[Panel-devel] Tasks applet and the panel

[Mohammad Bhuyan]

On 8/6/07, Robert Knight <robertknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have been doing some UI research on the task bar and started
> prototyping.

Hi,

As a KDE fan, thought I will drop in some of my comments on the
taskbar user experience direct to the developer. As I am following the
progress of KDE4 and being amazed, my expectation with the taskbar is
- *There has to be a miracle* :P

User experiecnce varies with user so if there is any usability
experiment on this please disregard. This is only what I though could
be a great taskbar for everybody. Here it goes ...

A portion of my desktop real state goes to Kicker (considering its
scope to include the following

-- KMenu Icon
-- Desktop Access Buttons
-- Desktop Preview & Pager
-- The Taskbar
-- System Tray
-- More Panel (if added)

I guess KMenu is there with an accepted "standard practice" of being
there. People expects it to be there (specially with the ubiquitio
knowledge of Windows). So I would see it to be a funny move to move it
to somewhere else.

Desktop access icon is really handy. I love it to put my frequent
applications 1 click away. but its only use full when i want to click
something on it. Its not like taskbar where visual inspection serves
any purpose. So until my mouse reaches there, its just wasting my real
state. So I would think that dynamically expanding/reducing the
Desktop Access panel on mouse hover can be great. So when its not in
use, it is being minimal to save real state.

Desktop Preview & Pager: One good One bad. Good to let me click and
switch my desktop. But I have no idea how that *small* *not at all
clear* *icon cluttering* *over lapped rectangles* preview is useful.
Also with the incorporation of compix/beryl effects in window manager,
desktop switching/preview/inspection is moving to a different
dimension. So as long as something is there which uses minimal real
state and let me clickNjump to my desktop should be good.

The Taskbar -

>    -  Re-arrange task representations using drag and drop*
>    -  Group tasks using drag and drop*

Sounds great. Will love to arrange my task when in very long session
for easy access and then rearrange when the nature of the work pattern
changes.

About the *grouping* - I have found that except of browser i generally
found that grouping to be annoying. Also again sometimes grouping
helps and sometimes for the same app I don't want grouping. while
keeping the option to make the the taskbar group items, if there is
feature of group taskbar items per application individually (say i
want the firefox tasks to group, but not my Kword tasks) during the
session by drag dro will be great.

System Tray - Same as desktop access icons with the option of icons to
force itself displayed as it could be providing visual indication of
something (network status?)

Regards,

Soyuz