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Rethinking Window Management

blogs.gnome.org

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Re: Rethinking Window Management

#161

Post by somat »

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. :)

True, really it should be the window managers job to provide tabs. I think browser tabs came about because people wanted many browser windows open and the windows desktop was not really providing an ideal user experience, so the browser vendors said "fine we will do it our self".

But really, if done correctly every application could be tabbed, and the application would not have to do anything.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#162

Post by _8j50 »

Back when I first started learning C, I had an idea to have a GUI environment where instead of windows you have cubes. Not random 3d objects bit 2D compatible abstractions similar to windows that render what would be a window on one face for regular apps but for 3d apps, different faces and relationship between cubes can be configured. I coded something very basic in opengl but gave up after getting camera movements right be ause I realized then how hard it would be basically doing wayland except more (and this was before wayland).

I still have the idea but I have a lot more improvements to it and now I understand that the focused content on a 2d screen has to always be 2d but navigation,effects, organization and control can be 3d.

Compiz died too early!

People lament not having our promised flying cars in 2023, I lament our super cool UIs.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#163

Post by Cacti »

somat wrote: post #159
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…

Conversely I regard modal dialogs as one of the worse sins a ui designer can commit. Sometimes necessary, but they should never willingly interfere with interactivity. This then sort of leads into the next point. Overlapping windows. It lets you put more applications on the screen at once but it does not really do much for the user in terms of workflow. The window underneath is obscured so I can't really use it witho…

A closely related sin: stealing/changing the users key or mouse focus.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#164

Post by ilyt »

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 miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.

It's weird that ability to see 2 chats at once is now both more arcane and complex than when the chat apps started; in most you'd need to explicitly have 2 separate instances of either webapp or webpage running to do that.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#165

Post by ilyt »

whartung wrote: post #141
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 honestly don't know how someone could do much of anything in a "single window" on a 27" iMac screen. (Anything beyond, say, watching a movie or the like.) On a laptop, sure, to a point. But these drive in theater style displays? Not quite sure how that works. Maybe it's great for video editing, but the screen is so large, and the eye can really focus on just a small portion of it, just seems like a lot of wasted sp…

> I honestly don't know how someone could do much of anything in a "single window" on a 27" iMac screen. (Anything beyond, say, watching a movie or the like.)

Well, IDE windows have sub-components while still techncially being "single window". CAD/graphics related ones like space. Most other apps don't need more than half of that screen.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#166

Post by em-bee »

KerrAvon wrote: post #136
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.

that sounds very weird to me. NeXT applications very much had multiple windows, and NeXT computers as well as PCs running NeXTStep could handle multiple windows just fine. even the app menu was its own window floating independently from the actual application window. so i really do not see where the claim would come from that multiple windows made things slow.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#167

Post by nerdix »

csdvrx wrote: post #120
jwells89 wrote: post #61

As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often, but when I do I don't usually want the window to be spirited away to its own separate universe, and the apps that actually need fullscreen implement that functionality ind…

> As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just norma…

I use hyprland too.

macOS's full screen mode is like the experience of using hyprland. It is vastly inferior. Yes, it hides window decorations and that is good. But its lacking shortcuts to switch directly to a particular workspace (so it lacks the Win + 1 feature that you are talking about, you can only transition between workspaces with a keyboard in order with ctrl + left or right)

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#168

Post by crimsontech »

taeric wrote: post #158
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 would take issue with your first claim. People, in general, have very mixed spatial sensibilities. Is why it takes herculean efforts to keep dishes organized in a family. Some people have organizations they want. Some have different and incompatible organizations they want. Some people just don't care. Seriously, look at the insane amount of effort that a grocery store has to go through to keep things organized. Ke…

Not only this, after decades I have decided that fewer visible windows is better for my focus. I went from using ultrawide and multiple monitors to a single 27” 5k monitor and find myself more productive than ever.

If the window is out of the way, on another virtual desktop or behind the current window it takes less of my attention.

I don’t respond to email or chat as fast because I’ll only check these apps infrequently throughout the day. At most I’ll have two app windows on display at once now.

Everyone is different and people are different from one day to the next.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#169

Post by jwells89 »

csdvrx wrote: post #120
jwells89 wrote: post #61

As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often, but when I do I don't usually want the window to be spirited away to its own separate universe, and the apps that actually need fullscreen implement that functionality ind…

> As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just norma…

I’ve taken a peek at hyprland in the past and it looks great for what it is, but tiling is not my cup of tea, and even if it can be configured to float everything by default its design isn’t floating-first.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#170

Post by Phrodo_00 »

pmontra wrote: post #70

Gnome developers really like automoving stuff on the screen, like activities animations. Instead I could kill a window that does not stay put were I placed it. Who does it thinks it is to know better than me how my desktop must look like? Anyway, until there is a way to work as I want to, no problem with them enjoying their time. Reconfiguring the desktop to look like Gnome 2 is a tax I pay to have them keeping it co…

You're the second person that calls the activity window overview moving windows. In what way are the windows being moved? They're just being unstacked so that you can find that window 3rd from the bottom on the stack.
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