A preview in Modal Dialogs in GNOME Shell 3.8 Overview

This post was made with another stylesheet and it might be messed up!

One major bug in the GNOME 3 design is the way that GNOME Shell handles Modal Windows on Overview. Currently GNOME cannot display Modals and that has proven confusing in many cases. Well GNOME Shell 3.8 hopefully will fix this!

Speaking of GNOME Shell, the changes and awaiting patches are many, and we can only estimate what will arrive in 3.8 and what won’t make it. However this will be ready for the next GNOME!

Modal Dialogs In GNOME

You all know the issues with Modals in GNOME. On the next screencasting it seems that GNOME has fixed some of them, but this is still under active development and many issues exist like Clutter Windows (ie. Sushi) which cannot be displayed on Overview; but this is another bug.

On the bellow video I applied patches in bug #650843. It would be useful to follow this and find out the complex issues (progressive bars, size of modals dialog etc), with something that in first place seems like an easy-to-fix. No it isn’t.

Other things you can notice in GNOME 3.8 on this video, is the border on Windows on Overview when are selected, the enchanted overlays transitions when modals are launched, and the fix of <close button> that it is now correctly displayed or gets hidden (no delays).

With 4 months ahead for the final release of GNOME 3.8, things look already unexpected good ..more than good ;)

Guest

I hope there will be an extension in 3.8 to make all windows equally re-sized in overview, because now they seem really ugly and messy to me.

alex285

Windows in Overview in 3.8 will be re-sized according to their real size, in order to can easily recognize them. I just hope them to include overlay icons there at some point.

hellsdark

Yes, but the guess point is still kindia right… It does not feel well organized now…

alex285

How you can equally re-size Firefox (big windows) with Calculator(small windows), or vertical-shape with horizontal-shape windows?

hells_dark

Sure, that’s a good point, but the view appears kinda messy with windows of all sizes. Logical versus esthetical..
Guest

What I meant was: I prefer the overview as it is now – each window has maximum width and maximum height according to number of windows open and the overall impression seems much more pleasing to the eye than the one that the developers are aiming for 3.8 release.
alex285

I am sorry, I didn’t understand it. If you have more than 4 windows I think that 3.8 handles them better. If you have just two maybe you are right. But the issue is when you have many windows.

Conscious User

Isn’t the inability to close the parent a part of modality? You can’t do it via window buttons, right?

alex285

hmm, it makes sense if you could close a window that runs an Dialog, but not a window that runs a progress ie. . I don’t know in what solution they will come up with.

Conscious User

Oh, now that I thought more about it, nevermind! This is actually not different from the “Quit” menu item that Gnome-Shell appmenus and docks like the Unity launcher already provide. Those do not care about modality either. If the app developer wants, he can block the “delete-event” signal, I guess.

flammon

One feature that I miss is the ability to re-size and move the modals which I think was in the last version. Sometimes, information from the parent is needed but it’s hidden by the modal. Moving the modal within the parent was be nice but if we could move the modal outside of the parent and keep it attached to the parent by the edges, it would be perfect.