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The conventional two-panel layout has been replaced by one panel which is present at the top of the screen. It houses the
Activities button, the calendar/date/time and some useful widgets. Surprisingly, the shutdown option is missing. I later found out that the developers felt it was more appropriate to hibernate the system than to shut it down. So you need to change your habits if you want to use the new interface.
GNOME menus spread throughout the screen and are very easy to navigate. They are quite suitable for touch based devices. Another cool feature which is sure to appeal to many users is the introduction of various keyboard shortcuts. You can do almost everything with you keyboard. The same can be said for the mouse if you want to use it (mouse gestures like moving to the top left corner of the screen opens the Activities window).
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GNOME-shell has a totally new way to manage workspaces which I admit is really cool (it is better than the way Unity manages workspaces). Moving an application to a different workspace and switching between workspaces is a breeze. This helps Fedora 15 deliver on its promise for distraction free computing. Everything seems to move out of you way when you are using a particular application.
Clicking on the Activities button reveals a dock at the side, a search bar and a preview of all the windows present in the workspace. Needless to say, favorite applications can be added and re-arranged on the dock. The right side of the screen houses the workspaces. The default Adwaita GNOME-shell theme is present in Fedora (and there are no front ends to change the GTK3 and GNOME-shell themes). Certain applications (like Firefox) might look a bit odd on Fedora. Fedora also provides a great set of wallpapers with the default striped wallpaper being a derivative of the GNOME 3 wallpaper.
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Overall, the system looks quite tidy and streamlined but there is still a lot of work to be done, especially by the GNOME team. The theme still has some glitches but compared to Fedora 14 the entire visual style has received a massive upgrade.
There is a lot of unfinished work (like GDM yet to be ported to GTK3) and various unusual problems, like the immovable floating dialog boxes, add to the discomfort. A user has to be patient enough to get used to the new way of interacting with your computer and wait for fixes for these minor bugs.
