Back in the 2.6 era yes, this was the behavior. It was changed because in my opinion it seems the Gnome Developers since around Gnome 3 jumped the shark. People

Back in the 2.6 era yes, this was the behavior. It was changed because in my opinion it seems the Gnome Developers since around Gnome 3 jumped the shark. People make suggestions, they argue some divine vision of how computers work, and a year later they are still hemorrhaging users and have little adoption because of their iron clad positions.