Some recent changes

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 10/20/2009 10:04 PM, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>> (I've never yet come across someone
>> who hit the 'show desktop' button accidentally and curled into a fetal
>> ball, but I'm willing to be shown some :>).
> 
> I've personally seen a number of people new to the system do it, and
> Bryan Clark (former GNOME interaction designer) mentioned it as a
> problem he saw with the layout.

I am not convinced this is a change for the better but even if it is,
why wait until the beta has already been released to make the change?
Why not explain the rationale, discuss it in this list first and get
some consensus from others and then make the changes?  While some of the
changes are at-least being announced in this list these days, it could
be much better. There is a repeated lack of transparency in the decision
making process surrounding many of the changes the desktop team makes
which is problematic and yes, I am paying close attention.

Making such changes in the end of the release means that we will have to
rush to document them in the release notes which are already frozen for
translations just as a single example of the problem of doing things now
instead of earlier in the release cycle. Even minor tweaks tend to have
a big impact.

I spend a lot of time in the end user forums answering questions and I
have to document them in the release notes if I don't want to spend even
more time answering the same questions and believe me, any change in the
default panel is going to get end users puzzled because they already
have strong expectations from years of experience with the defaults.
Easing the pain of transitioning from one release to another should be a
important goal.

Rahul