I was using the application switcher in Gnome-shell thinking about how much it made sense to have the application switcher to actually switch inbetween applications, not windows. That's really besides the point which is usability. The great thing about it is that it reinovates the application switcher that was designed at a point in time when users did not have that many windows running at the same time. The general application switcher is a cluttered interface and is therefor scarcely used. Grouping the windows by application is the same innovation that Microsoft did with their new taskbar, but lets not speak about the devil.
The problem with the application switcher in its current state is that the transition between applications and windows is not as smooth as it can be. You do at the moment have to use weird and odd key-combinations to go from the application-row to the window-row. The wasd way of orientation is ruled out by the fact that large parts of the linux-using population does not use qwerty. That leaves the user without qwerty having to use his right hand either by the arrow keys or the mouse. This is not optimal for fast application-switching. The idea would be that you when pushing alt-tab choose an application to switch to just as the application switcher works in it's current state. But only application-icons should be shown. And rather than than having the user to either push the applications icon with the mouse or press down-key on the keyboard the application/group of windows should be chosen when alt is released. If there is only one window belonging to the application there is nothing more to do than to switch to the appropriate desktop and show the window. If there on the other hand are multiple windows belonging to the same application these windows should be shown now just as windows are shown on each desktop in the activities view. So other windows on the current desktop should be pushed aside as the windows belonging to the application chosen quickly appear/slides in on the desktop. One may then use the tab key, the arrow keys or the mouse to select which window you want to go to. Keys to activate the window chosen could be the alt and enter keys, or why not space? This removes the hazzle of having to use the arrow-keys (read a second hand) to switch between applications using alt tab. The wasd-style of switching between applications only work if you have a qwerty keyboard. With this setup you press alt+tab to open up the application switcher. You select what application you wish to switch to with tab and then release alt to select it, just as you would with any other application switcher. But if there are more than one window you use tab to switch between the windows and alt to select the window. Using the activities style of showing the windows provides larger images of the windows making it easier to see which one of the office documents you really want to, tough this could just as well work with the current style of the application switcher. Pardon me for being so long-winded. Have a great day! -- www.twitter.com/Rovanion MSN: [email protected] _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
