Review Request: Change activity by rolling the mouse wheel over the showActivityManager widget.

[Guillaume DE BURE]

Le mardi 27 décembre 2011 15:58:31 Sebastian =?ISO-8859-1?Q?K=FCgler?= a écrit 
:
> On Tuesday, December 27, 2011 14:11:34 Marco Martin wrote:
> > On Tuesday 27 December 2011, Simone Gaiarin wrote:
> > > To fix the two problem it is just necessary to add a configuration
> > > dialog to the plasmoid in a such way that the user must intentionally
> > > enable this feature before use it. What do you think about this
> > > solution? I'll work on it.
> > 
> > no, adding a configuration option for every potentially problematic feature
> > is a too easy shortcut that has been done too much in the past, and is a
> > thing we are finally manage to get out of.
> > 
> > as i said, a solution can be a combination of:
> > a) make the activity switching way more intuitive, with animations, an osd
> > that says the activity name for an instant, in any case something obvious
> > b) only cycle troucg runnung activities (and by default there is only one
> > running activity) so if someone never seen them/doesn't use them, doesn't
> > get anything with the mouse wheel
> > 
> > this may or may not be intuitive enough, but is important to avoid the
> > shortcut of "just throwing another configuration option in"
> 
> One could also make it a hover interface, a bit like opening a QMenu while 
the 
> mouse is over that button (but not directly underneath it, as that makes 
> interaction harder). Or maybe fold the button out to a list of activities 
when 
> clicked (a bit like the devicenotifier does it).
> 
> One of the problems I see is that the Activity Switcher still feels a bit 
too 
> modal, the switcher is also in my normal usage often at least half a screen 
> away from my mouse, and in the case of the toolbox, even across the entire 
> screen. The activity switcher in the panel has a much better position.

I use the keyboard shortcut (meta + tab) quite often. However I remember once 
someone (maybe, marco ?) proposed an "exposé like" effect, with activities as 
rows, and desktop as columns. That could be extremely useful, especially for 
dragging windows between desktop / activities. Does that still sound like a 
good idea ? Would it be difficult to do ?