[lloydde]

I don’t doubt it, but the post does not lay out the timeline. Those events likely aligned the business interests to what the designers were already wanting to make happen. From what I recall, by 2004, Linux on Desktop designers were already looking to move on from mimic and displace Windows to win on their own terms. There seemed to be a lot of energy do something new and different by 2005. It seemed like there was a lot of wireframes and prototypes in both GNOME and KDE camps. Also around 2005, touchscreen tablets were also having a moment. I think I remember a popular Nokia model. 2006 had Sugar UI for interactive learning on OLPC XO.

[dvhh]

I remember gnome 3 being a lot more touchscreen friendly.

One big turnoff was that it wasn't compatible with my favorite gnome 2 theme.

In the end, I switched to XFCE.

[lproven]

[Article author here]

I provided citations for my claims.

Can we see some for yours, please?

[lloydde]

I am going from memory. I can anchor the memories as September 2005 till early 2006 as it was a memorable time for me. I spent that time working out of a Palo Alto garage working on a "web 2.0" web browser, Flock, with a small group of people that included a few who had previously been at Eazel and were still passionate GNOME participants.

Thinking further on it now, unrelated to that work, Jeff Waugh @jdub would be person I'd go to for receipts.

If I was searching the web, I'd be looking for references to Gnome ToPaZ with topaz being a play on ThreePointZero:

"When the prospect of GNOME 3 was first discussed by developers in 2005, the concept took on a life of its own among the users who imagined that it would be an audacious reinvention of the desktop with completely new interaction paradigms and a new kind of user interface. This pie-in-the-sky vision was referred to as ToPaZ, word play on the phrase three-point-zero. " https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/07/gnome...

[lloydde]

December 2005 article:

"So, the GNOME people have started to focus on questions such as universal access, so if you have motor difficulties or other disabilities, software still should be usable. Likewise, it shouldn't matter what language you use or character set you need, software should be usable.

Part of Galago and Telepathy comes from getting beyond questions of windows, menus, icons and pointers and focusing on the things people really care about. In Jeff's view, these things are people, events, documents and sex. When questions of when GNOME 3.0 will be released arose, people have suggested it was a stupid idea. So Jeff came up with TOPAZ, taking the first letters from Three Point Zero and inserting some vowels. TOPAZ is not planned for release at this time."

An Evening with Jeff Waugh Linux Journal by Colin McGregor on December 27, 2005 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8752