Activities (problems & proposals)

[niccolo]

   Hi,

   I've been using activities for a bit and I think they are a cool concept, but they have some problems. I was suggested by d_ed to make a coherent list of my problems; I also took a bit of time to think if there was anything I could do to help. I thus have also a proposal to make Activities better. First, the list of bugs I found:

   1. Remember what apps are set to be shown in all activities. I always use apps like Telegram and my music player in all activities, and I have to set this way too often.

   2. Some apps can only have one instance open. This should change to one instance for activity. E.g.: opening system settings in activity X should not make me switch to activity Y where I had it open already.

   3. When clicking links, the new tab will be opened in any open session found, even if it's in another activity. Instead - if I don't have firefox open in one activity - I'd like the tab to open up in a new window, in the same activity.

   4. When you restart kwin, all applications are thrown back into one activity regardless of where they were. This leads to frustration.

   5. When I have window X set to be shown in all activities, and window X spawns window Y, the latter will not be set to be shown in all activities but only the activity I opened window X in. Easy way to replicate it: open telegram, set it to all activities, change activity, click on any image.

   6. Sometimes apps in activities I stop pop up in the next activity I open.

   7. Many third party apps are not restored in the correct activities when I boot up.

   8. The animation from a activity to another is a slide in of the new activity wallpaper over a black screen. It doesn't make sense to have an animation that starts with a completely black screen. Either the animation should be removed, or the wallpaper of the old activity should be the one sliding out while the wallpaper of the new activity slides in.

   9. Activity sidebar get stuck open.

   10. No clear shortcut to open activity sidebar.

   ---

   11. The activities list widget breaks when you move anything in the panel. Try using more margin than default, and you'll see how it slides down and stops being displayed correctly.

   12. The activities list widget is missing a way to see all activities, or to create new ones on the fly.

   13. It is incredibly difficult to move apps between activities. It is either titlebar right click > show in activities > toggle new activity > titlebar right click > show in activities > toggle old activity or right click on desktop > show activities switcher > try to drag from TM to sidebar (sidebar accidentally closes way too often)

   14. It takes quite a bit of time to create a new activity and set it up: requires writing a name, choosing an icon in a very unintuitive way, possibly change the wallpaper etc otherwise they end up looking the same and it's difficult to distinguish which activity you are in.

   15. It is a bit difficult to switch to a precise activity (unless you have the activities pager): it's either right click on desktop > activity switcher > click on activity or meta-tabbing until the correct one appears.

   16. It is also difficult to stop an activity, as per above. Although stopping activities could benefit the user, opening the activity switcher and hovering on the right activity is an action too annoying to do every time, so the users ends up ignoring that.

   Issues 1-10 are quite technical, 11-16 are my personal opinions on why activities are not used much: literally everything about them takes too much time to perform. I'd like to propose a solution to address 11-16: (see picture in attachment).

   A new widget that

   a) Displays all user activities and up to four app for each one (after which the list becomes scrollable or visible on hover)

   b) Makes moving apps through activities easy: it would be enough to drag the app icon between them

   c) Allows for stopping activities with one click

   d) Allows for creating a new activity with one click. A new name, icon and wallpaper will be generated automatically. The user can then edit these info if needed.

   e) Allows for removing an activity by right clicking it and then selecting remove.

   f) Hovering on activity icon would expose its name on a tooltip, and hovering an app would show its title in a tooltip

   g) Rightclicking on an app icon in any activity would show up a menu of activity-related actions for that app: pin to this activity task manager, show also in activities..., Show in favorites in this activity, etc

   (The current activity "pill" doesn't show any app since there's TM for that, and has the + button)

   This widget could be shipped by default between kickoff and TM. It would take almost no space by default, since there would only be the default activity and a + button. There would also be a ? button that, when pressed, opens a dialog that explain how activities work and then offers an easy way to remove the activities widget if the user does not want it.

   I think such a widget would make it much, much easier and likeable for users to use activities. It mimics materia shell management of activities, which seem to be quite appreciated.

   Niccolò Venerandi
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