Discussion for Virtual Desktops and Activities future

[Nate Graham]

I used to be of the opinion that having both Activities and Virtual 
Desktops was "too confusing" to users. I've changed my opinion recently, 
because I finally came to understand how they're designed to be used for 
very different things: Virtual Desktops are for window organization 
within the current set of tasks, and Activities are for higher-level 
task and context switching.

Both concepts have merit and are useful, but it's true that the current 
user interfaces for them are rather confusing for a variety of reasons: 
both have similar animated transitions; one has an accessible user 
interface and a keyboard shortcut but the other one doesn't; one can 
have different wallpapers but the other one can't; etc.

I'm willing to experiment with combining them to improve the user 
interface, but I think it's important to keep in mind the different 
reasons *why* people use one or the other (or both), and fluidly support 
all of those use cases without losing any current functionality. So for 
example:

- You should be able to mark a Virtual Desktop as "private"
- Virtual Desktops should be able to have different wallpapers, panel 
settings, recent documents lists, etc.
- I'd like to see a visible-by-default method to switch between Virtual 
Desktops, plus appropriate keyboard shortcuts

In addition to alleviating potential user confusion, combining them 
while keeping current functionality may yield a PR advantage since it 
would represent an opportunity to shift the narrative from "KDE has two 
confusing versions of Virtual Desktops that nobody understands" to "KDE 
Has the best, most feature-filled Virtual Desktops implementation!"

I have no opinions regarding how the two concepts are or ought to be 
implemented on the backend.

Nate



On 07/04/2018 09:57 AM, Michail Vourlakos wrote:
> 
> 
> 2018-07-03 22:19 GMT+03:00 Eike Hein <hein at kde.org <mailto:hein at kde.org>>:
> 
> 
>     This is the relevant thread :-)
> 
> 
> There are some technical decisions and commit reviews referencing MERGE 
> and this is why I proposed this thread.
> 
> Proposed technical decisions:
> 
> 1. Virtual Desktops Ids from integers will be QVariants possibly strings 
> I guess
> 2. An empty Virtual Desktops list will mean to All Desktops even when 
> then user has enabled
> manually all dekstops records
> 
> 
> What are the reasons for [1] to be proposed?
> 
> [A] Desktops and Activities will share the same way and code to identify 
> themselves and thus it will be easier to maintain
> (I cant object to that of course)
> 
> 
> [B1] Activities and VDs will be able to be combined. That is the current 
> situation so I suppose [1] is just for [A]
> (I have no problem with that)
> 
> OR
> 
> [B2] Activities and VDs will NOT be able to be combined. So the users in 
> the future will be able to use
> Virtual Desktops OR Activities and never in combination.
> (I think that this is what kwayland protocol is trying to support currently.
> Even though that would break some user workflows for those users that 
> combine VDs and Activities together,
> personally I also dont object BUT this must be communicated and prepared 
> to all parts
> Plasma and VDG that is).
> 
> Things to consider for [B2]
> 
> [B2.1] How the user will be able to switch between VDs and Actitivities 
> easily?
> [B2.2] How this dual way of doing things can be presented to the user in 
> a way that has meaning in order to
> choose what prefers?
> 
> 
> P.S. [A] and [B] are just my guesses feel free to correct me