it’s likely to become hard to distinguish the left from the right.
It does remind me of the windows 7 task bar though (not necessarily a bad thing).
I think I’d really love this myself, largely for the sake of consistency with Chrome OS and Windows 7, both of which I use often. It’s even similar to how I typically use my iPad, switching among the recent apps at the bottom.
Also, as more and more apps are single-window and always-maximized, the window selection aspect of the overview is unnecessary for me, and this would allow me to not engage with it at all.
@Vanya
Never occured to me but makes sense that if every app is 1 window only that having an overview of windows is redundant… But somehow I like switching between windows via the overview. Nevertheless will see if you got a point there
Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash): Today I worked on hiding the workspace switcher … http://t.co/jPnp6mgH
Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash) –. http://t.co/LYu2BsAb #Gnome #GnomeShell #Ubuntu
I like it. I’ve always felt the Overview looked cluttered and unbalanced–especially with the left aligned Dash.
Now if you could think of another way to display the workspace switcher (preferably horisontally) I’d be forever grateful.
Oh, and I’d be happy to lend a hand too. I’ve been wanting to start contributing.
Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash) < GeekyOgre http://t.co/tGxdVVGJ // Sympa comme idée.
This looks great!
“I dislike the gesture for opening the 3.6 notification area though. It takes way too long when I want to open it” (Hashem)
Is there / could we implement a key combo to trigger this?
Looks very good! And you have a separator of lots and lots of space (until filled up).
One problem I can see: Does this mean that if I start with just one workspace and want to move a window to the next one, I either have to remember Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Down or to right-click on a title bar? I really like how discoverable the Gnome workspace interface is for people coming from other desktops (Mac/Windows) at the moment. It would be a shame to break this.
@Rupert
We hide the workspace vierwer if you determine that its not dynamic any more and restricted to only 1 workspace. This can be done via gnome-tweak-tool
Can you make the extension and post it on the Gnome extensions site? I don’t car emuch about notifications, but to be able to get to Dash just by going down with the cursor is a bliss.
Can I just say: brilliant – all of those things are improvements. Now the message tray is tall in Gnome 3.6 it makes perfect sense to merge it with the favourites bar, at least in overview mode. The overview looks so clean and easy to use in your example with application view utilizing the entire width of the screen. These will be must-have extesnions for me if not simply adopted by Gnome Shell.
@labatts
“Is there / could we implement a key combo to trigger this?”
Super + m
Playing with the dash / overview #linux #gnome http://t.co/XbQiwbF0
Fantastic!!!! I hope the bottom bar will become the default in gnome!
Playing with Shell extensions (playing with overview and dash) < GeekyOgre – http://t.co/XBBkSOW5 via Shareaholic
I’d second the comment someone else made about supporting horizontal workspace layout. Vertical has never suited me mentally, and it doesn’t help that the vertical workspace navigation keys conflict with frequently used shortcuts in the Eclipse IDE (my number-one application when at work)
Do please post it on the gnome extensions. Doesn’t matter, if it has any bugs!
So, in the age of desktop screens widening, you moved things to big panels on the bottom and top parts of the screen so they can take even more screen real estate and introduce even more wasted space (wasted by blackness at the top, and perlin noise greyness at the bottom). Go team Venture.
Gnome-shell looks a lot better with this extension. It makes much more sense having the dock on the button instead the left side of the screen.
I think this should be the default layout on future releases.
It looks very good!
I always felt the overview is far to complex, your solution is indeed peaceful, that’s the right word.
Very nice and beautiful
Hi, where can I find your extension? Thanks a lot!
I know it’s not exactly like your overall design, but what about having the dock appear under the mouse cursor as a kind of square. Perhaps on RMB, or when LMB clicked at the top anywhere. It seems the dock doesn’t need a place, but should be available there and then.
Like the idea of hiding the workspace switcher when not needed. However, your other idea, having the apps in the notification bar looks awkward. Very Windows-stylish, but not only. People interacting with widgets at the bottom of their apps will make the notification bar appear too often. But if you add a timeout, it will be too long for app switching. I like the apps on the left, they’re closer from the “Activities” button, so they can be activated more easily.
Even though it’s still an experiment, I must say it’s quite impressive!
How about creating a notification container with a standard “Information” symbol (yeah, quite similar to KDE, I must admit it, they have some things right)?
This is an interesting experiment. I imagine something like Chrome OS recently made: just one simple and really great designed panel at the bottom. GNOME could have two official layouts: one for mobile devices, and one for desktop, sharing most of components. Why not? After using GNOME from version 3.2 I realized that “one fits all” is not working. One example: the hot corner; first I thought it’s cool. Now I see that I became much slower and unnaturally carefull when moving my cursor. That’s because of avoiding trigerring overview while chosing some very important buttons like “back” in Web browser etc. So… you just proved, as Cinnamon did, that making alternative layout is hard but doable. I wish GNOME made something like that official. Desing Team could eventually polish this to something really simple, great and usable, just like ElementaryOS made Plank — the dock. Push this upstream (to Design Team) if you can.
Congratulations, nicely done. Now rename the “Dash” to “Dock” and the “Activities” to “Expose”, move the notifications a bit and you have an almost usable desktop experience again. Oh wait. You still need to get rid of that depressing default theme and make the fonts of shell coherent to the Gtk fonts again and … Ah forget it. I’m just trolling.
I like it!
Now, if the category menu could be moved to the left, aligned bottom…
As you appear to have noticed yourself, this is a bad idea due to mixing two “contexts” (apps vs. notificaitons) in the same space. Just add 10 more launchers and you’ll also have another problem…
Kind of reminds me of gnome-shell… progress by “playing around” UI metaphors in releases instead of architectured planned and user-tested UI before starting.
Love it! I can’t wait to use this one. Very nice!
It looks very clean and I like it much. I find the standard MessageTray behaviour very annoying, when hovering on the bottom of the desktop. It would be interesting to have an overlaying tray in normal view (transparent, like in overlay view, sliding in without moving the all desktop up).
Hi Seif! Congrats by site…
Where I can download this extension?
[]‘s
the dash in notification is really awesome. I would totally use it – please take care of handling the situation wheen there are a lot of icons there (both apps and notifications). and also separate the notifications from the the launcher part (the tablet ui of android does it really well).
Unfortunately the journal extension is broken for fedora 18. Simply won’t install frome the gnome-extensions website. Could you look into this and maybe provide a fix. It has been such a great help and i’m missing it