On 30 Jul 2007, at 14:39, Jesse Ross wrote: >> 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.
Minimising is window-granularity, hiding is application-granularity. What I really want is task-granularity hiding. If we have a good implementation of projects, the need for hiding is reduced. My only concern with projects is that it's difficult to mix and match, but if we have a 'visible in all projects' setting then that might work. As a use-case: I often hide Mail.app. This has the main window and a number of other windows containing emails I am in the middle of writing. When I want to think about something other than email, I just hide the app. When I want to go back to email, I unhide it and get all of my previous windows appearing again. This could be something like a project, except I often want to refer to something outside the mail client when I am writing an email. One way around this might be to implement 'layers' on top of projects. This would allow windows belonging to multiple projects to be visible at once. Think of it as having our virtual desktop switcher using check boxes instead of radio buttons; you turn projects on and off, rather than switching between them. Does this make sense to anyone else? > 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 That could work, but I have two concerns: - The menu bar space is fairly precious, especially on small screens. When you run low on dock space, the dock can shrink. The menu bar can't without adversely affecting the rest of the UI. - Notifications like this would have to either be there all the time (wasting space when they are not providing any useful information), or they would appear and disappear. My icon for mail.app is the third from the top. Since my dock it pinned to the top left corner, this never moves. When I want to see if I have waiting emails, I know exactly which part of my screen I need to glance at. These notifications might be small enough that you could just look at the notification area for the same feedback, but I'm not entirely convinced. On OS X it periodically moves my notification icons around (bluetooth seems to be next to spotlight now, when it used to be to the left of volume), and so I have to scan along the whole row to find the one I want. >> 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? Corner activation is not good for touch screens. Unlike relative- motion pointing devices, the corner gets no infinite-size-target bonus for Fitts' Law and so you're just trying to hit something tiny, which is hard. > 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. How about having it grow down from the icon area at the top left like a menu. Each notification either fades automatically after a certain time, or stays until it is dismissed, depending on the type. You either click on a 'close' icon on the right (lined up with the edge of the screen, easy to hit), click on the text (bigger target) and jump to the window causing the event to dismiss a single event, or click on the events icon in the menu bar above the list to dismiss them all? David _______________________________________________ Etoile-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-discuss
