I think I grok the concept of activities, but I haven't been using them, waiting to see from my work patterns what the divisions need to be. Now I think I'm ready to give it a try, so I renamed my existing activity "Egypt" and gave my new one "Russia" as a working title (named for the wallpapers). Then I ran into a short list of things I can actually customize.

I have a side job that I do from home, and my thought was to use "Russia" for that activity, with the windows-based programs I use under WINE and DOSBOX, a unit converter and qalculator, pastebin, links to tech docs, a folder view for all of the spreadsheets I generate, etc. So far so good, I can put the links, launchers, and widgets on the desktop as I please. The problem is that one desktop is enough, two at the most, and I use 4 desktops in normal all-purpose "Egypt" mode.

Please correct my understanding if I'm wrong here:

1) A new activity allows me to change wallpapers and desktop widgets ONLY.

2) It does not allow me to change the number of desktops, their names, the panel or the dashboard widgets, or the color scheme to match the wallpapers which I use to visually differentiate each activity.

I'm actually a clean-desktop fan; I really like putting my widgets on the dashboard, and on panels that disappear, but the desktop is the last place I care to put them. That is however the ONLY place where I can put widgets unique to each activity, correct?

Thanks,

GEF

Hmm, Daisy seems to be helpful, a disappearing panel that is actually a widget, tied to a desktop without obscuring it.

On the downside aesthetically, I see that even when I load up wallpapers of Russian cathedrals, when I rotate the cube, I still see an Egyptian tomb painting behind it! I'm thinking that each activity needs wallpapers chosen according to some subordinate component of an over-arching theme across all activities, OR ELSE they collectively require a blank skydome and neutral (grayscale) color scheme.

GEF

Your answers in 1 and 2 are both correct.

For me this behaviour is a problem, too. Usually I place widgets in the panel. E.g for notifications this is very usefull and you have quicker access. But as gefagan already said, this is agains the concept of activities because the panel is the same for every panel.

From my point of view there are two different solutions to this:

(1) The widgets changes there behaviour depending on the current activity. Unfortunately there is not one widget supporting this.

(2) Allow different Panels on every single activity. Should be easier, I guess.

Widgets like Daisy or Fancy Tasks are nice, but they don't offer the same possibilities. I tried to use a group widget instead and place all my widgets there. But this doesn't work neither, because the widgets like shelf will not use there "icon-version" like they do when placed at the panel.