Review Request 122249: libksysguard: add Kill Window to End Process button and show correct keyboard shortcut

Thomas Pfeiffer colomar at autistici.org
Mon Apr 27 01:32:25 BST 2015



> On April 20, 2015, 10:36 p.m., Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > What would likely be confusing is that the two button modes have different interaction flows: The "End Process" mode requires to first select a process and then press the button to work, whereas the "Kill specific window" mode requires to first press the button and then select the window to kill, and users have no easy way to understand how each one works and why they work differently.
> > 
> > The ellipsis in the label "End Process..." adds to that confusion. It indicates that further input is necessary before the action can take effect. While the button does open a dialog to confirm killing the selected process, ellipses are actually reserved for actions where a dialog asks for new information, such as the "Save As..." button, not for actions that require confirmation.
> > 
> > To avoid this confusion, it should be possible to also click "End Process..." even if no processes has been selected, whuch would then ask the user to select the process to kill. This could theoretically be done similarly to the "Kill specific window" function: Click the "End Process..." button and then click the process in the list that you want to end. Alternatively, if no process had been selected when "End Process..." is clicked, a dialog could be opened where the process to kill would be selected. Of course the current flow of ending a process could and should still work.
> 
> Gregor Mi wrote:
>     Thanks for the feedback! The ellipsis in "End Process..." is the original design. According to your explanation this was wrong in the first place. What about removing the ellipses in both menu items so we will end up with "End Process" and "Kill a specific window"?
> 
> Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>     "Kill specific window" does always need additional input until it really does something, doesn't it? As I understood it merely changes the cursor to the kill cursor and then the user has to select the window to kill, right?
> 
> Gregor Mi wrote:
>     Erm, right. To be exact, "Kill specific window..." only shows a message box. But in the end - after the user presses the keyboard shortcut - the user has to select a window. So this seems to be a special case. The intention behind all this is to increase the discoverability of the hidden xkill feature.
> 
> Gregor Mi wrote:
>     > To avoid this confusion, it should be possible to also click "End Process..." even if no processes has been selected, whuch would then ask the user to select the process to kill.
>     
>     If "End Process" is clicked with no processes selected, there will be a message box which says that the user has to select one more more processes first.
>     
>     > This could theoretically be done similarly to the "Kill specific window" function: Click the "End Process..." button and then click the process in the list that you want to end.
>     
>     I think "Kill specific windows" should be considered as the special case here. Changing or extending the "End Process" workflow would introduce more complexity to the code.
>     
>     > Alternatively, if no process had been selected when "End Process..." is clicked, a dialog could be opened where the process to kill would be selected. Of course the current flow of ending a p>rocess could and should still work.
>     
>     This would be a topic for another RR.
>     
>     Summary of final changes for this RR:
>     
>     - I would change the "End Process..." to "End Process" (remove ellipsis). Ok?
>     - I am not sure if the ellipsis of "Kill specific window..." should be removed or not.

To be honest: The more I think about this feature, the less sense it makes to me in general.
What is XKill's usecase anyway? If an application works normally, one can just quit it normally. If an application is frozen, KWin quite reliably detects that when trying to close the window and allows to kill the process.
Usually "End process" is used for applications that do not have a window (either because they don't have a GUI in the first place or because the window has disappeared but the process is still there), in which case xkill would not help anyway.
Yes, there may be some situations where it's useful, but they are really corner cases. Yes, very few people know it's there, but very few people miss the function, either. I heve never wished there was a way to hard kill a window without using the Close button in the windeco, and I have never met one who did.

So we're complicating the GUI with a split button only to explain a feature to users which the vast majority of them don't need in the first place.

If I have missed the "killer usecase for xkill" which makes it necessary to make it a lot more visible, please tell me about it.


- Thomas


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On April 20, 2015, 10:24 p.m., Gregor Mi wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/122249/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated April 20, 2015, 10:24 p.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for KDE Base Apps, Martin Gräßlin, John Tapsell, and Thomas Pfeiffer.
> 
> 
> Repository: libksysguard
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> Current situation:
> The "End Process..." button has a tooltip which says "To target a specific window to kill, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc at any time." The keyboard shortcut is hardcoded.
> 
> New:
> Replace the "End Process..." button with a drop-down button and a action named "Kill a specific window..."
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   CMakeLists.txt 66899e577a03786d894423a8f1ce5b3aeed6de8a 
>   processui/CMakeLists.txt 7f87b85e0201e63d69070a71203bbb34851a79c6 
>   processui/ProcessWidgetUI.ui e50f55cf1813b00d49b1716023df487ffbd536e3 
>   processui/ksysguardprocesslist.cpp 450ca600b8aed7ca611ec638610b6c524c96080c 
> 
> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/122249/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> 
> File Attachments
> ----------------
> 
> New End Process button with drop down arrow
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2015/01/28/16301e88-e21b-4358-9a63-a85dae5722bd__screenshot_default1.png
> new submenu
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2015/04/10/eeaecc88-20bc-46d6-9c65-50ba4a7c182a__submenu.png
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gregor Mi
> 
>

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