Re: I believe we should reconsider our sys-tray removal

[Alexandre Franke <afranke gnome org>]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 7:07 PM Britt Yazel <bwyazel gnome org> wrote:
> I want to re-poen an old argument now that we have seen the effects of
> removing the sys-tray/app-indicator tray for well over a year. In short, the
> users are not happy.

*Some* users. Please refrain from making such dubious claims when
there is no data to support it. Even “most people I talk to” is
unreliable, as for every person that complains about it there are 9.7
users who don’t.

I am a user and I am happy about the change.


> I believe our goals of putting pressure on application
> developers to ditch the antiquated app-indicator model fell mostly on deaf
> ears, and not having the sys-tray icons is mostly a nuisance for people, and
> big pain point for many.

None of the apps I use seem to have a problem with the lack of
systray, and it’s clear that 15 years ago some of them would have had
an icon there (e.g. Music, Fractal). This has had a positive impact on
my daily experience and I am thankful for GNOME to be behind this
push.


> Our users (myself included) and our software partners (Ubuntu, System76,
> Purism) have reverted to using extensions to return this behavior.

Again, *some* users. Count me as one of those who don’t.


> we have forced our users to fragment themselves between many solutions,

I don’t feel forced.


> An example of this biting us in the arse is that with 3.32
> TopIcons is causing the CPU usage to run through the roof, and people are
> blaming the Shell for the CPU usage, not the extension, leaving our users
> with a bad taste in their mouths.

That is indeed an issue, I acknowledge this. It doesn’t mean the
premise of this email is correct.


> So to sum up, most users who I talk to on social media and in person are
> using many different 3rd party solutions for sys-tray icons, and this
> fragmented approach is hurting our image, annoying our users, and is
> fragmenting our user experience to the point of actual detriment. I think we
> need to re-evaluate a solution for 3.34, and that this should be a focus this
> cycle. I believe that there is an elegant solution to handling sys-tray icons
> without sacrificing our core goals, one idea being to incorporate it into the
> Dash. However, I don't think we should go forward into 3.34+ without a 1st
> party solutions in place for how to treat sys-tray icons, because (sadly)
> they're not going anywhere.

Please consider how unnecessarily pushy this sounds.

-- 
Alexandre Franke
GNOME Hacker