# gnome-shell-extension: dock-singleclick
UPDATE: since another extension that does this is available from extensions.gnome.org, I deleted the repository. Good riddance.
One of the things people usually complain about Gnome-shell is that, for opening a new window from the dock, when a window of the application is already open, you must press Control and the clicking, instead of simply clicking, as it was the case with Gnome 2 launchers. What people fail to uderstand is that the dock is application-centric, not window-centric, and that it must work that way in order to make sense. The first time you click, you go to the application (it launches), and the second time too (it goes to the open window(s)). That’s also why it makes sense to show only one icon per application in the dock. Opening a new window is a secondary action, and not all applications will support it (some applications must have only one instance, for example — this has been contemplated in the new GTK+3 APIs, for example).
Anyway, people complain about this. What I’m quite surprised is that most people stop there, when in reality they can fix those things if they really wanted. The full source of the gnome-shell interface is available locally, as javascript, and there is a quite good extension API. I can’t deny, though, that writing extesions for this system isn’t very straightforward yet, because the documentation is lacking, but this is not unsurmountable.
So… I’ve written an extension to allow people to open a new instance of the application with a single click. By default, it is enabled only for terminals; you must tweak a variable for extending it as you please. I think that’s fair enough. This extension exists against my better judgement (being used to the way gnome-shell works, having icons that launch applications seems like utter madness!).
@github: gnome-shell-extension-dock-singleclick
