taskbar: onlyGroupWhenFull

[Orcan Ogetbil]

--- On Thu, 10/30/08, Zack Rusin <zack at kde.org> wrote:

> From: Zack Rusin <zack at kde.org>
> Subject: Re: taskbar: onlyGroupWhenFull
> 
> Well, all your googling proves is that Microsoft along with
> Apple and KDE all 
> groups tasks by default, which is pretty much the opposite
> what you're arguing 
> for.
> Fortunately for us we have usability experts and instead of
> complaining about 
> things you don't like you can go and ask them. 
> 
KDE4 nicely supports hovering over the taskbar to display the information about each task without even clicking on them. Additionally, whenever possible, I prefer those applications that have a tabbing feature for the job I want to do. I think that this feature remains in developers' minds as a habit from the tabless days.

> This is how my panel looks without grouping:
> http://ktown.kde.org/~zrusin/panel.png
> and this is only showing tasks from the current desktop. I
> have to click on 
> each and every item in the taskbar to find anything. While
> I'm certainly a very 
> special kind of user, your argument for pointlessness of
> grouping tasks is 
> obviously bogus.
> 
> z

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. Nevertheless there are times when my taskbar becomes similar. But (probably because of my physicist nature that always keeps me aware of my background tasks) I want to have it that way. I can tell what each task is doing with my eyes closed in most cases. Well maybe me and possibly all the people I talked to (mostly scientists and engineers) belong those special kind of users.

Hence for now there is nothing I can do other than recommending a study on this. I think having a page in kde.org for such surveys will do a great job in helping with decisions for defaults. And I can (and am willing to) help with building such a page. I'd be happy if you can tell me what would be my next steps.

Thanks,
Orcan