Would Unity Look Better Like This?

By Benjamin Kerensa On August 12, 2012 · 15 Comments

Check out this design by rylexr of DeviantArt as you can see he put together a really nice mockup of what the Unity Launcher could look like and in all honesty it would be nice to see a slicker Unity launcher or at least better customization options.

[poll id="2"]

Michael Hall

I like the larger “currently focused application” indicator, that might be useful (if I didn’t keep my launcher on auto-hide). I don’t like the idea of groups though, it’s an added layer of navigation, would complicate the current launcher navigation keyboard shortcuts, and likely end up just re-creating the old menu structures for most people.
- Camila Acolide
  
  “and likely end up just re-creating the old menu structures for most people”
  
  - But that is an excelent thing! People who want the old menu structures would have a very nice and supported option to play with, instead of being forced into the new paradigm. I have a coworker that simply loves the global menu and indicators, but refuses to migrate to unity because of the launcher. He is still on 10.10.
  - Michael Hall
    
    People who want the old menu structures have plenty of supported options for getting them, including Gnome-classic, Mate, Cinnamon, Xfce, Kde, LXDE, and many, many many more.
  - http://benjaminkerensa.com/ Benjamin Kerensa
    
    They could just sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback and have classic in 12.04 and even 12.10
http://twitter.com/DanHutter Daniel Hutter

I definitely like your mock-up. The problem with Unity right now it isn’t customizable. It’d be nice to add widgets (weather, stock ticker, etc) like we had for Gnome panels.
- http://benjaminkerensa.com/ Benjamin Kerensa
  
  Well I’m sure some of the developers from the Unity Team will see this blog post so whether they take the feedback in these comments is totally up to them. Weather Widgets and Stock Widgets would be cool perhaps thats something @google-4f30010283c04d692485e8fedff69f74:disqus could brew up
  - Michael Hall
    
    There’s already a weather indicator for the top-panel, and a stocks lens for the Dash.
    - Sebastian Rösgen
      
      That’s right but widgets for the Launcher would be different:
      1) the indicators get cluttered too fast if you add too many of them
      2) personally I would prefer the indicators to be all “extensions” of existing programs/applications already installed, like Session Indicator, Messaging Menu Indicator, Time and Date Indicator. They all “offer” hooks for other applications to collect information for the user. All the information come from applications already installed. Add too many Indicators and all becomes cluttered and you suffer from information overflow instead of being offered a simple and structured overview of important system information. (In my opinion many of the indicators that can be installed additionally, should be widgets for the launcher instead and no indicators at all)
      3) the dash is closed most of the time and it can only be opened exclusively, a widget on the other hand should be something that I could keep an eye on without entirely stopping my workflow.
      4) the launcher is perfect for dozens of widgets (or extensions similar to widgets), why not offer a possibility to the users to simply use the launcher in that manner?
      5) I generally miss some functions to easily activate/deactivate or simply add things to the launcher (like the “show desktop” icon). Compiz Config Settings Manager is not really an option here as normal users would be totally confused by CCSM.
Lolitha Ratnayake

Well Perosnaly this is kind of over bloated and could suck up memory in OLD hardware. It will be like when windows vista came out with not useful stuff to majority. (Just saying.) If people demands put this as option for mod but don’t include with default. Then see how percentage people doing this and woaha. It’s done.
BTW I do like the grouping thing. One more suggestion from me. when clicking the group icon make a horizontal bar with it’s icon slides right side so can select whats inside that group. It will be cooler too. I definitely need some grouping.
AC

Few notes:
-More space between icons looks better and is better for usability, but only as long as all icons fit the screen.
-I’m not convinced by groups, they may be confusing and require more clicks(fe: super+3, and then in popup super+1)
-About “icons should use all available space” – For me it looks like icons are about same size now anyway. Your chromium icon suggest forcing them to same shape witch would be bad because it easier to recognize icons with different shapes(but IM app have different icon so probably you were not suggesting that).
gn2

I couldn’t care less what Unity looks like or how customisable it is or isn’t because so long as Gnome Classic or Xfce remain available I will not use Unity.
vs8

I love this.

I would love to see this come true. Canonical, take notes!!!
http://www.facebook.com/uber.dudditz Uber Dudditz

Some of the ideas are good. I would like seeing the creation of custom lenses full of user grouped items, as well as Lenses being draggable to the launcher.
The dash could use a nice makeover, and more customization (icon resizing, spacing and opacity tweaking, moving the lenses and filter options to the left side, smaller filter buttons, etc) and the launcher would look nice with more noticeable number, download, and focus indicators.
I’m not wild about adding more space between icons though.
tgm

I like your mock-up, but the extra space could mean a lot of pain for people on 1366×768 displays…
tushantin

Yes, yes, yes, for the love of YES!