On 29 Jul 2007, at 23:46, Yen-Ju Chen wrote: > I would like to have a conclusion regarding the dock. > Dock serves many purposes, but also many controversies. > > First, it is a window switcher, which can be replace by AZSwitch. > Based on screenshots of OS X 10.5, > it is application switcher. In another word, > all the window of the same application has to > stay in the same desktop.
I tend to use Exposé pretty exclusively for switching windows, so I don't have a problem with this. I hide applications all the time though, and the dock is the easiest way of unhiding them. > Second, it is an application launcher. > I personally don't like this idea. > The solution is to have a menu shows all recently > opened applications, say up to 20. > In that case, users don't need to organize the dock anymore. > The more frequently used application will be on the upper part > of the menu. Long-term, we're getting rid of applications, so this isn't a problem. I tend to have the 15 or so apps I use most often running all the time (launched at boot), and the rest I launch from a simple command-line-like thing. > Third, it is a notifier (unread mail, message from IM, etc). > If we have a notifier framework and probably a menulet for that, > we don't need dock, either. It's quite nice for non-urgent, non-intrusive, notifications. If I go away from my computer and come back, I can glance at an application icon and see if I have mails or IMs waiting. I'd like to see a good solution for replacing this before I throw it away. > Fourth, it provides limited contextual for a few action on > application > without make them active first. > I am not sure it is really usefully except 'empty trash'. I'd completely forgotten about that aspect. Shows how often I use it. > So my propose is to remove the dock. > If you want to launch commonly-used applications, > we add a menu for that on menu bar. Then we go from move-click to move-click-drag-release for a common action. > If you want to switch window, use 'Alt-tab'. Not ideal if you don't have your hand on the keyboard, or if you are using a touchscreen. > If you want to see whether you have unread mail, > maybe we can show it with 'Alt-tab' (with some Xwindow trick) > or have a notifier framework for that. I'd rather have some part of the screen for unobtrusive notifications. I quite like the idea of a scrolling ticker, which is gradually populated with events (click on one to be taken to the window that caused it). Not sure how intrusive this would be though. David _______________________________________________ Etoile-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-discuss
