Panoramic desktop

[David Boddie]

On Wednesday 21 Aug 2002 3:21 pm, Ian Reinhart Geiser wrote:

> On Wednesday 21 August 2002 07:03 am, David Boddie wrote:

> > This area couldn't be investigated by simple, short term usability
> > tests but I find it one of the more interesting lines of enquiry.
>
> Short term:
> 	My fiance (an electrical engineer, so someone who is technical in nature)
> has always found virtual desktops to be inconvenent and never used them.
> Panoramic desktop on the otherhand she jumped right into.  There where some
> complaints about the update speed, but she is on a slower machine.

I did wonder about the performance on slower machines. I tend to turn
off the instant dragging option in the pager if screen updates are slow.

> For me after 5+ years of using the pager it took me a little longer
> to get into it.  After I got use to it I found it to be very useful.
> I still have problems with active boarders, but i think thats a prefs
> thing.

I set the electric border switch delay to 0 ms, but sometimes I still
have difficulty forcing them to work.

> Long Term:
> 	Still working on it.  The pager I can say is VERY usable, but I am still
> trying to rethink the size issue.  I have been watching jess too.  So far
> so good.

Great!

> The only problem with this that I have seen so far, is that window redraw
> is very slow.  While not your problem this agrivates a QT/KDE issue.

I'm probably forcing the display on the WIM (pager) to update far too
often. The technique I use for caching multiple window updates probably
only works well for fast machines, too.

> Overall very nice, what are the chances you would see this developed into
> 3.2?

I'd like to see the patches merged into the distribution, but I expect a
healthy discussion of their merits and shortcomings first. I hope the
pager makes it in as well, or at least inspires some novel alternative
designs.

David

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