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Rethinking Window Management

blogs.gnome.org

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Re: Rethinking Window Management

#181

Post by ilyt »

nektro wrote: post #81
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #65

Clearly I am a very simple person, and I don't get all these window management wars. Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed floating on top of another. Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn't as nicely integrated. What is everyone doing that needs someth…

yeah same, i3 does this for me perfectly. the only nit i would give it is that i wish the list of window tiles made it a little more apparent the borders, like including app icons or something like that

    rofi -show window
will give you searchable list of open windows. I bound it under alt+tab. No icons tho

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#182

Post by throwaway914 »

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 think we'll see gui toolkits adopt something like reactive design, where if you have the screen real estate the single-window-with-tabs will permit you to break them out to a dockable window, a modal, etc. Less choice, but I could see it going this way.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#183

Post by wilsonnb3 »

wredue wrote: post #157
deaddodo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however). Windows-style? Microsoft's APIs and design paradigms are as floating-window focused as they are maximized-focused. And I don't think I've had a window open maximized since the XP days. Multiple document interfaces were a first class citizen for a decade and a half, so clearly they under…

Yeah. Also: Windows 10 brought in some decent tiling/snapping, and windows 11 greatly expanded the tiling options for windows. It’s not i3 or bspwm or anything, but Microsoft does at least seem to understand desire for the window manager to help you nicely place several windows in to nice places.

I think window snapping was introduced in 7 actually. Might have even been vista - I never had the misfortune of using Vista.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#184

Post by em-bee »

jklinger410 wrote: post #44
snide wrote: post #23

For Gnome users, I really enjoy using Pop Shell (the window manager from Pop OS) as a tiling window manager. It doesn't exactly solve the problems with TWMs that this post discusses, but I often run into folks who don't know that you can use a lot of the bits from Pop OS in generic Gnome. I made a video about how to set it up if anyone is curious. The series was aimed at beginners, so feel to hop around if you just w…

I found the Forge plugin on GNOME Extensions to be a much better solution. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/

there is also paperWM.

what i can't see with any of them is how to combine tiling of smaller windows with fullscreen windows. basically i want the tiling to only apply to windows that are not fullscreen, and i want to be able to switch between the tiled layer and the fullscreen layer. even better, if there are multiple tile layers.

one could implement that with workspaces of course but gnome puts all workspaces in a row , which makes this difficult. i really want all apps related to a task on one workspace and switch between multiple tile sets. paperWM can scroll, that may help. or i could try to combine it with something like wsmatrix that puts workspaces in a grid.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#185

Post by ilyt »

cesarb wrote: post #121
bpye wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably don’t want a calculator to be full screen, even a terminal full height might make sense but full width almost never does.

> even a terminal full height might make sense but full width almost never does. I disagree; things like atop can make good use of a full width (and full height) terminal, and log lines (for instance from dmesg or journalctl) are often long enough that a full width terminal makes reading them more comfortable.

I just resize terminal when(~5% of the time) that's needed; long lines are hard to read without wrap on even 24 inch full size terminal, let alone anything longer

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#186

Post by ping00 »

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 exactly how I feel, and you put it very well. The one nice thing (to be fair, there's probably others but I haven't used it very long) about Win 11 is that your external monitor remembers your exact window configuration at the time of disconnection, so when you plug your laptop back in, you're good to go.

But the broader issue of spaced out information, wasted space, and a lack of *density* is what really drives me nuts. Cyberpunk promised me pic related (https://i.redd.it/dqipakmui3161.jpg) but we got tiling into preset (aka rigidly defined) configs instead. Note that I'm talking about the by-default experience.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#187

Post by pipeline_peak »

Regular people don’t really use window managers much these days, partly because they don’t use desktops as user environments unless needed. I know a lot of you’ve heard about gen-z not knowing about file systems and it’s definitely relative.

Most tasks are done in browsers with tabs, and if they need to use desktop apps it’s in full screen. Have any of you tried using Spotify or VScode not in full screen? It’s obviously not how they’re designed.

What the gnome people in this article refuse or fail to acknowledge is that no matter if they go with stacked, tiled, floating, mosaic, it’s gonna be a struggle for form factor because that’s just not how the way modern apps are designed.

The first picture in that post looks like the layout of a CDE screenshot from the 90s. Two text editors and a file manager open at the same time? Get real, might as well open xclock and xcalc lol.

Humans can’t multitask.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#188

Post by philsnow »

asoneth wrote: post #102
pxc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will get the standard Windows maximize behavior, which macOS calls "Zoom". No, no you won't. Because 'zoom' is not equivalent to maximization. It means something like 'make this window as big as the current contents it has open for viewing in each dimension, unless that's too big (and then just maximize it in that direction)'. Additionally it's just window resizing, not a window state . Which means that when yo…

> 'zoom' is not equivalent to maximization Interesting, I tried a few windows that I don't normally "zoom" and you are right. I suppose prior to this I only ever attempted to perform this action on browser/document/messaging/media windows that are able to be fully maximized. > there's a big, stupid, slow animation that must play every time you switch between workspaces I wondered how I never noticed this, and it look…

> I wondered how I never noticed this, and it looks like I had Accessibility > Display > Reduce Motion enabled.

I use Reduce Motion too, but even then there's an animation (it's a cross-fade instead of a wipe) with the same duration and annoyance, although it is less visually distracting and doesn't try to reinforce the worse-than-useless-to-me spatial ordering.

I have to wonder if there's some deep wizardry possible, some hacky function you can call hidden way deep inside Dock.app or Mission Control.app, that will do the workspace switching without any animation.

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#189

Post by em-bee »

em-bee wrote: post #112
asoneth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense to me. If you have a specific use for each workspace then I see how reordering them willy-nilly would be problematic and break muscle memory. I have a multi-monitor setup and I often find myself using particular monitors for particular applications. I would be annoyed if the operating system decided to start reorganizing them.

absolutely. i configured a fixed number of workspaces too, because the dynamic one were more work to set up each time. but either way, everytime the monitor arrangement changes, windows jump around to different workspaces, or all workspaces get merged into one. it drives me nuts! and it's not just muscle memory. it takes longer when you have twice as many workspaces in a row. if they would arrange in columns, say wor…

everytime the monitor arrangement changes, windows jump around to different workspaces

i just noticed that when i disconnect an external monitor, then a seemingly random number of windows that were not on the external monitor, moved to the active workspace. why, gnome, why?!!!

Re: Rethinking Window Management

#190

Post by johnny22 »

nirui wrote: post #144

> Overlapping windows can get messy quickly Yeah dude... that's one reason why the Minimize button exists on Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you know it's too important to...say...been removed (from default setting)? Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important... It's so important that on SOME deskto…

I"m glad it doesn't exist, since i'd have to turn it off :)

But seriously, I use GNOME because of what it is, not because of what it's not.

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