Re: Revisiting the GNOME Panel in general...

[Tristan Buckmaster <tristan buckmaster gmail com>]

I think  you are right in saying that my approach is wrong in the
sense that it groups windows by application rather than by task.  I
thank you for pointing this out to me as my limited experience in such
systems led me to be unaware of such problems.

Although I think our current systems have fundamental problems of
their own.  For example if you take the use of workspaces to divide
tasks.  The idea of workspaces only works well if you have very well
defined tasks and they are independent of each other.  l find when I
am using workspaces, that I waste a lot of time changing between
workspaces and moving one app from one workspace to the next.  That is
why I tend not to use workspaces and when I do, I use at most 2.

Maybe with the new opportunities arising with the use of hardware
accelerated desktops, we may be able to solve these issues.

On Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:57:52 -0400, Sean Middleditch
<elanthis awesomeplay com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 13:32 +1000, Tristan Buckmaster wrote:
> > I have made some gimp mock ups of the ideas I posted to this forum in
> > early August (the ideas have since been modified).
> >
> > http://sng.its.monash.edu.au:9876/18518559/demo1c.png
> > http://sng.its.monash.edu.au:9876/18518559/demo2c.png
> >
> > All the icons on the bottom panel that have arrows are applications
> > that are currently running.  The icons on the left which don't have
> > arrows are not running and if you click on them they will launch (Max
> > OS X like).   There are three different behaviours when you click on
> > an icon with an arrow depending on the situation, they are:
> 
> And what is the purpose of this?  The OS X window/application grouping
> system is one of the absolute worst designed usability nightmares I've
> ever seen.  (Seriously, I'm surprised Apple screwed up that badly.)
> Users do not think in terms of applications.  Or, if they do, it's only
> because the computer is failing to do its job of making their work
> easier.
> 
> Work should be grouped by task, and the application(s) responsible for
> those tasks is just an implementation detail that should be as hidden as
> possible.
> 
> I don't see any reason to draw attention to running apps, grouping
> windows by apps, or in any other way distinguishing between multiple
> apps, ever.
> 
> I run into this problem on OS X all the time.  Say I have a couple
> tasks.  Maybe a terminal window/X Code window for a development project,
> a word processor window for some school paper, and my web browser.  The
> web browser has two are three windows (each with tabs); one window has
> documentation and such loaded for my coding task, the other window has
> research for my school task, and the other has some news sites and blogs
> I check.
> 
> Wonderful OS X groups windows by task.  It *forces* to think in a very
> illogical manner, because I have these three browser windows which are
> *completely* unrelated together being grouped, while the individual
> application windows related to each browser window (word processor,
> terminal, etc.) are forced to be grouped separately.  It's a wretched
> mis-design on Apple's part.
> 
> Also, an additional reason for OS X marking the app icons on the
> launcher when running is because, unlike GNOME, the apps do not shut
> down when the last window closes.  GNOME doesn't have *any* need for
> identifying running apps on the panel.
> 
> Please let's not copy this mistake of Apple's.
> --
> Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
> AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.
> 
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