unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Siegel <david.siegel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We have a great metaphor that's familiar to users and already
implemented: minimized windows! There's already a button on every
single window dedicated to getting a window out of your way if you're
not interested in the window but still want to retain it.

Why aren't we using this? Why are we inventing more ways to minimize
windows? There should be only one way to do it. If there's something
currently flawed with how we're minimizing windows, let's fix it and
make this highly visible feature useful. For starters, it's been
suggested that minimized windows shouldn't appear when alt-tabbing.

Do you use minimized windows? Why or why not? How do you use them?

David


On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 17 May 2010 10:52, David Siegel <david.siegel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> <cringe>
>>
>> If you are designing an interface, and suddenly you believe you need
>> to add a "bucket", this is a good sign that your initial design failed
>> somewhere. I would encourage you to "shelve the bucket" and revisit
>> your earlier assumptions. Shake things up a bit and ask yourself "what
>> could I do differently so that I don't need a 'bucket'?" Challenge
>> yourself to make a fundamental change to your design so the bucket
>> isn't needed.
>
> As I mentioned in another thread, the *bucket* would just be
> duplicating the window switcher, just like minimizing to tray does.
> Which are plasters over the fact that the window-switcher applet just
> doesn't deal well with many windows - so minimize to tray exists to
> free up space. Unity is on the right track with its dock, but is
> obviously tailored to netbooks, we could really do with something
> similar for the desktop (*cough* dockbarx *cough*) :)
>
> Anyway, ideally we'd have one place to look for application windows,
> at the moment we have two (window-switcher and notification
> area/indicator applet), potentially several if you factor in
> workspaces*.
>
> Luke.
>
> *P.S. I'd love it if whatever window-switcher replacement grouped
> windows by workspace, I'd then actually use them.
>