See What’s New in Unity 5.0

Don’t think it will happen for two reasons. One is that user testing was done and found that people wanted a larger, more 3D-looking BFB than when it was in the panel. Also, I think Mark Shuttleworth said before that a reason for not allowing the launcher to move to other sides of the screen was that it always needed to be next to the BFB; now that it is in the launcher, this would make more customization possible (like in a certain Unity mod that already exists).

OS X doesn’t have an important menu in a corner. Spotlight is too slow to be super useful as a launcher, and the Apple Menu is more like the device menu (Ubuntu’s gear in the upper right)

And, the usability tests found that people didn’t know the BFB was clickable when it was in the corner. They wanted to click the Home Folder icon instead.

Not going to happen. 

I run Ubuntu and have my ‘button’ in the same place as Windows has since WIn95…..

Maybe you can set the fading time for a year or sth? ;)

I really want this as well. Would it be so difficult to add a checkbox do do this?

Agreed, I moved back to Windows 7 until this mess gets sorted out. This fading is even worse than old instant hiding, it’s like saying “neeneer here’s the menu, OH YOU WANT IT, F**K YOU, WE’LL FADE IT AWAY HAHAHAAH!”

use ubuntu tweak http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

There will be an option to have standard in-window app menus in precice BTW.
The canoncial design team have stated that unity was never supposed to be so unconfigurable, but had to be due to limited resources, since this is now “a checkbox away” I think there’s a very real chance of this happening as well.

You can in Unity 5.0 as of right now.

Add a bug or blueprint to the Unity Launchpad.

 You can have it permanently visible.  Just open Compiz Manager, and set the hide launcher setting to ‘Never’

Simples!

You might be able to set the menu fade timeout to a year or something like that. Then, when you open an app, the menu shows up and simply doesn’t go away.

 Gnome has not dropped the panels. Neither has Ubuntu. They are still available, and in the repositories. You now have to press alt to access the right-click menu and to move applets, and applets are grouped to the left, center or right. Other than that, it’s the same panels.  You can also use Gnome Panel with Unity if you want to. Not a problem at all.

Please stop spreading these rumors. You are participating in the removal of software you don’t want removed. Just install and use it. http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/gnome-session-fallback. Nobody will support it if everyone thinks that nobody wants it, and nobody will want it if everyone says it’s been dropped. It hasn’t. Yet. And there’s no real reason why it won’t still be usable ten years from now. If people want it.

I hear that newly installed apps will be added to the launcher by default now.

The first point you make is where most of my “usibility victims” fail. Out of 20 people (who have and haven’t used Ubuntu before) 20 told me they had real big problems finding apps. To NONE of them it occured, that “filter results” would lead them to app categories.

I think Ubuntu’s notification are great for most things, but for chat, GS is definitely superior.

Yes I really believe that Canonical hasn’t made any major changes or feature upgrades to their notification system. I am not sure if there are any changes under the hood but there are not changes with respect to usability or customization. 

 You can middle-click the icon to open a new instance. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, then shift+super+n will open a new instance of the nth launcher entry. For instance, if Nautilus is the first entry, then pressing super+shift+1 will open a new instance of Nautilus.

If you think this is exciting, wait until 14.04! 12.04 will look every bit as old and crusty as 10.04 does now, and people will be having a fit over GNOME 4 relying on the user having a 3D holographic monitor and want to get back to the traditional GNOME Shell / Unity that “just worked”.

Enjoy your news from the future! I better get back into my Delorean now before the Unity haters get me…

No.

Oww ok! Now I get it, nevermind ;)

Ubuntu uses the top panel to display titles and menus for applications. In Unity 4.24, applications show the title immediately, and doesn’t show the menu until you can actually use it; it’s hidden until the mouse enters the area or you use a keyboard shortcut to access them, such as F10. In Unity 5.0, the menus are displayed by default for x seconds, and then it fades back into displaying the window title.

I don’t really think it’s sufficient. If the titlebar and menu also had a golden background color (like when you drag a window to the top, for instance), it would be much easier to notice. But I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Try XFCE or LXDE.  They’re both panel-based, like Gnome 2.  Also, MATE is a Gnome 2 fork, but I’m not sure what condition it is in while running on Ubuntu.  

BFB = big FAT button lol

The main reason why it’s no easy task is because the traditional Linux community is very conservative and extremely resistant to change. The backlash and criticism are immense.

Not a DE, it’s a shell using the GNOME DE.

I agree here too, installed by default. Since they are going larger size disc image, space shouldn’t be a problem.

Wish there would be an option for a ‘bottom panel’.
Just Love some aspects of Unity. Clearly futuristic. However, I hope there would be an option for a ‘bottom panel’. This is so functional for certain tasks that requires several files of a particular program. 

Unity 5.0 can just be the answer to temporally add & remove the bottom panel on the fly. This can solve such a problematic & contentious issue.