Now, let's look at the panel on the mockup.
On the top, we have "launcher", which store links to applications
on the harddisk.
Then we have "workspaces switcher", followed by "taskbar" showing
running applications.
The rest space can be used by any other additions.
Actually... that's a bit incorrect. Here was my thinking:
The top is the launcher, this is correct. This serves the purpose of
the left side of the OS X dock (storing running and shortcuts to
applications).
The second part, is not the workspace switcher. In how I originally
envisioned the concept, that grid of nine squares is actually where
minimized windows are stored. This is basically the right side of the
dock (minus user-folder aliases and the trash).
The third part is not a taskbar because, as you said, the launcher
and taskbar server similar purposes under an Application-based
desktop. That is actually what I was calling the "buffer". It's
actually a unified pasteboard/bookmarks/shortcuts area. The way it
would work is this: If someone copies something, it shows up in the
list. Items such as URLs, documents, images and snippets of text
could also be dragged there to be stored for later. The user can do
two actions with them: 1. Clicking them launches an application
associated with the filetype (ex: a URL launches a web browser, plain
text launches a text editor, an image launches an image viewer, etc).
2. Dragging them to a document is contextual, depending on what kind
of document they are dropped on. If the file is an image, and it is
dropped onto an image document, then the image is inserted into the
document (on a new layer, for example). If the file is textual (url,
text snippet), and is dropped onto a document that receives text,
then that text is inserted into the document. So, in the context of
the demo, someone has: a bookmark to Google, a piece of text that
says "The Linux Desktop", a piece of text that says "Jesse Ross".
Clicking the first one would launch a browser and go to Google,
dragging it would copy 'http://www.google.com/' to the pasteboard.
Clicking the second or third would open a text editor with that text
already inserted, dragging them would copy the respective text and
paste it into the document they are dropped on.
I know it may not be relevant to the discussion at hand, but it was
an important distinction to be made, as I really like the concept of
the buffer.
J.
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