We all remember the critics about the choice of Gnom-ers to replace “Power Off” with “Stand By” option in user menu. It took more than a year of complains for Gnome to make things as users want it. Alternative Menu (made by Giovanni – a Gnome Dev) was the most popular extension at the time!
A similar situation was about to happen with Log Out option which was removed for Single Accounts.
Gnome Shell 3.8
Next Gnome Shell will be all about polishing things. A plethora of small details is planned that will increase Gnome Shell usability and aesthetics and some of these changes are already in master branch.
The main change will be the brand new and much promising Gnome Shell Search in Overview, which will look for about anything in the system or cloud -patches haven’t arrived yet. Add on this the quite improved Notification System and the new Keyboard Shortcuts (which isn’t clear yet if arrive). Removal of Application Categories from overview is on the air (at least I don’t know anything about it).
Even if you do ask a Gnome developer what are the new things that will land in Gnome Shell 3.8, you’ll get an answer like “We will do as much as possible”. My personal guess judging from what I see so far, is wow, Gnome Shell 3.8 will rock, and my lucky guess is that Gnome will force people to come back to it through UGR or Fedora. At least the people that don’t buy pre-installed Ubuntu systems (you know what I mean!).
Log Out for Single Accounts
You normally need a logout option when more than one account exist so you can switch to another. One more reason is if you want to reload your Gnome Session (logout and re-login) or to pick a different environment like Unity (all Ubuntu users have both Gnome Shell and Unity) or Cinnamon, OpenBox etc. Alright, we can just restart GDM from terminal, but this isn’t quite nice solution :)
Personally I don’t think is a big deal or even the right choice, but is a sign that Gnom-ers listen to people for things that don’t really support.
Matthias made the two commits:
Add a setting to force the ‘Log out’ menuitem | (bug #686057)
I’ve heard quite a bit of feedback from people who want to log out, even ifthey are the sole user on their system. It doesn’t seem work alienating them
over this; can we add a setting to make the log out item show up, always ?I don’t think we want to put the setting anywhere in the ui.
So there will be an option for any distributor want to use Logout by default ..or we can change this for our self through Gnome Tweak Tool
Show ‘Log out’ in more situations | (bug #686736)
There is a second patch again pushed by Matthias
When the current user is a remote account, or a we are logged in as root, we should always show ‘Log out’.
Identify Applications in Window Overview
There is a huge improvement in this area.
Gnome Shell 3.8 makes better use of available space, while it draws windows according to their original size (and creation time), so you can easier identify an application. We had print this when Allan present it as part of Every Details Matters project. Well, it is different reading something and trying it out. This is a *huge* improvement!
A drawback here is that Applications don’t show an Overlay Icon similar to OverLay Extension something that already works for Cinnamon and Elementary’s Gala. However this bug has been identify in Gnome Shell Annoyances, but is not yet confirmed. If anyone is interested to work on this, he/her only need to make a Gnome Live Account, make some mockups and contact Gnome Design Team.
Notifications
Stéphane Démurget pushed a nice patch that makes sure you won’t miss a system notification that requires your attention.
Show feedback notifications when the user is busy | (bug #662900)
Notifications that are created in response to direct user actions like “is ready” or “‘foo’ has been removed from favorites” should always be displayed even though the user has marked him/herself busy.
Because no feedback at all is surly not what the user expects in this case. As for the “is ready” in lots of situations we should probably just show the window but that is kind of a different bug.
Every Detail Matters
Small details have ruined lots of big relationships :) Such a small detail is the new Run Command design in Gnome Shell.
Other than the new design that is mouse/touch friendly the Close Button also help us to close Run Command without exiting the overview mode something that happens if we “Esc” and then we should re-launch Overview.
Ooh, and there is much more in Gnome Shell 3.8!