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Rethinking Window Management

blogs.gnome.org

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131–140 of 272 posts

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#131

Post by jancsika »

phkahler wrote: post #105

I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm not sure why. 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs. 2) I use a 55" screen where…

> I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.

Alternatively, I would love a window manager that is just a maximized Firefox patched to display all native apps inside browser tabs. :)

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#132

Post by seltzered_ »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #93

People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what m…

This is usually where I reference the idea of toolkits taking to each other as pioneered during the Smalltalk era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s

See also 'toolkits, not apps' tweet by Bret Victor : https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057...

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#134

Post by garou »

jancsika wrote: post #131
phkahler wrote: post #105

I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm not sure why. 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs. 2) I use a 55" screen where…

> I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done. Alternatively, I would love a window manager that is just a maximized Firefox patched to display all native apps inside browser tabs. :)

Sway (i3) can stack any program as tabs.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#135

Post by soulofmischief »

elteto wrote: post #92
soulofmischief wrote: post #31

I wish Gnome would stop rethinking things and just reimplement the basic desktop features every major competitor has, and that Gnome 2 had.

Starting with something as basic as bringing back the path input textbox in file dialogs. I mean... it's a file dialog! What else but inputting file _paths_ is it good for?

I recently got a macbook pro m2 in order to do local ML dev, and Finder has got to be one of the worst, most user-hostile programs I've ever used. It's not a good look when fucking windows explorer offers a better user experience.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#136

Post by KerrAvon »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #93

People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what m…

Single window apps came in with NeXT. I heard a theory early on in the NeXT/Apple merger that it was because the window server buffering was so heavyweight on early hardware that multiple windows just made things too slow.

While I personally agree with you, I think you're overestimating the desire of most users to manage multiple window clutter themselves except in very limited contexts.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#137

Post by alpaca128 »

dugmartin wrote: post #13

I've been using i3 (within the larger Regolith package) for a few years now and its hard for me to non-tiling WMs now. However I do think there would be a lot of improvements, especially with large desktop monitors. One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy ( https://www.sounda…

The centeredmaster patch for dwm works roughly like that - the master window(s) is in the center of the screen and the rest is stacked on the left and right.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#138

Post by KerrAvon »

seltzered_ wrote: post #132
iamcalledrob wrote: post #93

People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what m…

This is usually where I reference the idea of toolkits taking to each other as pioneered during the Smalltalk era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s See also 'toolkits, not apps' tweet by Bret Victor : https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057...

I assume there's a thread there that elaborates? Can't see threads anymore if you're logged out of Twitter/echs.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#139

Post by adrusi »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #93

People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what m…

I really appreciate apps that open new windows where it makes sense, but I'm pretty sure the reason it died out is because people started using too many windows for conventional floating window managers to handle. I'm not sure if many people really felt the burden it would have caused, because the growth in number of windows arguably began with having many webpages open at once, and firefox, and then later internet explorer with version 7 (or maybe 6?), introduced tabs as a core part of using a web browser.

When I'm using a tiling window manager that supports tab-style layouts (i3, sway, gnome+popOS) applications that open new windows liberally are great because the alternative is to have an ad hoc bespoke window manager inside every application, and it's much better to have a single consistent window management experience at the OS level with one set of keybondings and predictable behavior.

But if I had to have a floating window for every webpage I have open, I'd never find anything!

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#140

Post by alpaca128 »

> Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new windows in seemingly arbitrary positions

Not all tiling WMs are dynamic. Static tiling WMs exist and they give you both more control and more predictable behaviour. Don't want automatic placement and windows jumping around randomly each time you open/close something? Don't use a window manager which was designed to do exactly that.

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