remove or keep the activity view in the window list

Fania Bremmer fania.bremmer at basyskom.de
Mon Sep 26 15:45:48 UTC 2011



Am 23.09.2011 14:34, schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> On Friday, September 23, 2011 14:17:54 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>> On Friday 23 September 2011 13:41:50 Marco Martin wrote:
>>> On Friday 23 September 2011, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>>>>> ok, let's run with it as-is for now and i'll play a bit today with
>>>>> how
>>>>> the activity view is presented in the listing.
>>>> I'd also vote for keeping the homescreen in the window strip (or what
>>>> was
>>>> the official word for it? We definitely need to get our glossary written
>>>> down soon!), for the reasons Marco mentioned: The homescreen should not
>>> +1 ;) probably something like peek or task peek since the whole panel
>>> would
>>> be peek and launch
>> I think Aaron already had ideas about the names, we just all (including
>> himself) kept confusing them during the sprint ;)
> i had personally settled on "home screen". it's what it is often called on
> other devices, it's where you start off at, etc. however, Fania was not happy
> with that name, so i'm in a bit of a limbo over it :)
>
> Fania used the term "activity view" which is good for me. we do need to get
> consensus on this VERY soon, however.
>
>>>> Another thing: I'd really like to see the ability to switch back to the
>>>> last window shown when pressing the homescreen-button to the right of
>>>> the
>>>> bar again after switching to the homescreen. Being able to switch back
>>>> and forth between homescreen and application easily would be pretty
>>>> nice imo.
>>> would let a really fast workflow yeah :)
>>> (wouldn't there be problems with a button that changes its function btw?)
>> Maybe we'd need to change the icon to indicate that, but I'm not sure.
>> Compare it to alt-tab. It switches both ways between to windows as well.
> i don't want to work on this anymore for Plasma Active One, since the best
> idea i can think of requires a lot more work. what would be nice is for it to
> become a software version of the "Back" button seen on many phones these days.
>
> iow, it would send a message to the current app, if any, to go "back" one
> step; if the app does not have anything to "back" to (or doesn't support this)
> then it would return you to the home screen.
>
> one of the current limitations of the "back" on current devices is you never
> REALLY know what it will return you to and it is easy to pile up a HUUUUGE
> list of things in the "back" that are no longer relevant to you.
>
> for now, i'd like to just leave it as-is and consider working on this as a
> bigger project sometime in the future.
>
> an easier change would be to let the button change its icon depending on where
> you are:
>
> * when in an application, it shows the contour logo and brings you to the
> activity view
>
> * when viewing the activity, it shows the old "grid" icon and when tapped
> shows the peek and launch
>
> i'm a little concerned about a button that changes its UI like that, but it's
> plausible and the kind of change that could be made quite easily. i'd defer to
> Fania before attempting it, though. Fania: what do you think?
Sorry for answering that late.... so, what i already saw on a tablet 
from Karlheinz was putting the contour logo in the upper right corner, 
that switches right back to the current activity. Looks very smooth and 
logically from an interaction kind of view.

Thinking about switching this icon to another one and doubling the meaning of the button - I wouldn't do that.

What are the most common usecases in this situation, starting from the activity screen:
- open a resource: simply tap on it, it launches
- go back to current activity: simply tap on the contour icon
- start a new application: go to the launch area, tap on one
- go to another open application: just open the peek area and tap
->  so I think we dont need a "back-button" or a "show me my last application" button. What we could think about, would be the ordering in the peek area though. Currently they are sorted in the order of opening, right? So here it might be good to have the last ones opened in the very beginning. So we would have some sort of "backbutton-area" in our task-switcher.

But as Karlheinz mentioned - there are still a lot of bugs waiting to be fixed; new features should be focussed on in next release :)

my2cents,
Fania




More information about the Active mailing list