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Function keys productivity trick

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Re: Function keys productivity trick

#111

Post by marcosdumay »

robertoandred wrote: post #103
deathanatos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? macOS. There's no Alt+Tab, for example: no way to switch between two arbitrary windows on the Z-stack¹. The not-equivalent that exists is ⌘+Tab, and it switches apps ; the usability of it, vs. Alt+Tab, is horrendous. (It fronts stuff you don't want, covering up stuff you do want.) There are workspaces … but I have found them hard to get productive…

How would a window-based ⌘+Tab even work? It'd be a million miles long and take forever to cycle to the thing you want.

How many windows do you have opened? How many things are you doing at the same time?

Is this because you lose configuration if you close them, or because they take too long to open? Because you can't really use so many of them to make switching not viable on a single virtual desktop.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#112

Post by anthk »

the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

s,tiling,floating like CWM.

Same keybindings.

win+a = app launcher

win+s = search windows

win+m = rename window

win+1-4 = wspace 1-4

shift+win+1-4 move to wspace 1-4

win + q = close window

win + r = reload cwm

Also, if you are a programmer and use non-ASCII punctuation (Spanish, French, German, Nordic):

        setxkbmap us -option ctrl:swapcaps -option compose:menu -option compose:rwin
The US layout it's the best for programming, and with that setkbmap trick you can compose á-ú/ñ letters with ease.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#113

Post by kitsunesoba »

the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

I've tried tiling WMs several times and they inevitably drive me nuts because on normal computer screen sizes, windows frequently end up awkwardly-sized adding scrolling requirements that wouldn't be present with overlapping windows that are sized to fit the content…

If I were to commit to a tiling WM I think I'd have to replace my main monitor with a 4k TV large enough to run at 1x UI scale without the UI elements being tiny so each window gets the virtual real estate required without effectively making the "tiling" part of the tiling WM moot by maximizing every window.

This probably boils down to the type of programs one uses though… someone living in chromeless text editors and terminals all day will probably fare better with tiling than someone who spends all their time in IDEs, graphics editors, and web browsers.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#114

Post by rxhanson »

Charmstone [1] is a different take from everything mentioned here (I'm the developer).

The idea is to use your spatial memory to switch/launch apps faster than anything else that I've found, with a smaller learning curve and less memorization.

You can use keyboard shortcuts with the arrow keys, modifier keys + cursor movement, or a trackpad gesture.

[1] https://charmstone.app

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#117

Post by wink »

awelxtr wrote: post #106
wink wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to register with "multiples of the same application" open, i.e. if I have Firefox at Win-2 then it's always the first window that was opened (which is fine most of the time) but if I need the other Firefox window then it's alt-tabbing again. No, tabs don't help here, I don't have 50 Firefox windows open, but often a second.

Win+Ctrl+number You're welcome!

Ha, thanks. Was on Linux when I wrote that so couldn't try it. Also Win+Alt+Number opens a new window of that type. Weird hand twisting aside, this could be useful :)

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#118

Post by david_allison »

I've recently bought an Elgato Stream Deck*[0] (programmable 15-key LED macro-pad) and would strongly recommend it. Simply: define an icon, define a shell script/app/site and press a button to execute.

It natively supports 'profiles' for contextual actions if a given application is active, and 'folders', to extend the actions available given the 15 key limitation.

I believe there's also a SDK + plugin infrastructure which lets you define live-updating icons, but I haven't given this a try.

[0] https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-mk2

* EDIT to differentiate from Steam Deck

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#119

Post by kitsunesoba »

marcosdumay wrote: post #111
robertoandred wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a window-based ⌘+Tab even work? It'd be a million miles long and take forever to cycle to the thing you want.

How many windows do you have opened? How many things are you doing at the same time? Is this because you lose configuration if you close them, or because they take too long to open? Because you can't really use so many of them to make switching not viable on a single virtual desktop.

I tend to have a ton of apps/windows open at any given time due to a combination of tasks often requiring a fairly wide array of apps, but also to reduce the friction of context switching to a minimum (even with a lightning fast SSD, closing one set of apps/documents and opening another takes time). So at any given time I probably have apps/windows open for a few different tasks open.

Virtual desktops get heavy usage from me, but (Cmd|Alt)-Tab switching being caged off per-desktop would actually pose a problem, because when I reach for an app with that shortcut I'm not actively thinking about which desktop it's on — I just want to go to it, wherever it happens to be, even if it's been intentionally placed on a particular virtual desktop.

So app-scoped Cmd-Tab works well for me, because the number of entries it has is always reasonable to tap through and it includes entries from all desktops on both screens.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#120

Post by boomskats »

For my Gnomies, the Run-or-raise extension [0] is stellar. It does exactly what it says: you bind a key combo to a launcher command, and optionally define a windowname or wm_class query to check for the existence of the program before it's launched. If it's running it's raised, if it's not then it's run. It has options for the window behaviour after toggling, optionally minimising the programs etc.

I can't rate it highly enough. It helped me finally step away from my decade-long i3wm-adhd addition, where everything else failed.

[0]: https://github.com/CZ-NIC/run-or-raise

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