unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jonathan French <me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bumping so that the people back from UDS see this.

On 12 May 2012 19:19, Jonathan French <me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
> On 30/04/12 19:26, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
>
>> The design spec says if that an application supports multiple windows,
>> but there's only one open, then clicking the launcher entry should
>> display a spread with the already existing window, and an equal square
>> which represents a new window. Clicking it will create that window.
>>
>> I don't know what should happen if the application both has only one
>> window and doesn't support others. But suddenly minimizing windows in
>> that situation would be non-didactic since you're likely to want to open
>> a new window or access the spread. The same button must not be used to
>> both view and hide in different situations.
>>
>>  Ah, I hadn't seen that part of the spec. Interesting. I still think that
> in a lot of cases the button will be doing nothing, since this will
> presumably only work in apps with support specifically added for it.
>
>
> On 30/04/12 20:18, Nekhelesh wrote:
>
>> 1. Ubuntu 12.10 and onwards will have the new Unity spread behaviour
>> where when you click on the application icon, it either launches the
>> application if it is not open. If the application is already open, then it
>> will initiate the new Unity spread which was described in detail by John
>> Lea.
>>
> I know about the new Spread behaviour, as I mentioned this patch doesn't
> interfere with that.
>
>
> On 30/04/12 22:27, Connor Carney wrote:
>
>> Click-to-minimize breaks the fundamental concept of the unity launcher:
>> clicking on an application indicates that you want to use it.  Hiding the
>> application when you want to use it is exactly the wrong behaviour.
>>
> I'm not sure it's better to favour purity over pragmatic usability...
>
>
> For those who were wondering what the use case is --- two examples where I
> often use it:
>
> 1. Bringing up an IM or other small window, typing in it and then being
> able to minimize it again without moving the mouse.
>
> 2. Bringing up a large window, like a browser, over a set of carefully
> arranged windows (<3 Compiz Grid plugin) and then minimizing it again in
> one click to expose the windows underneath without having to touch every
> one.
>
>
> I can see how this might be more of a kludgy overload on the icon click
> with the Spread behaviour that activates even with only one window, but if
> some applications don't allow multiple windows I still think there'll be
> lots of cases where the button click does nothing. (There might even be
> cases, like with a browser, where it does support multiple windows but
> that's not usually what you want. But that's beside the point.)
>
> The key thing here I think is the case where the button does nothing at
> all, not even any indication that your click was received. If we don't get
> the minimize, can we at least somehow pulse the active window or something
> to draw attention to it? Personally I'd prefer using it to do something
> useful and minimize the window, but I think giving some indication it knows
> you've clicked is a minimum.
>
> Regardless of what the click does, could we include the minimize right
> click option? That way the use cases still work, if with two clicks rather
> than one, and it also adds a "minimize all windows of an app" feature that
> Unity currently lacks.
>
> Thanks for all your responses.
> Jonathan French
>
>