My biggest concern is that there aren’t any changes to the shell or GTK that would break any of my extensions.
I’m definitely in the minority with left sidebar, but the reason is simple: more screen real estate. If the dock is on the bottom, you sacrific limited height. Side is better.
I think if I was going to go side, it’d be the right side. Not sure why, but I think it would just feel more natural to me. Then again maybe I’m wrong, I never tried it.
There’s almost always some changes going on there, but as long as the extensions you use are actively maintained by the developer, generally speaking, you shouldn’t have a problem for new releases. Many of the most popular/downloaded extensions will work on day 1 of release. Any others generally get updated within that first month, so long as the dev has the free time available to update it.
If any of your extensions haven’t been updated in a couple releases, expect it to break at some point. The great thing about extensions, is you can always fork it and update it if you need to or if the maintainer abandons it, which does happen from time to time.
Have to tried no dock? 100% real estate coverage increased 
You would have a lot more screen real estate if you set the sidebar to auto hide when a window is maximized. My dock in on the bottom, but it’s set to auto hide. When I need it, I just hover my mouse near the bottom of the screen and it appears.
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Why not just set the dock to auto hide, like it does on Android, iOS/iPadOS, ChromeOS, and MacOS? I don’t understand to need to have it present when a window is at full screen, especially since the dock will unhide itself on a mouse hover, when you touch the screen near it, when you swipe up on the screen/touch pad, or when you click the Activities tab.
Nothing is one size fits all you know. Otherwise we’d all be on the same DE…you know, like that Microsoft OS I think I heard about…
Extensions Works Fine with 43.alpha in Fedora rawhide, new Device Security panel in Settings, It’s still experimental, but I’ve been testing things with selinux and secure-boot to translate the panel.
Quick settings extension.
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Scrollbars become very enjoyable when combined with a dock on the right.
/s
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I’m trying to remember the lsst time i actually used a scrollbar to scroll. Usually i use my trackpad or a wheel or just the arrow keys. Do maybe it won’t impact me much. Isle who actually use the scrollbar though…
Being ambidextrous, I favor the left hand, so maybe that’s why. I will try the right for a while. It still maximizes screen real estate on my tiny 15.4" screen.
Me I’m on top above Gnome. 
Here a list so far. I have Bitwarden paid version workin gproperly, but I see they are having a problem wih the free version from Firefox extension library.
https://wiki.gnome.org/Cleo%20Menezes%20Jr./WebExtensions
Good point. I’ll give it a try 
Nice post! 
/s means sarcasm.
In other words I don’t recommend a dock on right.
Having the dock on the side was an old Afterstep/WindowMaker layout (both of which were clones of NeXTSTEP, the basis for MacOS-X) that somehow crept it’s way into Ubuntu’s default GNOME 3.x desktop layout.
http://www.afterstep.org/
https://www.windowmaker.org/
Originally, GNOME had the taskbar on the bottom and menu bar on the top, providing the most screen real estate. Modern UIs (iOS, Android, iPadOS, ChromeOS, MacOS, Windows 11) have a dock on the bottom, similar to Unix’s Common Desktop Environment (CDE).
Except, unlike CDE, in modern UIs the dock is set to autohide, providing for maximum screen real estate.
So, whether you use your dock/panel on the bottom or the side, you get the most screen real estate by setting the dock to autohide when windows are maximized:
Unless you just like having the dock visible while your applications are at full screen…
You know, I actually liked XFCE back when it was a GTK-based visual clone of CDE…too bad no one makes one anymore…
I miss a lot about CDE also. I loved the interaction with CDE’s dock. The docks on modern UIs like MacOS and Android are a lot cleaner, but I think they’re missing some of CDE’s flare.
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