unity-design team mailing list archive

[Niklas Rosenqvist <niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx>]

 2011/5/15 Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>
> [...] Though I have to say I really don't
> like the hover in the Win 7 taskbar, mouse clicking or clicking and
> dragging is faster. The sole reason for this feature after all is
> speedy access to all windows.

Is it really needed to have a delay on showing the windows for the current
applications? I know Windows 7 has it and I prefer the hover over the
clicking when using a touchpad since it's much more comfortable not having
to click and do extra movements. But can't this be solved with hover and a
minimal delay?

> Unlike Win 7 there is an "expose" view
> so if those window thumbnails are slow no one is going to use them
> over the current scale views.
Unity has many different ways to switch windows and I'm used to switching
with alt+tab but for some reason it's window is very slow and takes some
time to pop up before I can switch to the desired window. What's up with
that?

2011/5/15 Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>

> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:04 AM, Brandon Watkins <bwat47@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Unity badly needs better ways to deal with applications that have
> multiple windows open. Currently if you have a program with multiple windows
> open, and you click its icon on the dock it just brings every window to the
> front. This is terrible behaviour and would be downright overwelming for new
> users.
>
> I agree with the problem. Some corrections though...
> A single click focuses the last used window (singular).
>
> > 1. Reversing the currently default behavior. Currently single click
> brings all windows to the front. Double click brings up scale. Unity is
> supposed to be easy to use, new users would not know to double click,
> instead they will click and be assaulted with windows. IMO single click to
> bring up scale and double click to bring forward all windows would make more
> sense.
>
> It's not really a double click: it's two single clicks. The first
> focuses the last window as above, a subsequent click will open the
> spread view. Here's where this difference becomes apparent: If you are
> trying to switch from one window to another within the same app you
> only need a single click for the spread view.
>
> It's not immediately discoverable but I think it's simple enough that
> people figure it out after a view minutes of playing with the Unity
> launcher. I'm against reversing it because among other issues you will
> always at a minimum need one mouse click more to do the same thing.
>
>
> > 2. Windows 7-like thumbnails. Hovering over and/or clicking the icon
> could bring up thumnnails that you could click on to bring forward the
> desired window.
>
> Suggested multiple times, maybe the most sought after feature on the
> mailing list lately (hint, hint). Though I have to say I really don't
> like the hover in the Win 7 taskbar, mouse clicking or clicking and
> dragging is faster. The sole reason for this feature after all is
> speedy access to all windows. Unlike Win 7 there is an "expose" view
> so if those window thumbnails are slow no one is going to use them
> over the current scale views.
>
> > 3. Slide-Down thumbnails. When you have multiple windows open there could
> be OSX-Like thumbnails in the launcher, but hidden until you click the app
> icon. For example you would click the application icon and if it has
> multiple windows open thumbnails for these would slide down from under the
> icon in the launcher. For this to be intuitive there would need to be an
> indicator on the dock icons that shows it has multiple windows open.
>
> This is an interesting design because it still preserves one goal of
> the launcher: predictable icon placement (something were OS X dock
> fails miserably). If the animation is fast this would solve the speed
> problem of above very elegantly. One issue: especially all text based
> windows will look pretty much the same in the thumbnail view, window
> titles are needed to distinguish those but titles don't really fit
> into the narrow launcher (the reason why I prefer horizontal panels on
> larger screens...;) )
>
> There already is an indicator: little arrows on the right side of an
> app icon show how many windows are open.
>
> > When you bring up scale there should be an X button on the top right of
> every window so you can close windows within scale (See: Gnome Shell)
>
> Yes, and a minimize button (or at least hidden via middle click or
> something) because unlike in G3 you can still hide windows with a
> button.
> Let me repeat that we need to rethink the term "minimizing" and the
> layout of the button which was designed with a taskbar in mind.
> Secondly, minimized (or "hidden") windows should be represented
> differently in the Scale view. Reason being: people minimize to get
> stuff out of their way, preserve for later and so on. A user
> deliberately chooses not to see those windows so why should those
> become mixed with the "active" windows in the spread view?
>
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