Please, all,  read to the end.

You all know I’m a Lightning Launcher fanatic, using it for years now. And for sure I will never ever use any other launcher! But lately I’m sad getting more and more frustrated working on templates for  LLx. Really, the last weeks I trashed half a dozen or so templates I was working on. Simply because they did not work in practice as they should in theory — because of bugs and I finally gave up literally cursing and crying when I found no workarounds.

Just some simple examples:

Swipe gestures and panels

I have a panel with vertical scrolling. Swiping horizontally should scroll desktops. I does not. As workaround I even added swipe left/right gestures to the panel that scrolled to desktop shortcuts left and right. (Looked and felt terrible BTW).

Back button

Nothing much to say, reported that lately. Use shortcuts to jump from desktop to a position inside panel and your lost trying to return with “back” button.

To be honest: I did not even try any of the latest features added to LL(x). And reading the the postings the last weeks shows, new users still struggle with basic features. LLx is powerful, but it’s gettings overwhelming even for experienced users.

I don’t want to see LLx go down because it’s some day so powerful only long time hardcore users understand and newbies would need a 3 weeks training with certification to do basic stuff — leave alone handle the beast.

As much as I liked the idea of scripting, the more I think about it (I’m really sorry to say that): I don’t think it is the right way. How many users would (and could) use scripting finally? About 1%? … and how many of those would do something useful with it?

I currently have the feeling too much energy in LLx development i spent in the wrong direction. Especially when those little bugs keep crawling out and disturbing my every day life with LLx.