Re: Launching vs. Raising an application...

[James A <nevyn and org>]

Ami Ganguli <aganguli@interlog.com> writes:

> 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.

 Would it not be easier to have an option to close an application when 
you click on the minimize button (very easy to do by configuring your
wm). As long as all gnome apps save enough state, this should be
transparent. The other useful effect this will have is that if an app
is doing something, then it will ignore the delete request and hide
itself (this means that click on the close button in an ftp client
while downloading doesn't stop your download).
 This would also stop the problem of not being able to start multiple
applications from the menu (something I really hate about some windoze 
apps).

[snip ... ]

> 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.

 Sounds like a cute idea

-- 
James Antill -- james@crazylands.org
Flaming is easy but it is basically masturbation without the orgasm
so why bother? -- Larry MvVoy