Re: Thoughts on Alt-Tab switching

[Fernando <ferkiwi gmail com>]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Jeremy Perry<jeremy perry redhat com> wrote:
> I think the value of workspaces is the physical division of the space -
> example I want this app to take up a whole screen, and this screen to have
> appx, y, and z. I might have pidgin in one space and a full screen art app
> in another. i want to be able to quickly switch to pidgin when I hear the
> 'ping.'  I think of people working across workspaces because it is spatially
> tidy, not just because they want to live in 1 and forget about 2 and 3 for a
> while.
>

I guess it depends on the person, I think that at the very least it
should be optional.
Normally, I'm working with a window taking up the whole screen and one
or two small windows behind it (i.e. maximized firefox+pidgin windows,
I have them usually in the same workspace). When I want to use the
small app I just alt+tab to it (if it's on the same workspace) and
have the previously maximized app as a background (Often, I don't even
see my wallpaper for hours). I keep a spatial organization but it
often has overlapping windows, one of them usually maximized, which
makes it be not much different to the eye from having it all in one
single workspace.

I use workspaces for cleaning up my tasks, because it's much more
comfortable to press a workspace shortcut and Alt+tab 1 or 2 times
than having to cycle through all workspace windows Alt+tabbing 12
times. Perhaps for the people who would like to use the mouse in the
task-switcher it will be easier to cycle all windows, but I think that
for keyboard users it's not that cool. When you have a lot of windows
it gets really hard if you can't cycle windows by workspace.

Btw, for switching tabs in firefox/pidgin/nautilus/etc.. I usually do
Control+PageUp / PageDown and having control over the direction of the
switch is quite more powerful than the tabbing system (I know you can
alt+shift+tab ...but thats quite uncomfortable to type) I think that
some alternative keys like the ones David Jordan pointed out will be
really helpful!

--
Fernando