On 17 May 2010 12:40, David Siegel <david.sie...@canonical.com> wrote: > More specifically, I'm interested in why people use minimize-to-tray > instead of regular minimize. My suspicion is that it's easier to > recall minimized windows by clicking on indicators than by clicking on > the window list. > > If a window "minimizes to tray" instead of closing when the Close > button is clicked, this just means that Close has become another > Minimize button, and the tray has become another window list. Ugly! > > David > > On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:34 AM, David Siegel > <david.sie...@canonical.com> wrote: >> We have a great metaphor that's familiar to users and already >> implemented: minimized windows! There's already a button on every >> single window dedicated to getting a window out of your way if you're >> not interested in the window but still want to retain it. >> >> Why aren't we using this? Why are we inventing more ways to minimize >> windows? There should be only one way to do it. If there's something >> currently flawed with how we're minimizing windows, let's fix it and >> make this highly visible feature useful. For starters, it's been >> suggested that minimized windows shouldn't appear when alt-tabbing. >> >> Do you use minimized windows? Why or why not? How do you use them? >> >> David >> >> >> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Luke Benstead <kaz...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On 17 May 2010 10:52, David Siegel <david.sie...@canonical.com> wrote: >>>> <cringe> >>>> >>>> If you are designing an interface, and suddenly you believe you need >>>> to add a "bucket", this is a good sign that your initial design failed >>>> somewhere. I would encourage you to "shelve the bucket" and revisit >>>> your earlier assumptions. Shake things up a bit and ask yourself "what >>>> could I do differently so that I don't need a 'bucket'?" Challenge >>>> yourself to make a fundamental change to your design so the bucket >>>> isn't needed. >>> >>> As I mentioned in another thread, the *bucket* would just be >>> duplicating the window switcher, just like minimizing to tray does. >>> Which are plasters over the fact that the window-switcher applet just >>> doesn't deal well with many windows - so minimize to tray exists to >>> free up space. Unity is on the right track with its dock, but is >>> obviously tailored to netbooks, we could really do with something >>> similar for the desktop (*cough* dockbarx *cough*) :) >>> >>> Anyway, ideally we'd have one place to look for application windows, >>> at the moment we have two (window-switcher and notification >>> area/indicator applet), potentially several if you factor in >>> workspaces*. >>> >>> Luke. >>> >>> *P.S. I'd love it if whatever window-switcher replacement grouped >>> windows by workspace, I'd then actually use them. >>> >> > I believe these are the reasons for using minimise-to-tray: * Applications take a lot of space in the window list applet on the panel; it's not only the icon, but also some text * Out of view is out of the mind: if something is still clearly visible at the bottom of your screen you will be distracted by it and it feels untidy. * The window 'buttons' in the window list applet are very different from the panel background, so they stand out a lot; attracting attention with their different colours and the icons and the text
Like I said in my previous post, the cluttering of the screen is less of an issue with the launcher as: * most applications will already be there AND it is natural for the launcher to be filled with icons => it doesn't feel untidy when it's full and the presence of an application in the launcher doesn't attract more attention than usual since it's normal for it to be there * whether an application is running or not is indicated by a small grey triangle, not very distracting Maybe it would be interesting to investigate in what part of the screen the mouse pointer mostly is; it could be that the location of the tray or the window list makes one of the two ways of recalling a minimised applications easier. Mark Shuttleworth: I think we had a little misunderstanding in my previous post: naturally I didn't mean background processes and daemons; I meant that applications with a GUI -- and that most likely would show up in the window list applet -- should never be hidden, but maybe I hadn't made that clear enough. Of course it has no use to show processes like gwibber-service in the launcher. -- Sense Hofstede [ˈsɛn.sə ˈɦɔf.steː.də] _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
