unity-design team mailing list archive

[Diego Moya <turingt@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 22 April 2010 12:59, Vishnoo wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 08:49 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>> On 22/04/10 04:27, Robin Anderson wrote:
>> It's a good point. The workspaces experience has languished, and I'd
>> like for us to climb in and improve it substantially. At the moment, we
>> do a half-hearted job - we ship what's there but as you say, only
>> configure two workspaces.
>
> For 10.04 , we now ship with 4 workspaces as the default.
>
> Oh workspaces are one of the better ways to actually manage /not/
> minimizing a long-running-app to systray, err, notification area ;-)
>
> IMO , workspaces are one of the untapped resources , we havent been able
> to use workspaces to the full potential [yet].

The problem with workspaces is, they require too much manual handling
to benefit from their organization. You have to think in advance what
applications want together to open them in the same workspace, or
spend some time rearranging them every time you need a different
arrangement.

I know I only use workspaces when the current desktop is in the "too
cluttered" space and I need a fresh start to begin a new unrelated
task. (BTW this is also how I use tabs in tabbed browsers. There's a
common pattern for an uncovered need laying somewhere here).


>
> What can be done is have Task-based workspaces, similar to the grouping
> the apps in the messaging menu , we could have the messaging apps stay
> in only one workspace. To probably do this well, we'd need to get a good
> set of personas.

This would help with the "where should I open this application", they
could be automatically sorted to the correct workspace when opened.
But doesn't cover the need for simultaneous tasks ("I want to work on
this document while following an IM conversation"), nor helps with new
kind of tasks for which there isn't a predefined configuration.

IMHO the preferred solution would be some lightweight interaction that
allowed to mix and match windows from several workspaces without
requiring to rearrange them one by one. Maybe something like the
Picture-in-picture feature found in TVs. The preview feature already
available in the panel workspace selector can serve as the basis for
this "simultaneous awareness of several workspace contents".



> Would it be wise to open a wiki page and have a list of applications
> that use the notification area? [if we narrow it down , we would
> probably we stuck with 10-20 apps which need a good alternative..]
> And Work out each application's use of the area and then work out the
> best way to handle them?

I think that would be great, yes. Some task analysis based on the
current popular usages and how they interact with each other, before
creating a new global organization scheme.