OMG not another Unity Thread

[Gone fishing]

OK this ones different - I like Unity, but I wonder about a few things.

Firstly is the launcher on the wrong side? Obviously the side is the best place, as we all seem to have wide screens these days, but the left has the dash, windows open, close and minimize buttons as well as the application menu - quite cluttered, how about moving it to the right?

Next switching between open applications - Unities weakest point in my opinion. Yes you can alt tab but ... On the old desktop it was easy and you could even get previews of your open windows. I don't think the little arrows on the launcher are good enough and would like to see something like the BeOS tracker, with window previews added.

So what would you like to see changed or added?

[ScionicSpectre]

Honestly, I think it makes sense for more functions to be on the same area of the screen. Less movement to do common tasks- so long as the design remains visually balanced, I think we're in good shape (if you maximize a window I'd say it's hard to think it's out of shape). What you're saying is similar to saying that a microwave should have buttons on both sides of the panel for balance, since having them all on the right is cluttered.

As for window switching, I find it odd that clicking an icon of an open window does nothing, rather than minimizing, but Mark has personally replied to this in a bug report saying that he doesn't want people to 'hide' their windows in the launcher, that it's meant to launch things and perform actions, not to bury things with. Fair enough, that's how OS X does it.

I think there a lot of things that were great in Compiz before that aren't well integrated with Unity, like a scale option for all windows/ desktops. Clicking a workspaces button that changes position is far more difficult that wacking the upper-left of your screen with your mouse. However, with the menu up there it's dangerous to do, so that's probably why they don't. This is something you don't run into, of course, in GNOME 3.

I think Unity needs to be rethought a little, but there is a lot to love about it. I love that they autohide the menus up top (I hate menus, I think they're lazy and dysfunctional, so not having to see them if you don't use them more than 1 percent of the time is awesome). It saves so much screen space it's ridiculous (something GNOME 3 isn't great at, as it keeps menus and the titlebar when you maximize rather than condensing them up top).

Unity isn't perfect, but it's far from crappy.

[Gone fishing]

I can see your point and on my desktop PC it seems to work nicely - however, on my laptop I have hit the wrong thing on several occasions, Possibly making the launcher movable between the right or left.

Oh and microwaves and other appliances - why do they always have unusable interfaces, things that make the commandline seem natural and intuitive?

[BigSilly]

My main gripe with Unity is a simple one - every time I go to click the back button on my browser I accidentally start up the Unity bar because I've ventured into it's trigger territory. Gah! It's a small thing but annoying, and it doesn't happen on Gnome 3...