Update Feb 11, 2012 — It seems that the Gnome Shell extensions eco-system has grown up quickly, and there are now tons of extensions that do all kinds of fun stuff, include one to do exactly what I describe below — without having to customize the javascript.

I have been forcing myself to use the new Gnome 3 window manager, which has been the default in Fedora since release 15.   At first I absolutely hated it, but a lot of that was due to the radical change in thinking about a desktop environment.

I have since come to like it and appreciate it, but there are still some things that are infuriating:

• It’s not very configurable — at least not without installing tweak tools or modifying the source code.
• Some things require two steps.  For example, there is not a way to shut down your system without first logging out, and then using the shut down icon from the login screen.   That’s fine for me because I know how to shut down from the command prompt, which is always open, but still clunky and cumbersome out of the box.
• The hot area in the upper left-hand part of the screen looks cool when activated, but it is so annoying.   I find my mouse in the upper left-hand corner of the screen all the time, and my intention is not to bring up the activity screen.   This is one of those things that is not configurable as far as I can see, and I’ve done lots of googling.
• There is no visual way to see what applications are running without doing something.  In other Window Managers and previously in Gnome you could look at a task bar to see instantly what you had going on.   Yes, it was configurable, too so you could take it away if you didn’t care.   I still miss that after months of use.   Yes, the screen is more sleek and uncluttered but I prefer functionality over form!  Give me a choice.

Luckily, I did find that much of the Gnome shell is written in Javascript and somebody already studied the code and found how to disable the hot area in the upper left.  Yay!   I’m including the code change here for my own records in case I can’t find it again, and maybe it will help someone else out there.

This is a system-wide hack, not user specific.  That’s fine for me because I’m the only user of my machine, but this would not work on a multi-user machine where everyone has a different preference for this setting.    That’s why this should be built in as configurable!

The javascript (at least in Fedora 16) is stored in /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/.   The file that needs to be modified is layout.js.   I made a copy of the file before modifying it just in case I hosed things up.

Note that after applying this change you can still get the effect either by hitting the Super (Windows) key or clicking the “Activities” item in the upper left-hand corner.  The change also doesn’t take effect until you restart Gnome.

The previous version of the site was hosted by Google Apps, but this new one is on our own server in the basement, and powered by WordPress. That means it might be down from time to time, for sure once a week when the virtual matchine this site runs on is shut down and backed up. But it’s just our site for sharing stuff with friends and family, so no biggie, right?!

Most of the work was completed by our contractor in February, but we did a number of things ourselves, so we officially closed the book on the project in June.

Our initial photo diary can be found here.