Panoramic desktop

[David Boddie]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:06:05, Ian Reinhart Geiser wrote:

> This is very nice...
> I guess my only complaint, was with the pager.  While it is infinitely
> easier to use and to manage screens than anything I have ever seen it
> just takes up way to much realestate.  Unless user have a 128 pixel
> kicker it would not make a very effective doc applet, and I am not sure
> I like it as an always on top window.

Sometimes I find that it is quite annoying to use when it is "always on
top" because it can obscure menus and the spinning "K" icon in Konqueror.
Curiously, though, I hardly ever use the taskbar to turn this feature
off.

I don't tend to resize it, either, as it's harder to use when it's tiny.
An earlier iteration of the pager would sit on the screen as a small
window until the cursor moved over it. When this happened, it would
become larger so that the user could interact with it. This was
regarded as being unfriendly to users because the rescaling would make
targetting parts of the window difficult.

I imagine that, at its tiniest, it could fit on the panel, but then it
would probably only be useful as an indicator like the minipager.

> That begin said I think we should explore this some more because this
> does make (imho) using KDE much easier when you have  a smaller screen
> and tons of virtual consoles.  Also I think from a user point a view
> panorama is more useful to.  Just for giggles I did some spying on my
> fiance and her KDE usage.  She has one very very crowded window and 3
> empty consoles...
> She is a very technical individual and the idea of virtual consoles
> seem cute, but hard to use.

I tend to use two extended desktops; one with work stuff and one with
general applications. So, logical partitioning of work is still useful.

> Personally I think this warrents some serious exploration.  For once
> we can have a truly inovative idea for desktop usage, instead of always
> trying to copy every Microsoft and Apple feature.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

If you decide to continue using the panoramic features over an
extended period of time, I'd be interested in the strategies you adopt
for positioning your windows on the desktop, and how these change over
time. This area couldn't be investigated by simple, short term
usability tests but I find it one of the more interesting lines of
enquiry.

David

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