unity-design team mailing list archive

[Robin Anderson <afisynte@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's an idea for a kind of Mac OS X Expose fullscreen (in the way Apple's
Front Row fullscreens) way to move either windows or all windows of an
application from workspaces. Also is probably touch-friendly. I want to get
the general idea of moving windows/applications between workspaces by
dragging *icons* between workspaces out there. Hopefully people get
inspiration from this.

Two workspaces, Firefox selected
http://imgur.com/vZzve.png

Four workspaces, all of them shown and set to be shown
http://imgur.com/HBmkx.png

Four workspaces, two shown and set to be shown, on page one, and Firefox is
selected
http://imgur.com/4pMsK.png

Firefox being dragged to another workspace
http://imgur.com/pRhzZ.png

Notes:
Definitely needs spacing fixed up
I just used the most basic colors
Dots are page markers, black dot is the current page
Brightness up or colored at all basically means selected
Workspace numbers or names might be good

I hope:
A good hotkey system would be included to bring it up and navigate.
The placement of the close buttons at the top could be customized.
The color of the boxes around the icons are similar to the panel colors, so
the way icons for applications are viewed across the system are similar

I take inspiration from these:
http://iphonehelp.in/content/uploads/2009/04/safari-30-windows.png (mirror:
http://imgur.com/3ZjhY.png )
http://www.flickr.com/photos/totalaldo/4505453992/sizes/o/ (mirror:
http://imgur.com/KMvwm.png )
http://davidhayden.com/photos/AppleSpaces.jpg (mirror:
http://imgur.com/dYYMz.jpg )
Videos of Apple Spaces on YouTube

Apple Spaces really looks pretty nice, I've never used them though. There
are a lot of videos on YouTube showing ways to interact with them. I'm just
not sure how to get people to start using them unless they're automatically
activated or used somehow. But what kind of initial setup would be good for
what applications to open in certain workspaces? What names should default
workspace have?

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Robin Anderson <afisynte@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I think a distinction should be made between what would work well on
> desktops and what would work well on netbooks. Using only maximized windows
> on a 24in screen for example doesn't sound like something people would be
> into.
>
> As screen size gets bigger I see window management going more towards easy
> window placement, the way something like Bluetile does perhaps. I think
> users would want to easily 'dock' windows to take up something like a corner
> of the screen rather than going between workspaces to interact with multiple
> windows.
>