<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aseigo@kde.org">aseigo@kde.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
hi all ...<br>
<br>
so i've been piddling away at code-level design work for the activities<br>
overview.<br>
<br>
and i kept finding myself getting frustrated by it.<br>
<br>
the ideas are sound (mapping windows to activities, a simple activity<br>
switcher...) and yet the word "but" kept coming up in the back of my head.<br>
<br>
in the shower today i was composing in my head a hypothetical blog entry on<br>
what i think of gnome-shell. (i'm getting that question probably once a week<br>
right now.) i don't think i'll actually write such a thing in the near future,<br>
but it was a really great exercise and i had a "oh .. yeah" moment in the<br>
process.<br>
<br>
to be perfectly blunt, the whole "activities and windows combined overview"<br>
topic has been driven at least to some extent by a reaction by some to the<br>
previews and demos of gnome-shell. and that's where we got off track.<br>
<br>
gnome-shell is a panel designed for one segment of users (e.g. those who use<br>
IM, among other characteristics) combined with a search driven file and<br>
application launcher and a "desktop grid on steroids" composition manager<br>
effect that is meant to run on desktop/laptop systems.<br>
<br>
this is not at all what plasma-desktop, let alone plasma as a whole, is.<br>
<br>
so what's wrong with the overview thing in gnome-shell? in one word: it's<br>
modal.<br>
<br>
in gnome-shell, i'm either working with an application or i'm working with the<br>
desktop shell. when i want to switch from one task to the other, i need to<br>
switch the mode the shell is in. i do that by hitting the Applications button<br>
which brings up the app/file launcher (whether i want it or not) and gives me<br>
a desktop overview (whether i want it or not) and i can now go about managing<br>
my applications.<br>
<br>
the philosophy dualism has never been better served.<br>
<br>
then i realized that the proposed overview we have dreamed up with window<br>
groups and containment thumbnails is essentially the same kind of dualism. it<br>
is a mode.<br>
<br>
in that mode the user must switch from "i'm using the web browser" thinking to<br>
"i'm managing the window of this web browser".<br>
<br>
the whole screen would change.<br>
<br>
applications would get little dummy representations of themselves drawn in<br>
little boxes. i kept thinking "this is really just another form of the tasks<br>
widget".<br>
<br>
we don't do that anywhere else in plasma-desktop, really. the desktop shell<br>
frames the applications you are working on and compliments that work. it is<br>
visually and interaction-wise distinct from your applications, causing a "this<br>
is mine" and "this is the computer's" distinction to become clear (which is<br>
also a dualism), but we never create a modality along those lines. they<br>
coexist peacefully. to accomplish that peaceful coexistence we have these<br>
"shell" and "application" visual identities.<br>
<br>
so i started asking myself: how can we break this activities overview feature<br>
set down so that it is no longer a mode but "melts" into this coexistence?<br>
<br>
here are some thoughts i had:<br>
<br>
* in the same panel controller window that we now show the Add Widgets<br>
interface, we could show a Choose Activity interface. it would share a lot of<br>
presentation code with Add Widgets for consistency.<br>
<br>
* instead of categories in the tab widget it would have "Active" and<br>
"Stored". instead of destroying an Activity, you could store it for later use.<br>
these stored Activities would then show up in the Stored section; an rc file<br>
and a screenshot pic would be saved to disk for each stored Activity. store<br>
and trash would perhaps appear in the hover interface that pops up when the<br>
icon is moused over or in a touch based world selected.<br>
<br>
* a "New Activity" tab would appear Active and Stored and would allow you to<br>
create a new activity, including picking what kind of activity and optionally<br>
what other activity you would like to clone<br>
<br>
* associating a Window with an Activity could happen in one of two places: a<br>
new button in the window title bar (would mean some adjustment to kwin) that<br>
would list activities from nepomuk. the other place would be the context menu<br>
of items in the tasks widget<br>
<br>
* the tasks widget could have an added "show only windows for the current<br>
activity" feature<br>
<br>
* a "hidden windows" button could be shown in the tasks widget when there are<br>
hidden-by-activity-change windows around; switching to one of those windows<br>
would switch the activity as well?<br>
<br>
* a "Choose Activity" button would appear in the toolboxes (panel and desktop)<br></blockquote><div>+1<br>Right now I've to manually do this by adding an activity switcher to a new panel.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
* the kwin desktop grid effect would have remove/add buttons added to it to<br>
fill the virtual desktop management gap a bit more; we should offer a plasmoid<br>
to trigger it and perhaps add it, by default, to the panel<br>
<br>
* windows associated with an activity could be listed in the mouse over pop up<br>
in the Choose Activities interface<br>
<br>
* in a-containment-per-virtual-desktop mode (which i'm starting to feel small<br>
amounts of regret over offering ... but maybe i'm just being pessimistic :)<br>
the "Choose Activities" would be per-virtual-desktop. if you wanted to migrate<br>
an activity from one desktop to another, you'd have to store it first. the<br>
more i think about per-virtual-desktop containments the more i cringe, though.<br>
<br></blockquote><div> </div><div>Maybe not exactly related to this thread, but still something I'd like to mention-<br>The concept of virtual desktops and activities being separate is something I've seen beginners feel rather confusing. Seeing the word "desktop", it gives the impression of desktop=wallpaper+applets and when switching desktops doesn't change the applets (and changing activities does), it gets confusing. I remember there was some idea of replacing virtual desktops with kind of a "window grouping" concept. It will be great and avoids this confusion. I wonder what happened to the idea ..<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
there's probably more than could be done along this line of thinking. any<br>
ideas?<br>
<br>
the basic change in direction is that instead of making it a full on mode a<br>
person must switch into to get an overview of things, it becomes part of the<br>
overall system that doesn't require you to put away your windows and other<br>
tools in the meantime.<br>
<br>
thoughts?<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Aaron J. Seigo<br>
humru othro a kohnu se<br>
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43<br>
<br>
KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Shantanu Tushar (UTC +0530)<br><a href="http://www.shantanutushar.com">http://www.shantanutushar.com</a><br>