unity-design team mailing list archive

[Xavier Guillot <Valeryan_24@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I was about to forward also the mail to the list.

I agree with some of these observations, I'd like to add some others.

Switch between 2 or multiple opened windows of same program by click in 
Unity's dock icon :


- One of the new amazing features of Ubuntu 11.10 and Unity was : if an 
application has 2 or more maximized windows opened (ie Firefox with 
navigation + bookmarks manager), a quick double click on its icon on 
Unity dock automatically switched from a window to another.

This was really useful, as normal switch with one click makes visible 
the thumbnails of all opened windows, but always with the current one on 
the left side of screen, so to change the window on foreground I have to 
do more move with mouse. This new possibility was just perfect !

But now it does not work anymore, a double click has just the same 
effect as simple click : displaying thumbnails of all windows from this 
application, no more direct switch between them, and quick return to 
current window.

I know there is a patch in a ppa to change this default behavior, but 
I'd prefer to have it as an option in System preferences.


- So, if the behavior of double click remains the same, ie: quickly show 
the 2 opened windows thumbnails and come back to the same window as 
before, why not change the default presentation of thumbnails when there 
are 2 instances of a program opened ?

I explain : you have for example Firefox browser and bookmarks manager 
both opened and maximized, so 2 left triangles on Unity launcher icon.

I am on the browser window and want to switch to bookmarks. I make 1 
left click on Firefox Unity icon.

It displays thumbnails of the 2 windows, at left the browser (where I 
was), at right the bookmarks.

If I want to stay on browser, I just have to click another time on Unity 
icon, easy, no mouse move, and browser comes back in foreground.

But if I want to change to go to another window, the bookmarks one, I 
have to move through half of the screen with the mouse to select it and 
have it on first place.


This is not logical, as 2 clicks on icon remain same window, changing 
for the 2nd instance should be easier and this one should be shown 
closer to the launcher, to make minimal mouse move.

This is the behavior we get when one of the 2 instances is not maximized 
on the screen (ie Firefox browser maximized + Firefox download manager 
not maximized opened), the downlaod manager thumbnail is well on the 
left, or when there are 3 windows of the same program opened : current 
is seen on the right, others on left and bottom, which is good.

I wrote all those remarks in the following bug report :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/859715


- If you have 3 instances maximized of the same program opened, ie 
Thunderbird main window and 2 mails, behavior is more logical :

When you click on the launcher icon, the current window is displayed at 
the top right of the screen, so the most far, that's OK, if I want to 
keep this on focus, I just jave to re-click on icon launcher.

On the top left corner there is the instance we were just before the 
current window, and on the bottom the 3rd one.

So the 2 other instances are closer to the launcher, that's perfect.

The problem occurs when we have 2 maximized windows of a program...

Best regards,

Xavier