Allow for the panel to be disabled (wishlist)

Some straightforward method of disabling the global menu to use alternatives would definitely be useful for power users, as well as the maintainers of Ubuntu desktop derivatives.

Me too faces the same issue. I never wanted to waste space for unity panel, and will be comfortable with unity dock and dash! The idea of wingpanel sounds great :) .BTW, there should be an option to switch off unity panel. This would increase the flexibility of ubuntu , as users have more options to stick with their ideal desktop. Thanks Kazade for opening this issue, just what I was looking for at this moment. :) Looking forward..

My ideal desktop would be left alone!

Install Ccsm and disable the unity plugin... Done!

I already do this manually, changing the preferences in /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/panel using the gconf-editor to avant-window-navigator instead of gnome-panel.

An appearance setting could be useful to spare the visit to the gconf-editor.

@Gerardo That will no longer work with Unity - Unity has its own panel.

We definitely need a natural way to move between "full screen" (no
panel) and "panelled" mode, across multiple apps. And perhaps we need a
good way for things like indicators to show up at appropriate times,
when the panel is not being displayed.

So kudos to the Elementary team for their explorations with wingpanel.

In terms of space efficiency, though, if you maximise a window and have
wingpanel float over it, you effectively have the same thing as the
design goal for 11.04 Unity: maximised windows put titles / window
controls / windicators into the panel themselves. And if you're not
using a maximised window then space efficiency is by definition not your
primary concern.

I can see that there's a "lightness" of the desktop without the panel,
yes. So I think this idea has merit and is worth exploration. I would
welcome mockups and discussion on the Ayatana list, cc'd.

Mark

As of Daily-Build 20-12-2010 Disabling Unity in Ccsm works, leaving you to use what ever Dock you like.?field.comment=As of Daily-Build 20-12-2010 Disabling Unity in Ccsm works, leaving you to use what ever Dock you like.

I think a bottom Unity launcher (maybe with a little bit smaller size) and a WingPanel would be a good combination.

On 21 December 2010 11:21, Mark Shuttleworth <email address hidden> wrote:

>
> We definitely need a natural way to move between "full screen" (no
> panel) and "panelled" mode, across multiple apps. And perhaps we need a
> good way for things like indicators to show up at appropriate times,
> when the panel is not being displayed.
>
> Just to clarify, do you mean that there would be a system-wide on/off
switch for the Unity panel (my request) or do you mean that entering an app
into a "fullscreen" mode would remove the panel (which, while a cool
feature, is not quite what I was after :) )

> So kudos to the Elementary team for their explorations with wingpanel.
>
> In terms of space efficiency, though, if you maximise a window and have
> wingpanel float over it, you effectively have the same thing as the
> design goal for 11.04 Unity: maximised windows put titles / window
> controls / windicators into the panel themselves. And if you're not
> using a maximised window then space efficiency is by definition not your
> primary concern.
>
>
The obvious difference is of course the global menu. Indicator-appmenu is my
only gripe with Unity, and the reason is that I use more than one monitor
and focus follows mouse on my work desktop; a global menu isn't a great fit
for this. I want a consistent experience across all my PCs and so if I
remove indicator-appmenu from one, I'll remove it from all. This leaves me
with a rather irritating blank panel stretched across the desktop that I
can't do anything with. Wingpanel is for me the ideal solution; hence the
bug report, I'd like to run Wingpanel + Unity Dock together (which would be
my ideal setup, I even mocked up this exact setup on Ayatana before
Wingpanel even existed: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04044.html )

> I can see that there's a "lightness" of the desktop without the panel,
> yes. So I think this idea has merit and is worth exploration. I would
> welcome mockups and discussion on the Ayatana list, cc'd.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
Cool :)

El mar, 21-12-2010 a las 14:12 +0000, Luke Benstead escribió:

> Just to clarify, do you mean that there would be a system-wide on/off
> switch for the Unity panel (my request) or do you mean that entering
> an app into a "fullscreen" mode would remove the panel (which, while a
> cool feature, is not quite what I was after :) )

I agree with this question... Mark, You mean like Totem full screen mode
and want something like wingpanel for show some indicators?

I'm saying I'm open to exploration in this area, not that I have a
specific solution in mind. I'm encouraging folks to mockup, discuss, or
provide patches or other prototypes of the behaviour so we can test it
and think about it :-)

@Mark We could of course explore a lot easier if we could turn off the panel (j/k) ;)

My mockup.
Yes, I know there is no global menu, but I just want to share my idea.
Sorry for the bad english.

well, one of the reasons we are experimenting with wingpanel currently is that global menu has two fairly large problems.

1. it enforces having a menu bar, elementary apps are designed without menu bars, and instead use the "app menu", when we use global menu, it looks really funny if the app doesn't provide a menu-bar.

2. global menu has a very large usability problem on multi-monitor setups. Sometimes my mouse has to travel a surprising and frustrating distance from the app to reach it's menu.

i like the idea.

if you place the menu in the window bar like in these mockups:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/682788

and also have a small panel similar to a wingpanel

then you solve both this bug here and this bug:

"Global menu is not ergonomical on large screens"
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/682788

IMO a wingpanel would also help complete the awesome look that unity is aiming for (which is to be even better looking than OSX, which i think is more than doable in the short term).

sorry on my last comment, the menu in bar mockups are here:

http://anaershadowynomaly.deviantart.com/gallery/29691776

here is another wingpanel type / ubuntu mockup:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TRN4T4XDEiI/AAAAAAAACgM/kXBETtXAykg/Me%20Menu_v0.7.jpg

Somewhat related to this issue should be the treatment of the top panel in a multi-monitor setup. Since the upgrade to 11.10, the top panel is duplicated on each monitor. I'm fairly certain that I was able to kill it (or maybe it never appeared) on the second monitor in 11.04.

With regard to the wingpanel, I like the second batch that manny posted. With the ability to autohide, that would be an excellent evolution of the panel.

I just need the panel removed from my second monitor, thanks!

I'm with you Ben. Customization of Unity is its biggest shortcoming at the moment...

When LIM gets implemented, the panel will become mostly an empty space. What about a wingpanel mode for people using LIM?

Sorry, this won't be worked on.