Unity customization ideas?

[vexorian]

No, this does not belong to brainstorm because they lock any idea related to unity as the design process is completely closed. This is also more about your what ifs, and wish lists rather than ideas... Just a informal discussion about how we would unity more customizable...

So, in my case, I would wish I could set the top panel to always show the window close/minimize/maximize buttons.

It would be nice to disable the global menu bar feature or the global title bar. So if you wanted you could have one or the other but not both.

The launcher... It would be nice being able to set the colors of the buttons (no need for a hard to code GUI, just add a field to the .desktop files).

Also perhaps being able to toggle between average color from the icon and the complement of the average. So if the icon was mostly green, the button would be mostly pink.

Being able to disable the trash button. I honestly have never used trash. Ever since it was invented in windows 95...

[philinux]

No, this does not belong to brainstorm because they lock any idea related to unity as the design process is completely closed. This is also more about your what ifs, and wish lists rather than ideas... Just a informal discussion about how we would unity more customizable...

So, in my case, I would wish I could set the top panel to always show the window close/minimize/maximize buttons.

It would be nice to disable the global menu bar feature or the global title bar. So if you wanted you could have one or the other but not both.

The launcher... It would be nice being able to set the colors of the buttons (no need for a hard to code GUI, just add a field to the .desktop files).

Also perhaps being able to toggle between average color from the icon and the complement of the average. So if the icon was mostly green, the button would be mostly pink.

Being able to disable the trash button. I honestly have never used trash. Ever since it was invented in windows 95...

Have you seen this. http://www.iloveubuntu.net/learn-how-customize-ubuntu-1204s-unity-unity-customization-guide-10-free-72-pages-pdf-book

[vexorian]

This is more about ideas to implement in the future. Because for some reason unity does not support any of the things I mentioned.

I'd also like to be able to move the launcher, at least to the right.

[neu5eeCh]

The ability to remove the launcher.

As politicians like to patronizingly say: That would be a good first step. There's just no real need for it - in my experience.

[vexorian]

It needs many more decoupling. Would me nice to use the global menu bar without the launcher or the launcher without the global menu bar.

[Bachstelze]

Shortcuts. I want Super+T to open a new tab in my terminal, not the Trash. I want three-finger touchpad scrolling to do NOTHING, not drag the window. And so on. This is the #1 reason I do not use Unity.

[MadmanRB]

1: A movable launcher with actual re-size ability as opposed to cutting off at a certain point, at least make it re sizable to 22 pixels
2: Bring back window dodge
3: Global menubar for maximized windows but keep menu in apps when apps are not maximized.
4: Easily add/remove items from the top panel.

This will never happen of course in Unity so thats why I use KDE instead.
Heck even Gnome shell can do a lot of this after installing nine trillion different extensions for it

[vexorian]

I really dislike that stuff, I would prefer unity with 22 width sometimes or other times with 128 width. (Would be so funny with 128!).

Other 'obvious' thing that should be basic: Allow us to easily customize the icons of launchers.


This will never happen of course in Unity.

Never say never.

[madjr]

here is a interesting unity launcher behavior

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/985675

and is open up for contributors.

"If someone is interested in submitting a patch implementing this functionality, we will user test and consider for inclusion

I've leaving the status the same for the time being; as soon as a patch is submitted we will review.

Anybody interested in taking up this challenge?"

[Lucradia]

here is a interesting unity launcher behavior

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/985675

and is open up for contributors.

"If someone is interested in submitting a patch implementing this functionality, we will user test and consider for inclusion

I've leaving the status the same for the time being; as soon as a patch is submitted we will review.

Anybody interested in taking up this challenge?"

You mean like how Pidgin put out years ago that they'd accept a patch for encryption? Yet no one has ever successfully submitted one? This dates back before it was Pidgin. I don't expect Unity to get one anytime soon either, especially when Pidgin has a third-party patch, yet doesn't incorporate it because it wasn't accepted in the patch submission process. (It's open-source too, so I don't get why they denied it.)

This also reminds me of the whole chromium thing I've been getting at too. It's like open-source devs won't accept change, even though they say they will.

[madjr]

You mean like how Pidgin put out years ago that they'd accept a patch for encryption? Yet no one has ever successfully submitted one? This dates back before it was Pidgin. I don't expect Unity to get one anytime soon either, especially when Pidgin has a third-party patch, yet doesn't incorporate it because it wasn't accepted in the patch submission process. (It's open-source too, so I don't get why they denied it.)

This also reminds me of the whole chromium thing I've been getting at too. It's like open-source devs won't accept change, even though they say they will.

Unity has many options under "experimental" (ccsm).

This may just be another one.

If it works better than the old behavior in practice and not just in theory then there is a good chance of it becoming official.

[vexorian]

3: Global menubar for maximized windows but keep menu in apps when apps are not maximized.You make me notice that this is actually a big ergonomic flaw in unity. There is a contradiction between how window control buttons and menu bar behave. Window control buttons only appear in panel when the window is maximized, but menu bar does it all the time.

[Ariya243]

I don't mind the Unity panel, only I'd like it at the bottom and as prettier as Awn panel. I like Unity panel's ideas, but it is not pretty and not in the right place.

Actually, if you open Nautilus /usr/share/applications, and keep it open all the time, you have a very simple, but well working menu window. Or, you could have a categorized window with links to /usr/share/applications. Some of the applications might not be there, but in /usr/bin, but that too could be linked. Then do we need a special launcher?;)

We can have these categories linked to icons and those icons placed in a bottom panel (or top panel) and that panel could be anything, Awn, Cairo, Docky or Gnome. What do you think?

Have a nice day!;)

Ariya

[mamamia88]

um quick question about unity. could you put the dock all the way on the left of a second monitor but have the search feature on your primary monitor? I think that would be a good compromise for me.

[vexorian]

I'd like to disable the "spread" or at least let me be able to find open windows in the quick-list so I could just switch to them.


Actually, if you open Nautilus /usr/share/applications, and keep it open all the time, you have a very simple, but well working menu window. Or, you could have a categorized window with links to /usr/share/applications. Some of the applications might not be there, but in /usr/bin, but that too could be linked. Then do we need a special launcher?

We can have these categories linked to icons and those icons placed in a bottom panel (or top panel) and that panel could be anything, Awn, Cairo, Docky or Gnome. What do you think?

Have a nice day!

We can't really do that, because installers everywhere are file based and just created .desktop files in that folder. So we cannot rely or modify its structure.

You could instead create your own folder and fill it of the launchers you like (can just copy the stuff you find in /usr/share/applications) and the folder structure you like.

[vexorian]

It is great that the panel has an option to toggle transparency when a window is maximized. It would be nice if the launcher had the same option.

[effenberg0x0]

I've always missed 2 features:

- Drawers or containers in Unity Launcher. I think that is because mostly all menu/dock alternatives I have used in the past had something like it, so it's hard to drop old habits.I know one can hack something similar using menu quicklists, but it's not the same thing.

- user-created, user-managed shortcuts on Dash -> Home. Like I did here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11430047&postcount=16 I always felt like it was a better alternative (to me) than recent files, recent music, recent apps, etc. Anyway, it's easily doable using lens instead of changing unity code.

Regards,
Effenberg

[vexorian]

Difficulty in creating and customizing dash icons is very annoying. But after I installed MenuLibre, it is much easier. In a perfect world, MenuLibre would come by default with Ubuntu, to me, unity is unusable if you can't customize your own quicklists and changing/adding the icons of programs that weren't made with unity in mind.