Drop to Shell: Proposing an Alternative Design to Gnomes Drop downs
Back in the days Dropdowns where a common method to offer quick actions without disturbing the windows on your desktop. As windows where a fairly static, that might have made sense. But dropdowns always had caveats:
- They don't scale well. On small screens they overflow; on large ones they stay a small box
- Although visually limited to little space they usually do not let the user interact with the major part of the screen so in fact are occupying the whole scree.
- They close at the first click elsewhere. You can't keep the volume, Wi-Fi or a tray app's menu open while you work, so you reopen it again and again.
- They cover your windows instead of sharing the space. A dropdown sits over exactly the content you might need, like the email you're answering while checking your calendar.
All those problems apply for gnome shell dropdowns. To improve on this the first derision we have to take is: Which elements need (a) to be shown alongside the opened windows and which one don't (b). All elements of type a can occupy the whole desktop replacing the opened windows. All elements of type by should be shown in a way alongside the opened windows which enables the user to interact with both.
In my opinion in Gnome all elements which lives in the calendar dropdown are of the type a. All that lives in the quick setting drop down are of the type b.
1. Quick Settings could becomes a side pane
Mockup: Quick Settings becomes a side pane that shrinks the windows.
Click the system indicators and a pane would slide in from the right, from the panel to the bottom of the screen. It stays open while you use your apps: changing focus doesn't dismiss it. Your windows make room and come back when it closes. Drag its edge to resize it.
It holds GNOME's own controls: sliders, toggles, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth menus. It would also hold a list of tray apps, background apps and other extensions' indicators. Their menus open inside the pane at full width. Tray icons (AppIndicators) could be hosted by the pane itself, so you wouldn't need a separate tray extension. This also could gives room for a decent clipboard integration:
2. It would work in the overview too
Mockup: Pane in overview with Blur my shell.
An open pane stays open in the overview, and the search, workspaces and dash make room for it. With Blur my Shell, the pane takes the same blur as the panel.
3. The clock's dropdown becomes a Today page
Mockup: Clicking on the calendar/clock opens a today overview in the shell.
Click the clock (or press Super+M) and the overview opens with a Today page in place of the windows: notifications and media controls, a month calendar with the events of each day, the selected day's schedule, the weather forecast and world clocks.
I'd love to hear you opinion.