>> I would like to have a conclusion regarding the dock. >> Dock serves many purposes, but also many controversies.
I'm glad you proposed this, Yen-Ju, because I was starting to think the same thing. The Dock is good on OS X for demo purposes, but other than that, it's tended to be plagued by problems. I'm up for eliminating it too in favor of something more window/document- centric, such as an Expose-like interface + some of the other methods you propose below. >> 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. Rather than hiding windows, would minimizing them do the trick? Because I think it still makes sense to have a space similar to the right hand side of OS X's Dock, where minimized windows go. We'd just be eliminating the application, trash and alias portions of the OS X Dock. Additionally, using minimization in favor of hiding makes sure windows never just disappear from the screen -- if we were to integrate window-level-granularity for hiding, I can imagine the frustration of a user who did that accidentally and had no idea where their window went. >> 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. Yeah -- makes sense to me as well. >> 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. I don't see why menulets can't provide that function. That's what I did in my latest mockup: http://jesseross.com/clients/etoile/ui/interface/800x480.png >> 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. Or hit a corner, perhaps, to trigger Expose-like functionality, perhaps? >> 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. Could work well... but rather than be a stock-style horizontal- scrolling ticker, something like what Apple used to do on their home page for news would be better: use a fixed-width space and have items slide up from the bottom. Legible, obvious when you want it to be, yet not constantly moving nor intrusive. J. _______________________________________________ Etoile-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-discuss
