Hands-on with Ubuntu’s new Unity netbook shell

“During a keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Belgium,
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth unveiled a new lightweight user
interface shell called Unity. The new shell is designed to use
screen space more efficiently and consume fewer system resources
than a conventional desktop environment. It will be a key component
of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition and a new instant-on computing
platform called Ubuntu Light.

“The Unity environment eschews the conventional GNOME panel
configuration. It includes a dock-like launcher and task management
panel that is displayed vertically along the left-hand side. The
top panel will house application indicators, window indicators, and
the menubar of the active window. Moving the menu out of individual
windows and into a global menu bar will reduce wasted vertical
screen space, leaving more room for content.

“Window indicators (windicators) are a new concept that
Shuttleworth introduced in a blog entry last week. Designed to help
reduce the need for status bars, they are interactive icon-based
widgets that are specific to a window. They can be used to signify
that an operation is being performed, notify the user of
application events, or to control application status. For example,
you could use a windicator to display a progress spinner when a
program is loading data.”

Complete Story