Change default dconf setting for center-new-windows to true
Edit: In GNOME 3.32 the behaviour has changed a lot for when the "center new windows" setting is disabled. It now tries to place windows automatically, so they don't overlap. See discussion below for details. Thus, the behaviour described below may partically only reflect the GNOME pre-v3.32 status.
Edit2: Actually, it has not changed.
I've been using GNOME for some time, and the very first thing I change, because it is usually the very first thing that bothers me, is the /org/gnome/mutter/center-new-windows
.
Current setting is: False, i.e. show windows by default at 0,0 when they are shown. I propose default setting: True, i.e. center new windows, when they are shown.
Reasoning
- This seems to be a popular question (another link) with, summed together, over 25 000 views.
- IMHO, it makes no sense to show windows at 0.0 (top left) position of the screen. Who would want to see them there? Usually all users do hardly care where a window is shown, but if it is shown in such a irregular ("extreme") place, i.e. exactly in a corner, that is noticeable.
- We can assume that most users maybe find it disturbing, but do not care enough in order to search for how to change that or so, as it is only a small thing, which annoys. The problem is: It degrades the user experience every time it happens when such a window is shown, so it may not be (considered) a particularly big thing, but when users will include this – deliberately or not – when they evaluate their experience on GNOME/on Linux/etc. In short: It's a small detail, but it matters.
- AFAIK, not all programs respect that setting and may show itself anyway in the middle or so. This may lead to inconsistencies.
- The center seems to be the most "neutral" place to start showing a window. Everywhere else is noticeable (as stated above) and feels award to the user (at least this is how I feel when applications do so).
- Showing new popups/windows/etc. in the center is a common UI/UX pattern, which can be seen everywhere, be it websites, which show popups or many other things. Even simple stuff like
alert()
in JS usually follows this pattern (judging from Firefox' behaviour here).
Edited by rugk