unity-design team mailing list archive

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, confusing indeed!

I think the logic should be:
- A click on a Launcher Icons does what it takes to bring the associated 
application to the top.
- Thus if the application isn't running, it will be started.
- Since the scope is applications, not windows, bringing the application 
to the top can mean bringing all windows of the application to the top, 
keeping their relative z-order.

Temporarily changing the stacking, to put windoes other then one chosen 
application window back to where the were should be avoided, as that 
means the click starts a mode instead of being a single, immediate action.

This leads to 3 questions:
- How to handle minimized windows?
- What to do about application windows spread across workspaces?
- What should happen on a Launcher icon click, if the associated 
application is already on top?


How to handle minimized windows?

A: Abandon minimization ...
B: Only bring up the non-minimized windows. But then you pretty much 
have to un-minimize all windows, if there would be none left.
C: Pretend minimized windows are still in the z-stack, but have fallen 
to below the desktop. On bringing all windows of an application to the 
top, its minimized windows will be un-minimized and put below all its 
other windows.


What to do about application windows spread across workspaces?

Neither having Launcher-clicks sometimes (but not always) causing jumps 
to other workspaces or bringing up no windows on the current workspace 
are attractive options.

A: Abandon workspacces to avoid the conflict between per-application and 
per-workspace access.
B: Change the Launcher to work per workspace, making it act like windows 
on other workspaces do not exist.
C: On Launcher-click, jump to the workspace with the most recently used 
window of the application, moved to the top
D: Raise windows of the application on the current workspace. If there 
are none:
   D1: Do nothing.
   D2: Jump to other workspace as in C.

For C and D, the Launcher could indicate, if an applications has 
windows, but none on the current workspace. But I think that would be 
too much (too crowded, too complicated, too hard to decipher).


What should happen on a Launcher icon click, if the associated 
application is already on top?

A: Nothing, to avoid conditional behavior / modality. I would say the 
Icon should change, to look "disabled", not react on left-clicks, but of 
course there are still middle- and right-clicks ...
B: Trigger Scale (current choice)
C: Minimize all

The bad thing about B is that it starts a mode, instead of being an 
immediate action. I see no reason for a user to expect any one of the 3 
possibilities.


--
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/