>if you maximize Firefox

This is what has me concerned. I never maximize windows. I've not used Unity yet, but the trend with both it and OS X Lion seems to be moving toward more and more modal interface paradigms in a world where we have the largest, highest resolutions displays that have ever been available to the average person. I'm not happy with the idea, personally.

I think you're reading too much into it. Maximization have existed since the 90s, Unity just makes it more efficient in its use of vertical screen space.

I would argue the trend is towards smaller screens if anything (small, light laptops, netbooks, tablets etc.).

I always either maximise or snap Windows to some sensible half/third of the screen layout.

I don't want to manually juggle Windows as my OCD kicks in and I start fiddling with them to get them exactly lined up. The Mac's 'sort of maximised but with a bit of the desktop showing round the edges' gives me the shakes...

At first I thought Unity was a stupid idea. That in Canoncial's quest to compete with OS X's "elegance" they were copying one of its most hated features, The Dock. However, after using Alpha 3 and Beta 1 a bit I feel like it is The Dock done right. It auto-hides but still reveals notifications. It does not abuse precious vertical screen real estate. It does not disconnect the act of finding apps to launch from apps that are running.

It is definitely not perfect and as is so common in open source it lacks polish. It abuses glow effects and is a bit non-intuitive in its finer details. However, it solves far more problems than its creating and is definitely a good change.

Whether it is a better change than Gnome Shell is another question and as I haven't used Gnome Shell I can only hope that one or both will push desktop usability ahead.

How is the Unity Launcher like Gnome-Do on steroids? Maybe things have improved, but the Launcher of the Unity that's included in Ubuntu 10.10's repositories is really limited. It doesn't have any keyboard shortcut to load the launcher (at least as far as I can tell; it seems like super is the shortcut in current releases, but that does nothing for me in Unity 2.46), and opening things is _nowhere_ near as snappy as quickly typing "term" and then hitting enter, since it requires waiting a second to populate the list, and then you have to use the mouse to select the item.

I agree that it's a fraction of a second slower, as the box populates a bit slower than Gnome-Do. (Though I suspect that's just an area for optimization rather than an intent of the design.)

However, for frequently-used applications, you can also pin them to the launcher allowing you to launch them with one key combination. Super-1 will launch the first application penned to the launcher, Super-2 will launch the second, etc. In effect this gives you 10 'hotkey' slots for launching applications.

Good point. My gnome-do workflow is basically just typing in "chrome", "term", or "emacs" and hitting enter, and that could easily translate to hotkey slots. From what I recall of using unity in 10.10, it was difficult to open the same application in multiple workspaces, though; is that still the case?

In Natty typing 'term' and hitting enter seems to do exactly what you would want, except you have to wait a fraction of a second after typing to hit enter so that they can populate the list. Not as good as it could be, but tolerable for me.

interesting; I'll look forward to this when 11.04 leaves beta. though recently I've found that just auto-hiding the two default Gnome panels and calling up gnome-do to open applications works well with my workflow.

How about when I have two 21" monitors, and don't maximise my windows. And if it's anything like OS X the menu bar will be one screen only.

There seems to be plenty of good things about it, and i do quite like OS X, but having the menu bar fixed at the top is not some sort of usability godsend.

I use Unity with two monitors and unmaximized windows, and it works fine. In the window is on the second screen, the menu bar follows.

Try it.

>You've gotta keep in mind though that's not a finished product yet.

If it's in the beta you'd think it probably should be a finished product.

Nonetheless, I think it's good that Ubuntu is pushing this if it'll result in a more competitive desktop offering (and diehards can simply change to GNOME).

One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.

I guess that varies by the user. For me, on Ubuntu there are generally only two applications I end up launching from the panel: terminal and a browser.

The other software I use are either communicational tools (IRC and instant messaging), launched from the messaging menu, and document-specific tools (openoffice. GIMP, inkscape, gedit) that I launch either from terminal or the file manager.

I don't know how well Unity supports this workflow, as the Maverick version of it was too slow to use. But I appreciate the extra vertical space given by the global menu

Right-clicking on the 'Applications' lens presents an organized list of application types. It's only one-level deep rather than truly hierarchical but it works quite well.

I don't think a hierarchical menu is needed. What purpose would that help with? I think instead they should focus on making it easy to search in the launcher.

One cool feature they have is that it can listed installed apps as expected but also apps available in Software Center. Hopefully, someone can search for "draw" and get appropriate apps listed. Or for "GIMP" and either launch of install the app.

Hierarchical menus help with app discoverability by showing all the apps the system has to offer.

I've always found such menus more confusing than anything.

Can you guess under which menu is the termina/command line program is hidden? No, unless you know in advance that it's under "Accessories". I mean, why isn't it under "system" or "programming"? It's too hard to guess what the menu author(s) were thinking so it's always hard to guess where a certain program is.

Think of the first time you ever used a computer. I agree that once you know that there is a app called terminal, using the Hierarchical menu might not be the best way to launch/use it. But the very first time you use a computer, its useful to see "Ahh - I can do Graphics, Programming, System Administration, Games. Oh wow it even has Solitaire!". So a hybrid approach with something like Gnome-Do for power users while retaining the hierarchical menu for regular users is optimal imo. Heck a lot of power users even create application sessions and do most of their app launching automatically at startup.

You can view all the apps installed just fine. Ubuntu, unlike many distros, doesn't install 10 of every kind of app so I don't think its necessary.

Exploration, with a menu I can explore and see what is there. Search only means I can randomly type stuff in and see what happens but I never know the extents of the system.

You should check out a review if you haven't actually used the UI.

http://maketecheasier.com/ubuntu-natty-beta-1-review-screens...