Re: Some thoughts about window management

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Yaron Tausky wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 17:00 +0300, Yaron Tausky wrote:
>>
>>1. The context menu for tasks in the taskbar is not very helpful. Most
>>of the functions it offers are rarely used (rollup, anyone?), even
>>though it's the best place to put the most used ones, since it's always
>>accessible (as the panel is always visible). I suggest that some sort of
>>API would be implemented to allow the application developers to add
>>app-specific functions to that menu, and put all the window management
>>stuff under a "Window management" submenu.
>...
> http://www.geocities.com/decaycell/mockup.png

The main problem with this is that most programs would not add extra
items to their menu, either because they didn't need to, or because
their developers didn't get around to it because it was a near-invisible
feature. So in most cases, you'd have a menu where *most* of its items
(the window management items) were in a submenu, which would be very
strange.

And with the Gaim example you show, there's the problem that it's
duplicating items that are already in the panel applet menu. If your
mouse pointer is in the middle of the screen, which do you go for -- the
panel applet menu, or the window list menu? Dither, dither ...

Also, how would this work with the "Window Grouping" preferences?

I agree on getting rid of the "Roll Up" item, though. The use case for
rolling up is to temporarily get a window out of the way so you can see
what's behind it. If you're near the window list, minimizing and
restoring does the same thing, much more quickly, so there's no point in
having Roll Up in the menu.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/