On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <ase...@kde.org> wrote:
> hi all ... > > so i've been piddling away at code-level design work for the activities > overview. > > and i kept finding myself getting frustrated by it. > > the ideas are sound (mapping windows to activities, a simple activity > switcher...) and yet the word "but" kept coming up in the back of my head. > > in the shower today i was composing in my head a hypothetical blog entry on > what i think of gnome-shell. (i'm getting that question probably once a > week > right now.) i don't think i'll actually write such a thing in the near > future, > but it was a really great exercise and i had a "oh .. yeah" moment in the > process. > > to be perfectly blunt, the whole "activities and windows combined overview" > topic has been driven at least to some extent by a reaction by some to the > previews and demos of gnome-shell. and that's where we got off track. > > gnome-shell is a panel designed for one segment of users (e.g. those who > use > IM, among other characteristics) combined with a search driven file and > application launcher and a "desktop grid on steroids" composition manager > effect that is meant to run on desktop/laptop systems. > > this is not at all what plasma-desktop, let alone plasma as a whole, is. > > so what's wrong with the overview thing in gnome-shell? in one word: it's > modal. > > in gnome-shell, i'm either working with an application or i'm working with > the > desktop shell. when i want to switch from one task to the other, i need to > switch the mode the shell is in. i do that by hitting the Applications > button > which brings up the app/file launcher (whether i want it or not) and gives > me > a desktop overview (whether i want it or not) and i can now go about > managing > my applications. > > the philosophy dualism has never been better served. > > then i realized that the proposed overview we have dreamed up with window > groups and containment thumbnails is essentially the same kind of dualism. > it > is a mode. > > in that mode the user must switch from "i'm using the web browser" thinking > to > "i'm managing the window of this web browser". > > the whole screen would change. > > applications would get little dummy representations of themselves drawn in > little boxes. i kept thinking "this is really just another form of the > tasks > widget". > > we don't do that anywhere else in plasma-desktop, really. the desktop shell > frames the applications you are working on and compliments that work. it is > visually and interaction-wise distinct from your applications, causing a > "this > is mine" and "this is the computer's" distinction to become clear (which is > also a dualism), but we never create a modality along those lines. they > coexist peacefully. to accomplish that peaceful coexistence we have these > "shell" and "application" visual identities. > > so i started asking myself: how can we break this activities overview > feature > set down so that it is no longer a mode but "melts" into this coexistence? > > here are some thoughts i had: > > * in the same panel controller window that we now show the Add Widgets > interface, we could show a Choose Activity interface. it would share a lot > of > presentation code with Add Widgets for consistency. > > * instead of categories in the tab widget it would have "Active" and > "Stored". instead of destroying an Activity, you could store it for later > use. > these stored Activities would then show up in the Stored section; an rc > file > and a screenshot pic would be saved to disk for each stored Activity. store > and trash would perhaps appear in the hover interface that pops up when the > icon is moused over or in a touch based world selected. > > * a "New Activity" tab would appear Active and Stored and would allow you > to > create a new activity, including picking what kind of activity and > optionally > what other activity you would like to clone > > * associating a Window with an Activity could happen in one of two places: > a > new button in the window title bar (would mean some adjustment to kwin) > that > would list activities from nepomuk. the other place would be the context > menu > of items in the tasks widget > > * the tasks widget could have an added "show only windows for the current > activity" feature > > * a "hidden windows" button could be shown in the tasks widget when there > are > hidden-by-activity-change windows around; switching to one of those windows > would switch the activity as well? > > * a "Choose Activity" button would appear in the toolboxes (panel and > desktop) > +1 Right now I've to manually do this by adding an activity switcher to a new panel. > > * the kwin desktop grid effect would have remove/add buttons added to it to > fill the virtual desktop management gap a bit more; we should offer a > plasmoid > to trigger it and perhaps add it, by default, to the panel > > * windows associated with an activity could be listed in the mouse over pop > up > in the Choose Activities interface > > * in a-containment-per-virtual-desktop mode (which i'm starting to feel > small > amounts of regret over offering ... but maybe i'm just being pessimistic :) > the "Choose Activities" would be per-virtual-desktop. if you wanted to > migrate > an activity from one desktop to another, you'd have to store it first. the > more i think about per-virtual-desktop containments the more i cringe, > though. > > Maybe not exactly related to this thread, but still something I'd like to mention- The concept of virtual desktops and activities being separate is something I've seen beginners feel rather confusing. Seeing the word "desktop", it gives the impression of desktop=wallpaper+applets and when switching desktops doesn't change the applets (and changing activities does), it gets confusing. I remember there was some idea of replacing virtual desktops with kind of a "window grouping" concept. It will be great and avoids this confusion. I wonder what happened to the idea .. > there's probably more than could be done along this line of thinking. any > ideas? > > the basic change in direction is that instead of making it a full on mode a > person must switch into to get an overview of things, it becomes part of > the > overall system that doesn't require you to put away your windows and other > tools in the meantime. > > thoughts? > > -- > Aaron J. Seigo > humru othro a kohnu se > GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 > > KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks > > _______________________________________________ > Plasma-devel mailing list > Plasma-devel@kde.org > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel > > -- Shantanu Tushar (UTC +0530) http://www.shantanutushar.com
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