zui, windows, desktops

[Chani]

so, me and aaron discussed this last week, and then I promptly forgot all 
about writing any of it down. ;)

it makes a lot more sense when you see the mockups...

I'll try and re-explain it in my own words, hopefully it'll be clearer when 
seen from > 1 POV :)

basically, the idea is to replace the zui (and the proposed windowgroup effect)  
with a full overview of everything. no more confusing separation of windows 
and activities, get all your context-switching right here. this isn't really 
about a a UI for switching windows any more, it's about managing them.

on the [top two thirds?] of the screen we have window groups (aka tags). on 
the bottom third we have a row of activities (which are secretly also tags 
too).

in terms of window management, you can (iirc) move/copy windows into different 
groups. you can also copy them to an activity (which really is just tagging 
htem with that activity). windows tagged with an activity only show in the 
overview when that activity is selected. by default new windows wouldn't be 
associated with an activity, and would be in the current window group 
(basically the same behaviour as now).
I assume we could use drag&drop for this as well as clicking buttons.

iirc, when you leave the overview you'll see the windows that were showing in 
the selected window group (so, those with that tag AND the current activity's 
tag). so now you can switch groups as you switched virtual-desktops before, 
but if some windows are tagged with an activity then they're not going to show 
up until you go to the overview and switch to that activity (or use a plasmoid 
to switch activity, or use my mouse plugin, or...)

back to the overview:
the activity strip at the bottom might only have interaction possible for the 
current activity; you'll still be able to drag applets off that one onto 
another activity. unless a plasmoid doesn't have anywhere to drag from :P (the 
notes applet has a richtext bar at the bottom now, phew)

each screen will show a strip with the activities for just that screen (I'm 
assuming we can still drag an activity to another screen). inactive 
containments will be available through some other mechanism which I've 
forgotten. possibly you press a button and a second strip pops up.

to me, this kind of sounds like another kind of dashboard; the current 
dashboard lets me get at my desktop (but not zoom out :( ), this overview one 
would let me get at all my activites and windows and manage them properly.

hrm. I guess that means we need another global keyboard shortcut to activate 
it? it's either that or I put the "show overview" plasmoid on one of my 
panels, and I like keyboard shortcuts better than buttons on panels.


oh, and I still think window tagging should also be available by right-
clicking the titlebar of windows, the way you can move them to another desktop 
now. and through the regular taskbar too.

-- 
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www.chani3.com
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