On Aug 18, 2012, at 11:08 PM, "Glenn L. Austin" <gl...@austin-soft.com> wrote:
> On Aug 18, 2012, at 4:48 PM, Commodore 64 <salmankhi...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Because MissionControl is not spatially stable. The windows keep moving >> around and you always have to search for it visually. Its useless for a >> power user. > > Which windows, what what do *you* mean by "spatially stable?" > Spatially stable means that MissionControl/Exposé does not try at all to keep a window where you last saw it. Here is how to repro it: 1) Open yourselves a dozen or so windows. 2) Invoke MissionControl/Exposé. 3) Notice the position of your favorite window, say Mail. Perhaps it is in the lower-left corner? 4) Keep working and invoke it again after diong something. 5) Mail may now all of a sudden appear in the top-right corner for example. This is specially true if you close some of the windows that you had opened last time. This mandates that the user visually scans for a window in Exposé every time after invocation and may take a few seconds to visually find a window. Almost all the time, during a context switch, I take so long to find a window that when I find it, I forget why I wanted to switch to it in the first place---especially if I have to use the space bar to temporarily zoom in to see what that small thumbnail is all about. You can rethink it in terms of, for example, comparing it to driving home from work everyday. When you go home, you don't look at the street names to find out where your home is. You just know it by position; you simply and unconsciously know which turn to take as you drive. It is in your spatial memory. Contrast this to someone lifting your home and placing it in a different neighborhood randomly by 15 miles everyday and sending you its new address before you leave work. Now you will need a GPS and have to look at which streets you are turning into when you drive home. This is MissionControl and Exposé my friend. Takes much longer to find what you need. I want to rewrite a variant of WindowScape. The idea is that _you_ control where each thumbnail goes on the screen. Each thumbnail stays where you left it and never moves. You can make is so small that is is barely readable, but you will still know which window it is because _you_ put it there. This is how the human brain works---by memorizing the spatial position of objects. For more, please see the research project: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/pixi/wp-content/uploads/WindowScape-Tashman.pdf _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
