[Discuss] Interesting rant about Gnome 3

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

John Abreau wrote:
> This blog post sheds some interesting light on some of the issues many of
> us have been having with gnome 3.
> 
> http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/

One of the key points made in this posting was how the GNOME developers
disliked allowing users to customize and how they rejected the Firefox
model of extensions.

Yet...

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials/build-extensions-for-the-gnome-desktop-environment

  Among many new features in GNOME 3, the most exciting one is the
  ability to build extensions. Here's how it's done...

  The GNOME 3 desktop environment represents a dramatic shift from the
  traditional desktop metaphor. The key element in this redesign is
  GNOME Shell. It provides core user interface functions that are
  essential to the GNOME 3 user experience...

  GNOME Shell extensions are small plug-ins...that can add, remove or
  modify GNOME Shell features. These extensions exist outside the GNOME
  design and development process and therefore provide a great deal of
  independence for what you can do. You also don't need to learn full
  GNOME source code in order build extensions. ...GNOME Shell extensions
  are written in JavaScript.

The article goes on to give step-by-step instructions for writing a
simple extension, and claims it works with "GNOME 3.2 or above,"
implying the APIs for extensions (at least the ones relevant to this
simple extension) are stable across at least several minor revisions
(3.6 was released in September; the article was posted in December,
2012, so the author was presumably aware of newer versions bring available).

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/