GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 685744
list set of supported extensions
Last modified: 2016-11-11 14:50:37 UTC
As part of dropping fallback mode.
I don't think 'supported' is a term we really want to use here. From what I recall, this is about the second group of fallback mode users - those that choose fallback mode voluntarily because they don't like the new ux. So, what we want to do is tell them something like: We're sorry that GNOME 3 does not work perfectly for you - but thankfully, gnome-shell is extensible. If you like the GNOME 2 user experience better, there are a number of extensions that you can try to make GNOME 3 work better for you: 1) ... 2) ... 3) ...
I think we really do want a list of supported extensions for a GNOME2-ish experience. By "supported", I mean that if somebody does something that breaks an extension on the list, that somebody needs to either fix the extension or find someone to do that. An example would be if someone overhauls the way "places" work, then they need to make sure the "places status indicator" still works. Some candidates https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/8/places-status-indicator/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes/ (should just be in core) Either https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/ or https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/17/dock/ (one is on the left and one is on the right; they should probably have a setting to configure that) Maybe some of the Frippery extensions (which apparently haven't been updated for 3.6 yet, which is an example of why we need to do a better job of supporting some core extensions...unless we really just want people to use Mate or Cinnamon or XFCE). https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2/move-clock/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3/bottom-panel/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4/panel-favorites/
> I think we really do want a list of supported extensions for a GNOME2-ish > experience. By "supported", I mean that if somebody does something that breaks > an extension on the list, that somebody needs to either fix the extension or > find someone to do that. Unless you are signing up to be that somebody, that doesn't really improve the situation compared to shipping a bunch of unmaintained gnome2 modules...
I'm fine with maintaining some set of extensions, but I think there's more work to be done. We don't really have a safe way for developers to develop and test before the release is made, and usually it takes another three or four months from GNOME release to distro release. I think that solving this issue would help quite a big deal, and this is probably what Frippery is waiting on, but it's a hard issue. If somebody wants me to maintain X extension and ensure that it's up to date, I'd be happy to do it.
FWIW, I support the aforementioned extensions "apps-menu", "places-menu", "alternate-tab" and "user-theme", to the extent of making sure that they work with each new shell release, and occasionally fixing bugs on them. I also rewrote places-menu to look like the new nautilus place sidebar for 3.6. On the other hand, I dropped dock starting with 3.7.1, for lack of time and interests, after nobody showed up in the mailing list. I believe that user-theme specifically makes sense in core shell, for the same reasons we support theming in gtk and mutter. Additionally, move-clock and remove-accessibility could be obsoleted by bug 681528.
To update the wider audience; we've had some discussions about this. The current plan is as follows: We will use the gnome-shell-extensions repository for this work. We want to do tarball releases of this to go along with GNOME releases ("supported"), and a repository makes that much easier. The gnome-shell-extensions already has the build machinery in place to do releases (and Giovanni is in fact, doing regular releases). The set of supported extensions will not include everything that is currently in the repository. We are thinking of - taskbar - minimize/maximize buttons - classic alt-tab - main menu Giovanni already added a --classic-mode build switch in the 3.7.2 release, which allows building a subset of extensions. We haven't made a final decision yet on the best way to turn these on as a group. Once that has been settled, we will look at exposing that switch in the UI, possibly in gnome-tweak-tool.
What about adding the user-theme extension to that list?
I'd just like to add my hearty encouragement to this effort. Having to spend hours searching for updated extensions, and often fixing them, with each release has made me consider giving up on GNOME 3: there are some legacy behaviours that apps I rely on can't live without, and some new UI features I really don't want. Anything that eases transition from one release to the next in future is a winner, and it looks as though the key extensions will mostly be supported by this. The one remaining one I don't see which is frequently a bone of contention is something like TopIcons: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/495/topicons/
The main-menu extension future will be have a keyboard shortcut to present Applications, Places and system menu for example? This is important for a11y if an user want using the traditional classic categorized main menus to launch applications. Or I missunderstand this extension purpose? For example, the ALT+F1 keystroke is good if not need conflicting the present owerview screen. Now I using my Ubuntu 12.04 with GNOME3 fallback session, but tryed GNOME Shell 3.6 a Fedora 18 alpha live CD with Orca Screen Reader. Fortunately my notebook built in Intel GMA 3100 video card GNOME Shell 3.6 works good, and very good usable with Orca Screen Reader. Unfortunately because in Ubuntu 12.10 the braille support is not working good (this is a different story), I come back with Ubuntu 12.04. This future extensions need manual downloading a distribution, or perhaps distro maintainers packaging this extensions? I newer try installing GNOME Shell extensions, so I not known this new mehanishm detailed. If Ubuntu 13.04 development release Orca screen reader working good again and will be have testing extensions, I welcome help the testing if I have enough free time. Attila
(In reply to comment #8) > something like TopIcons: That is a good suggestion. Speaking as a user, I would like to move status icons and notifications to the top bar, and completely remove the notification bar at the bottom. There are already a bunch of extensions that do similar things, but they still have room for improvement.
FWIW read this article http://www.webupd8.org/2012/12/evernote-linux-client-everpad-available.html In general parlance, "Now With GNOME Shell Support" basically seems to mean not just using Unity specific API. In this specific example it seems to mean "has a status icon" So I guess this is a vote for something like TopIcons? (Dropbox and Skype are the other problems here)
Based on this thread https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/KygiWsQc4Wm A vote for panel-favorites... (for the terminal pros that like to launch new terminals using the mouse)
It's been 4 years since Matthias wrote a proposal for this in comment 6, and I don't see any substantive movement here since then. My impression is that we have a stable arrangement for maintaining extensions.
I'd say FIXED, not OBSOLETE, since this is basically what led to gnome-shell's classic mode.