In Gnome-3 you can Alt - Tab as normal through active applications.
But you can also Alt-~ to cycle through only active application windows.
For instance, firefox usually has two windows open for me, the browser window, and the download window. 

First hour of Gnome 3 usage...

Fedora 15 is out, and includes the brand spanking new Gnome 3. I thought I'd try it out. The idea is to make the interface simpler, cleaner and more modern. What I don't understand is how the changes in Gnome 3 do that? I've read all the justifications that are out there. I don't agree with them.  Maybe these changes make sense given time. I'll try to use it for a few days and see.

Here are thoughts after the first hour or so of usage...

I downloaded the LiveCD which boots into a fully functional Fedora system. To install to the hard drive you start the installation application. Once the system is installed, the installation application exits and you are left with the Fedora system running of the LiveCD. I look for a way to reboot. I can't find a way to reboot or shutdown the system. On the top right hand side if you click on your user name, the only option is to suspend the machine. Ummm...

Turns out you have to press Alt - and click on the username and the suspend option will change to "Power Off". WTH!

Ok, I restart the system. First thing I want to do is to change the fonts. They are never right on any distro. How do I do that? Umm....

Turns out gnome-shell in Gnome 3 is a complete rewrite based on CSS and JS and you have to go edit:
/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css.

Or you can install Gnome Tweak Tool:
in a terminal as root run the following command: yum install gnome-tweak-tool. Thats right, changing fonts so your eyes don't hurt means you have to install an obscure utility you didn't know about. How simple.

 Want to minimize/maximize a window...

As can be seen in the screenshot, there is only one button on the window. Close.

If you want to maximize the window, you can double click on the title. The Gnome developers believe you don't need to minimize. You can still get those options if you right click on the title.

No wonder Ubuntu decided to go to Unity. These changes make no sense to me, it just seems to make things harder.

Chromebook fast boot doesn't seem that fast...

Years ago, I saw BeOS boot up in 15 seconds. Lately I've installed an SSD on my Core i3 laptop and have Ubuntu Natty boot up in seconds. Each of these are full fledged OS's. Keeping that in mind the chromebook's boot up speed doesn't seem that fast to me. Anyone else feel that way? I think 7 seconds is 5 seconds too much!

Six Reasons Why Chromebooks Are a Bad Idea - Technology Review

Reading this article Six Reasons Why Chromebooks Are a Bad Idea - Technology Review I ran into the following quote:

"People aren't ready to trust the cloud, claims InformationWeek:"

That makes it sound like its the peoples fault that they don't trust the cloud. It should be the other way round, you can't trust the cloud (networks go down, servers get hacked, etc.).