unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Prieto <frandavid100@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Conscious user, thanks for your comments,

1) Does not seem to work for applications with multiple windows
> (you already know that per your comment in Launchpad)
>

I do know, and I haven't really come up with a good way to solve that. One
of my main reasons to send this mail was actually to see if someone would
bring that up and maybe propose a good way to solve it.

2) Even for applications with a single window, I believe cases
> where users are not interested in such association are frequent.
> Several users treat workspaces as extra space to be used as
> needed (Gnome shell for example was designed with that
> in mind) and not as fixed spaces.
>

I'm not sure I'm following you here. You say it's frequent for users not to
want which association? You mean they don't want "four workspaces" but add
and remove them as needed? If that's what you mean, I think Seb's idea
addresses that gracefully, offering an easy way to add and remove additional
workspaces right on the spot.

3) The size, and therefore easiness of interaction, of each
> workspace is proportional to the number of itens inside it.
> This makes switching to a specific workspace, literally, a
> moving target.
>

True. I've made a second group of mockups, based on Seb's idea, which I
think will solve that problem. Please take a look at them:

   - http://imgur.com/492ux.png
   - http://imgur.com/zSlew.png

In the first mockup you see the situation with only one workspace: There are
no empty workspaces, only the one being used (with firefox and hamster
windows) and a second, empty one, which you can click or drag launchers to.

When you drag a launcher to that second workspace or navigate to it and open
an app (in the second mockup I opened GIMP), a third, empty workspace
appears which you can in turn navigate to.

Therefore, there is always one empty desktop (plus the ones that are in
use). Never more, never less.

4) Disposing workspaces from a 2x2 grid in a linear stack makes
> the association unnatural.
>

Might be... definitely not my opinion! Would like to hear if others agree,
though.


> 5) In my opinion, the presentation as it is is not noticeable enough.
> On the other hand, I cannot suggest anything more noticeable that
> would not be excessively cluttered.
>

Maybe by taking some empty vertical space. Again, please see the new
mockups. Following Seb's idea, I added an empty header to each workspace
that could open its name (a la quicklist) when you hover over it, be clicked
to move to it, clicked again to trigger expose, be grabbed to drag the
workspace up or down (therefore changing its order) or be right-clicked to
bring a quicklist with options.


> Overall, in my opinion, the idea seems to add clutter and complexity
> without bringing too many advantages.
>
Which problem, exactly, you are trying to solve?
>

I think it gives the user a way to add workspaces easily AND use them
correctly (i.e. not having empty workspaces just laying around), allows the
user to perform an expose only on the current workspace, allows easy
reordering of the workspaces and allows keeping an eye of which apps are in
the current workspace (making it easier to find them in the sidebar because
those on other workspaces don't get in the way).

I do think improves the user experience.