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Old 02-26-2015, 03:30 AM   #1
Anarchy
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Gnome shell, why do they hate tray icons?


Why do the devs behind Gnome Shell hate tray icons? Why are they removed and only hidden in the message bar?
 
Old 02-26-2015, 07:29 AM   #2
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It's not like them devs do that to spite people: it was a design decision so "hate" IMHO is too strong a word for that kind of thing...
 
Old 02-26-2015, 07:51 AM   #3
Anarchy
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Yeah, I am aware of Gnome taking their design very seriously and that they spending a lot of time basing it upon actual research. That's why I'm curios to *why* they hid the tray bar, which most other OSes and DEs utilize.
 
Old 02-26-2015, 10:40 AM   #4
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I don't know. If their user interaction/experience design docs don't show clues ask the devs?
 
Old 02-26-2015, 11:14 AM   #5
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Systray icons are seen as common source of distraction, which the devs want to get rid of. Personally i like the idea, the Gnome Shell feels very clean thanks to it. The actual implementation could be probably better, though (afaik notifications are being reworked for Gnome 3.16).
 
Old 04-20-2015, 12:49 PM   #6
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They do not hate tray icons but tray icons are typically ugly and never match a design theme. There are so many iconsets it make sense that people dont make icons to match them all.

GNOME 3.14 and older just decided to hide them to make the GNOME design much better, which it did make them much better at the cost of functionality.

GNOME 3.16 on the other hand has actually improved the functionality while at the same time still keeping the nice design even with ugly tray icons. = Screenshot of the new GNOME 3.16 Icon Tray Panel

The new tray icon panel is actually nice looking, until you open it of course but it easily hides away which is nice. The problem with it is that you can't control the location or anything else of it. You either use it as is or you remove it entirely.

Top Icons Extension by "ag" has solved this problem. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/495/topicons/

With Top Icons you can replace the bottom left icon tray panel with putting the icons back in the top right of the main panel. This extension also does the same thing with GNOME 3.14 or older.

----

So conclusiong, GNOME doesn't hate tray icons but they are always ugly and never match anything. They chose to hide them because of this but now are trying to compensate by adding new functionality for them.
 
Old 04-21-2015, 11:07 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelTunnell View Post
So conclusiong, GNOME doesn't hate tray icons but they are always ugly and never match anything. They chose to hide them because of this but now are trying to compensate by adding new functionality for them.
In other words, the Gnome team are prepared to sacrifice (albeit temporarily) functionality for "being pretty". That's why some of us stopped using Gnome!
 
Old 04-21-2015, 04:26 PM   #8
MichaelTunnell
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
In other words, the Gnome team are prepared to sacrifice (albeit temporarily) functionality for "being pretty". That's why some of us stopped using Gnome!
You consider it sacrificing, I consider it repositioning. No DE is going to work for everyone so if someone doesn't like it then they can leave it for the people who do like it.

Everyone's experience and needs will be different so I don't see any problem with their decision.
 
  


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