Possibly controversial #Linux opinion:
I think #Gnome should seriously consider moving the top bar to the side. 2 reasons:
1. Vertical space is more valuable than horizontal in most cases, because there's less of it (especially as the number of ultra widescreens increases) and probably most things you look at while not in full screen mode is taller than wide.
2. By moving the bar to the side the hot corner can be moved to the bottom, significantly decreasing the distance to the dash/dock
@forteller That's why I use #KDE. I can do whatever I want. Just saying...
@cslinuxboy I can too, I've had it on the side for some time now. But defaults matter.
And also I understand that you can change it out of the box on KDE whereas you need an extension on Gnome, but that doesn't bother me. I just love Gnome, I've always come back whenever I've tried something else.
The bar on the side would need to use a lot more space since the text in most of the world is horizontal not vertical, also I don't see how changing the corner would make the difference since mouse cursor is mostly in a very central area of the screen so every corner is about the same distance from the mouse. In either case I don't see the problem with current implementation and I think that changing it would only produce a worse outcome.
What I do like doing on my systems is hiding the top bar all together when not in overview since I don't need that information all the time and it's easy to access it when I need it with one flick of the mouse or tap on the super key. Of course I don't want to argue that that's a good default, but it works great for me
@gloopsies I get that way of doing it, but I prefer to always be able to see the clock. If there was a way to only have to clock visible, but no other part of the bar, I'd probably prefer that. The early @elementary OS seemed to have something like that, with their Wingpanel, but they moved away from that pretty quickly unfortunately.
@gloopsies There's very little text in the bar. Ok, some (crazy) people have the name of the day there, but other than that it's only the "Activities" thing (which seems to be about to be replaced anyway) and the clock. The clock can be shown as two numbers on top and two on bottom, no problem.
The dash is on the bottom middle, while the hot corner now is on the top corner. Moving it to the bottom corner would drastically decrease distance from opening the overview to interacting with the dash.
@forteller I like the top bar but I never understood why the default position of the dock is at the bottom for said reason (yes, I use the Dash to Dock extension).
I'd prefer both positions to be customizable but, well, GNOME people...
@forteller One issue I'm having with having it to the side, is that it increases neck movement as my eyes are oriented with the top of the screen.
Another "issue" is that one would end up with different patterns on desktop/mobile.