Hi All,
At first BIG thanks for authors for creating such an excellent product!
I would like to share my 1-week experience here, because I think it is relevant
for authours to understand what/how novices think. My impressions
are fresh now, but the more I became used to, the less I will notice
the small but important differencies which novice users need.
What I explain is neigher critics, neither wishes to implement. It is as-is,
just the impressions of new user, and please do your own judgement
and conclusions if anything from said below is important for you
and strategically for i3.
Things I've noticed:
1) There are no good explation of stacking mode in the video screencast
and docs.
2) "Resize" section of default config file is too complicated. I've come
with much better solution for me, it is very easy to remember:
# resize
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Left resize shrink right 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Right resize grow right 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Control+Right resize shrink left 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Control+Left resize grow left 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Up resize shrink down 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Down resize grow down 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Control+Down resize shrink up 3 px or 3 ppt
bindsym Mod4+Mod1+Control+Up resize grow up 3 px or 3 ppt
P.S. May be I just don't get the defaule resize mode. I've tried
it a few times and later just disabled it because were unable to learn
it fast.
3) [minor issue ]Modkey + jkl - difficult to re-learn after xmonad,
awesome and others which have assigned different meanings for those keys
by default
4) [minor] I can not find the shortcut for Alt-Tab. Simple, this should be
ability
to cycle windows on current desktop. Most of newcoming users would feel
bad without it.
5) [minor] Floating mode for the whole desktop. Let me explain. Tiling &
stacking
are very good for hard work, where all space is occupied
by different windows. But there are situations when I don't need
this. Sometimes I want to see my nice background and a few floating
windows over it. It would be good to have such a mode for desktop,
as a fallback for a typical user to normal work.
The other argument: I use to put very nice background on my desktop,
and would never see it if I always work in tiling.
It is also _very_ important IMO if we would ever have floating
mode for desktop, it should support 'smart' window placement. I've
explained
what I mean in this video: http://youtu.be/eS-mchtzJsg but generally it
means
the following: place window in biggest onuccupied space on current screen.
6) *Always* pressing Modkey+H, Modkey+V before every next program open is
overkill. I think more smart would be to cycle this. Why? Because now every
next window open always have bigger ratio X*Y where it is comfortable to
work
with apps in square. So, what I mean, exactly, I think it would be helpful
if:
6.1. Mod+enter - opens terminal on full screen
6.2. Mod+enter - opens terminal split vertically
6.3. Mod+enter (without Modkey+v) opens new terminal split horizontally
etc... Because I always tend to do it this way. I don't see big necessity
to open tall narrow terminals.
6.4. Next one should open horizontally.
Looks like we come up to somehow called 'spiral' layout, but its smarter
because
when you switch to other window, it would continue splitting this way.
7) Its very pity that dmenu does not remember previous choice. It would be
great
to improve this part of dmenu.
8) Until there are serious bugs remain, like dying tray applications (
http://bugs.i3wm.org/report/ticket/550) it would be diffcult to advertize
i3. I am upset that such great window manager still don't get great
public attention (like I don't see it in Google Trends), but may be its not a
right time. When everything will be very stable, I will try publish an article
about it in habr (21523 readers) for russian speaking ppl.
Again, please don't treat this as critics, no way! You have created
one of the greatest products around, and I hope that my first impressions
will tell you something about new users mind :)
Best Regards,
--
Alex V. Koval
