Launching vs. Raising an application...

[Ami Ganguli <aganguli interlog com>]

I was playing with Gnome for this first time today and suddenly had
a GUI revelation.  I figured I'd subscribe to this list to see if
anybody
agreed with me.

Anyway, I once taught beginning computing courses at various
private training companies and I've seen lots of newbie users trying
to figure out the MS-Windows user interface.

A common problem is confusion between launching and application
and raising/maximizing an application that's already open.  I've
often found users having trouble because they'd somehow opened
a dozen or so copies of the same program.  New users find it intuitive
that in order to get back an application that has "disappeared" (i.e..
you've minimized it or hidden it behind a window)  you repeat
whatever you did to start the thing in the first place.  Why not
try to blur or eliminate the distinction between minimized and
terminated applications?

1/  Each Gnome app creates a PID file when it starts.  If a previous
PID file exists, check if the process is really running and take some
action to maximize it, as this is probably what the user wants.

2/ Each Gnome app should include a menu option to "Open another
window" (as in Navigator).  This would provide the ability to
launch another instance of an application.

3/ Minimized apps could simply disappear.  No desktop icons.
The 'right' way to find the application again would be to select
it again from the menu or panel.  To make things easier, a panel
applet could be created with Icons for the 5 (or so) most recently
used applications.

4/ Have applications save state and exit when they are minimized.
As long as the application properly saves state, there need not
be a distinction between exiting and minimizing a window.
Perhaps there should be a time-out period: after five minutes of
being minimized, the application saves state and exits.  (I realize
there are lots of applications where this would be a bad thing -
a cd roaster comes to mind.  Only apps where this actually makes
sense would do such a thing.  Actually, this could work with a
CD-roaster too, as long as it could enter a "don't exit" state
while it was actually roasting.)

5/  Since users will no longer be conscious of what's running,
there is a danger that they'll shut down X while an application is
busy (again the CD-Roaster comes to mind).  Apps that don't
want to be accidentally interrupted could "spin" a panel applet
(just like the Netscape spinner).  There would only be one
spinner that's shared by all Gnome applications. Perhaps clicking
on the applet would give status information.  Note that this
should be used judiciously - if every app spins it while doing
anything at all, it'll get irritating and no longer convey useful
information.

Comments?

... Ami.