unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Prieto <frandavid100@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

One of the few problems I have with Unity is that there is no way to perform
window-specific actions from the launcher: everything is app-specific. I can
press the launcher icon to focus an app's most recent window, but I can't
focus a specific window. I can't minimize a window by clicking the launcher
icon, see an app's different windows without focusing it, or launch a new
window.

I propose replacing Unity's current behaviour when you hover on a launcher
icon (where you only get the app's name) with something like this:
http://imgur.com/1cP0B.png


   - When you hover the cursor over Unity's launcher icon, you get a preview
   of all the open windows belonging to that app.
   - If one of them is the active window, it has some kind of visual
   indication (in the mockup it has an orange box around).
   - You can click the active window to minimize it, or click an inactive
   window to focus it.
   - You can right-click a window to get a contextual menu, where you can
   perform operations such as minimize, maximize, close, send to another
   workspace...
   - You can click a button (in the mockup, located at the left) in order to
   open a new window for that app.
   - You can drag that specific window, which solves the problem raised by
   Mark Shuttleworth (
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/667245/comments/10) about dragging
   launcher icons to other workspaces.

I would like the Ayatana team to consider implementing along the lines.