Firstly can someone please mark this to UI review because I wasn't able to work out how to do it :)

What I am requesting basically is to enable certain core options in gnome-shell to be configurable either via gnome-tweak-tool or gnome-control-panel, but leaning towards gnome-tweak-tool to be closer aligned with the existing theming options in there.

These core gnome-shell configuration options I see including but not limited to the following options:

1. Activities hot corner, changing text, enabling an icon or both
2. Padding in the top panel for both left and right corners of the panel for icons and text
3. Message Tray, barrier location (default, left corner, right corner), and height and icon size and whether the message tray pushes windows up (default), or just pops up
4. Aggregate menu - add\remove options from a list and allow custom entries


There are currently 2 extensions available to achieve 1 & 2 in the above list (Activities Configurator & Horizontal Spacing extension) the latter is not listed on the extensions website yet as it requires a change to enable it to work in 3.10, and another extension (written by zzat on request) to do PART of option 3 above, namely to move it to the bottom right corner.

What I am proposing is that along with the 4th option, is to write a consolidated extension that enables all of the above in 1 extension, or to have these options included in the core gnome experience.

I have support of the maintainer of the gnome-tweak-tool, and from some of the owners of the above extensions to consolidate and include support for these options in the gnome-tweak-tool UI, but this may or may not be the best way to include support of these options.

Being able to change certain core features of gnome-shell without hacking code, installing (in the above case 4 separate extensions) to enable changing certain functionality, along with hacking code to achieve the rest, is not an ideal situation to have for the general user.

Not to mention that these options are only available if the owner of the extension has the time or inclination to update the extension, in which case it falls back to hacking code, which as of 3.10 no longer works to change the location of the barrier for the message tray, and required an extension to be written specifically to achieve this.

I'm not talking about including options that legitimately should be handled through extensions or themes (like adding places to the top panel, or changing the location of the top panel to the bottom) etc. Just configuration options for what are core areas of gnome-shell that cannot be changed or configured currently without hacking code or having extensions written to monkey patch code to enable some of the functionality that a properly coded configuration option would and should include.

As some of these extensions already exist then we have already got the code required to implement these features, and have the support of the gnome-tweak-tool to enable inclusion within the UI for these options, hence the suggestion of this option.

But ultimately it would be nice to see this in the core gnome-shell experience. Just about every OS out there allows configuration of core components of the OS, and for gnome shell the core components include the activities area, top panel, aggregate menu (in 3.10 or user menu in <=3.8), and the message tray, and I feel these have the largest impact on the default user experience within gnome-shell.