Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 28/07/11 22:20, Evan Huus wrote:

Admittedly, I've never used the spatial alternative proposed here, but
I imagine it would be much nicer if I could know 'four tabs is app X'
all the time, rather than, 'four tabs is the
fourth-most-recently-used, which was, uh, what again?'


Then you might like the Super+n key combinations, holding down Super 
(the Windows key on many laptops) and pressing 0-9 will launch/switch to 
that launcher. Hold down Super for a while to see the actual number.


I would also be happy to try a patch which used Super+TAB the way we've 
discussed, tabbing through the launcher.


Mark

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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Tony Pursell]

On Thu, 2011-07-28 at 17:20 -0400, Evan Huus wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Mark Shuttleworth
>  wrote:
> >
> > It's a lovely idea, and three consecutive designers have dashed themselves
> > on the rocks trying to get it right. I'd be thrilled if someone could do
> > better!
> >
> > Here's what we found each time we tried it:
> >
> > The launcher is spatial, the alt-tab is logical. The alt-tab works best when
> > it is a stack, with the most recently used stuff first. Toggling between
> > apps is always a single alt-tab, and moving between a small group of apps
> > scales up accordingly, alt-tab-tab-tab gets you to the third most recently
> > used app/window.
> >
> > If you want to jump more than one step back in the stack, you want to be
> > able to see where you are going. And this is the problem with the launcher,
> > in order to give a sense of trajectory, you would need to reorder the items
> > on the launcher. Which breaks people's sense of "where things are" and makes
> > the launcher seem arbitrary. On the other hand, you could jump from item to
> > item, but then you are not providing any clue as to where the next tab will
> > send you. Which feels sucky (we tried it :-)).
> >
> > So, it's an interesting exercise and a very attractive idea, and if someone
> > can make it work I would embrace the patch, but I think it's one of those
> > attractive-but-wrong sinkholes. Prove me wrong :-)
> >
> > Mark
> 
> This really surprised me: I've always found traditional alt-tab
> annoying for exactly that reason. While the logical representation of
> a stack makes a lot of sense in theory, I find I can never keep track
> of what's where on it beyond the absolute top anyways. Whenever I use
> traditional alt-tab for more than an immediate switch to the
> most-recently-used, I have to stop, look at the icons, figure out how
> many times to press tab, and then do it, which is slow. If I just
> press tab until I see the icon I want highlighted, I tend to miss it,
> and have to cycle round again to find it.

I have to agree with Mark.  In my last job (I am retired now) I had to
make extensive use of the Alt-Tab feature.  Often it was to find (search
for) a browser window (organisation was stuck on IE 6), but where it
really came into its own was when switching between two applications.
My productivity would have been severely limited without that simple use
of the Alt-Tab feature. 

> 
> Admittedly, I've never used the spatial alternative proposed here, but
> I imagine it would be much nicer if I could know 'four tabs is app X'
> all the time, rather than, 'four tabs is the
> fourth-most-recently-used, which was, uh, what again?'
> 
> On the other hand, I do use a single alt-tab a lot, which would break
> if it was simply replaced by the spatial alternative.
> 
> Maybe I'm unusual in this, or maybe a stack is still faster than
> spatial even though it feels slower. I dunno. I would be extremely
> interested if somebody did a usability and speed study on various
> window-switching methods though.
> 
> Evan
> 

Tony






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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Evan Huus]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Mark Shuttleworth
 wrote:
>
> It's a lovely idea, and three consecutive designers have dashed themselves
> on the rocks trying to get it right. I'd be thrilled if someone could do
> better!
>
> Here's what we found each time we tried it:
>
> The launcher is spatial, the alt-tab is logical. The alt-tab works best when
> it is a stack, with the most recently used stuff first. Toggling between
> apps is always a single alt-tab, and moving between a small group of apps
> scales up accordingly, alt-tab-tab-tab gets you to the third most recently
> used app/window.
>
> If you want to jump more than one step back in the stack, you want to be
> able to see where you are going. And this is the problem with the launcher,
> in order to give a sense of trajectory, you would need to reorder the items
> on the launcher. Which breaks people's sense of "where things are" and makes
> the launcher seem arbitrary. On the other hand, you could jump from item to
> item, but then you are not providing any clue as to where the next tab will
> send you. Which feels sucky (we tried it :-)).
>
> So, it's an interesting exercise and a very attractive idea, and if someone
> can make it work I would embrace the patch, but I think it's one of those
> attractive-but-wrong sinkholes. Prove me wrong :-)
>
> Mark

This really surprised me: I've always found traditional alt-tab
annoying for exactly that reason. While the logical representation of
a stack makes a lot of sense in theory, I find I can never keep track
of what's where on it beyond the absolute top anyways. Whenever I use
traditional alt-tab for more than an immediate switch to the
most-recently-used, I have to stop, look at the icons, figure out how
many times to press tab, and then do it, which is slow. If I just
press tab until I see the icon I want highlighted, I tend to miss it,
and have to cycle round again to find it.

Admittedly, I've never used the spatial alternative proposed here, but
I imagine it would be much nicer if I could know 'four tabs is app X'
all the time, rather than, 'four tabs is the
fourth-most-recently-used, which was, uh, what again?'

On the other hand, I do use a single alt-tab a lot, which would break
if it was simply replaced by the spatial alternative.

Maybe I'm unusual in this, or maybe a stack is still faster than
spatial even though it feels slower. I dunno. I would be extremely
interested if somebody did a usability and speed study on various
window-switching methods though.

Evan

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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[ello]

First of all, I'm no programmer.  Second of all, I'm probably missing
something.  Third of all, how about making "Toggles" the Backlight Mode
default?  That way, it will be clear on first sight what alt-tab
selections there are, especially if it only cycles through open
programs.  The white highlight used when keyboard focus is on the bar
could be used (as well as showing the program window).

An alternative would be to use the Scale plugin, in effect adding extra
keyboard controls.  Alt-Tab would scale all windows and cycle through
them; to show which window is highlighted, use Zoom Window and Window
Title from the Scale Addons plugin.  This has the advantage of avoiding
extra UI items or re-arranging the launcher bar while being somewhat
intuitive.  The problems would be how this would work on low-spec
computers, and the work that would need to be done with Compiz (e.g.
changing the behaviour of bindings, adding new functions, making Scale
arrange windows in order of recent use &c.).



On Thu, 2011-07-28 at 18:04 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> 
> It's a lovely idea, and three consecutive designers have dashed
> themselves on the rocks trying to get it right. I'd be thrilled if
> someone could do better!
> 
> Here's what we found each time we tried it:
> 
> The launcher is spatial, the alt-tab is logical. The alt-tab works
> best when it is a stack, with the most recently used stuff first.
> Toggling between apps is always a single alt-tab, and moving between a
> small group of apps scales up accordingly, alt-tab-tab-tab gets you to
> the third most recently used app/window.
> 
> If you want to jump more than one step back in the stack, you want to
> be able to see where you are going. And this is the problem with the
> launcher, in order to give a sense of trajectory, you would need to
> reorder the items on the launcher. Which breaks people's sense of
> "where things are" and makes the launcher seem arbitrary. On the other
> hand, you could jump from item to item, but then you are not providing
> any clue as to where the next tab will send you. Which feels sucky (we
> tried it :-)).
> 
> So, it's an interesting exercise and a very attractive idea, and if
> someone can make it work I would embrace the patch, but I think it's
> one of those attractive-but-wrong sinkholes. Prove me wrong :-)
> 
> Mark
> 
> On 28/07/11 15:52, Owas Lone wrote: 
> > Great Idea.
> > 
> > On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Alex Launi  
> > wrote:
> > > I love this. It really just makes alt-tab a keybinding for features we
> > > already have. Very clean, very simple, and enhances the idioms we've 
> > > already
> > > started developing.
> > > 
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> > 
> > 
> 
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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Mark Shuttleworth]

It's a lovely idea, and three consecutive designers have dashed 
themselves on the rocks trying to get it right. I'd be thrilled if 
someone could do better!


Here's what we found each time we tried it:

*The launcher is spatial, the alt-tab is logical.* The alt-tab works 
best when it is a stack, with the most recently used stuff first. 
Toggling between apps is always a single alt-tab, and moving between a 
small group of apps scales up accordingly, alt-tab-tab-tab gets you to 
the third most recently used app/window.


If you want to jump more than one step back in the stack, you want to be 
able to see where you are going. And this is the problem with the 
launcher, in order to give a sense of trajectory, you would need to 
reorder the items on the launcher. Which breaks people's sense of "where 
things are" and makes the launcher seem arbitrary. On the other hand, 
you could jump from item to item, but then you are not providing any 
clue as to where the next tab will send you. Which feels sucky (we tried 
it :-)).


So, it's an interesting exercise and a very attractive idea, and if 
someone can make it work I would embrace the patch, but I think it's one 
of those attractive-but-wrong sinkholes. Prove me wrong :-)


Mark

On 28/07/11 15:52, Owas Lone wrote:

Great Idea.

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Alex Launi  wrote:

I love this. It really just makes alt-tab a keybinding for features we
already have. Very clean, very simple, and enhances the idioms we've already
started developing.

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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Owas Lone]

Great Idea.

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Alex Launi  wrote:
> I love this. It really just makes alt-tab a keybinding for features we
> already have. Very clean, very simple, and enhances the idioms we've already
> started developing.
>
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>



-- 
Owais Lone
he...@owaislone.org
http://www.owaislone.org

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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Marco Biscaro]

Sure, nice idea. +1

2011/7/28 Alex Launi 

> I love this. It really just makes alt-tab a keybinding for features we
> already have. Very clean, very simple, and enhances the idioms we've already
> started developing.
>
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Re: [Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Alex Launi]

I love this. It really just makes alt-tab a keybinding for features we 
already have. Very clean, very simple, and enhances the idioms we've 
already started developing.


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[Ayatana] New Alt-Tab

[Mark Curtis]

So I saw the video for Oneiric's Alt-Tab on OMG Ubuntu and I was a bit 
disappointed. It just seemed like icons with a bit of the coverflow tilting.

It's probably too late to implement now, but I had the idea where Alt-Tab would 
make the launcher visible, non running applications would be desaturated and in 
the main view the window(s) for only the highlighted app would show (expose 
view if mulitple windows).
This way, it stays consistent with look at the launcher for running 
applications and provides previews to the content of said applications.
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Re: [Ayatana] Place "Shut Down" as the last entry in the Sessions-Menu for Oneiric and beyond

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Evan Huus wrote on 27/07/11 17:21:
>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 7:39 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas
>...
>> This is what Havoc Pennington called "the misguided 'hmm, maybe I can
>> autogenerate my GUI' stage".
>>  Artificial
>> intelligence researchers work on many things, but I'm not aware of
>> any who are working on the problem of making an auto-generated
>> settings interface anywhere near as understandable as a
>> human-designed one.
> 
> One project that is already sort of doing this is Wireshark.
> Individual protocols (TCP, IP, etc.) register their settings with very
> simple API calls along the lines of
> 
> register_boolean(&bool, "Name", "Description").
> 
> Wireshark does the rest behind the scenes.
> 
> The result is certainly usable, although probably not as usable as it
> could be. They're located under Edit->Preferences->Protocols in
> Wireshark if anyone actually wants to take a look.
>...

That's a great example of how terrible it would be if applied to every
application.

To be fair, there are several mistakes in the Wireshark presentation
that could be fixed even while keeping it automated: checkbox labels are
to the left when they should be to the right, numeric fields accept
non-numeric characters, 1-of-many options are presented using radio
menus even when there is plenty of room for radio buttons instead, the
controls use tooltips when text-based controls never should, and so on.

But there are many parts of that interface that just couldn't be
designed well without a human. The "ASN1" panel, for example, includes:
*   three fields for entering multiple port values, with no help in
separating them
*   labels for those three fields which are mostly redundant with each
other, because the presentation engine can't know how to (or even
that it should) factor out the common words
*   a field for entering a file path, with no button for opening a file
picker
*   a checkbox for "Show full names", with no hint of what the
alternative is.

It actually reminds me a lot of WordPress 1.1, which also had an
auto-generated settings interface. I designed a manual layout, and Matt
Mullenweg implemented the redesign for version 1.2. It's far from the
only reason WordPress then became wildly popular ... but it probably
helped just a little bit.

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Re: [Ayatana] Fwd: Place "Shut Down" as the last entry in the Sessions-Menu for Oneiric and beyond

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote on 27/07/11 16:05:
>...
> On 27 July 2011 13:39, Matthew Paul Thomas  wrote:
>> 
>> We have no evidence that a non-trivial proportion of people notice
>> differently colored icons in the menu bar.
> 
> You might say that's an assumption, based on personal experience and
> observation. Sure, it's not a scientific test, and I only have tested
> it on 10-20 people. But I noticed it the first time it changed color
> and I was surprised by how effective that really is.

Yes, there seems to be a huge variation in the degree to which people
notice small things on the screen. The sort of people who contribute to
Ubuntu, for example, often find a colored icon in a panel quite enough
to notify them of software updates. They can't understand how anyone
would possibly not see it. But in user tests, nobody does.

>> I don't see how they'd be more likely to search for them in the menu
>> bar.
> 
> * the indicators are visible. The launcher is not.
> * bluetooth is displayed as an indicator, not as a launcher.

Fair points.

> * you often have many usb devices connected.
> * devices need a description. Menus as suitable for that. Launchers
>   aren't.

Those two don't seem to be related to the question of whether people
will look to disconnect/eject a device in the first place.

>> Personally, I would find more inviting a launcher that I could put
>> anything into -- applications, bookmarks, documents, folders,
>> contacts, whatever. I can do that with the Mac OS X Dock and (mostly)
>> with the Windows 7 taskbar.
> 
> Interesting. Wouldn't that make the launcher notifications (usb, etc)
> even more difficult to find?

I don't know what you mean by launcher notifications.

>  I thought I would want to keep all of my
> most used applications on the launcher and that I would temporarily
> move icons up and down according to what I'm doing so that I could
> rearrange keyboard shortcuts. Turns out I do, but in a much smaller
> degree than I had expected. The first six launchers are completely
> static. The next four is more "dynamic", used for documents I'm
> working on right now, but don't need to launch using keyboard
> shortcuts. That works well for me, because then I launch and switch to
> my most used applications using only the left hand, and the shortcuts
> get very familiar. The work I'm doing right now changes, so I have to
> look up the shortcut number in any case, meaning that it doesn't
> bother me that I have to use two hands. In that regard, it would be
> nice if we could make a certain window type ungroupable, so that you
> could easily switch between open writer documents, for instance.
>...

Yes, there may be a useful distinction between document-based
applications (for which it's best to show open documents in the
launcher) and other types (for which it's best to show the application
itself).

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