Re: Loss of controllable icons that represent open applications

[Andre Gaytan <Andre Gaytan Sun COM>]

Thanks Ryan,

I will check out the MacOS and the other great suggestions you
made below.

Not sure why you call this the old Unixy methods of minimizing an open
window into an icon?   Is it really that old?  What have you been
using?  What are the top window systems for Unix (Gnome and MacOS X's)?

Thank you,

Andre






Ryan McDougall wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-21-03 at 13:09 -0800, Andre Gaytan wrote:
> 
>>Gnome Community,
>>
>>Sun is currently using the Gnome desktop in our Java Desktop.  Most employee's
>>are being "encouraged" to use this desktop.
>>
>>However the loss of being able to locate icons that represent open applications
>>is a huge loss on JDS at Sun.  CDE user's have grown accustomed to organizing
>>their desktop for quick reference of open applications.  So ...
>>
> 
> 
> Are you describing the old Unixy methods of minimizing an open window
> into an icon that rests on the user's desktop? Currently we minimize
> windows to a panel applet currently called "Window List", or optionally
> a Mac-style applet called "Window Selector".
> 
> I believe minimizing to icons is not done because one might confuse a
> window icon with a file or launcher icon, however that is just an
> educated guess on my part.
> 
> The best method for managing windows, by far, has to be MacOS X's expose
> functionality. And despite the fact that you make a good case for the
> spatial-memory feature of minimize to icon, we are far more likely to
> see something like that on GNOME than we are to see the return of
> minimize to icons.
> 
> 
>>Could someone please let me know who to direct this request?
> 
> 
> Bugzilla is where you put feature requests, but what you're asking for
> is a pretty broad, cross module behaviour change that I think will see
> resistance due to questionable benefit (when going forward with
> something new is a better idea than backwards with minimize to icon). So
> you really need to start working on getting buy-in from a number of
> places if you want things to change, probably the window manager and
> Nautilus (it draws the desktop/icons) people to start with.
> 
> You can discuss in detail the user interface aspects in
> usability gnome org, but discussion there can often become
> pie-in-the-sky if no one wants to actually implement ideas with code.
> 
> You can try desktop-devel-list, but before you go there you need to have
> your case made pretty solidly, and you homework well done.
> 
> 
>>Thank you,
>>
>>Andre
>>
> 
> 
> Hope that helps explain a couple things.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ryan
> 

-- 
Andre Gaytan, Uniboard Manager
Data Center Systems Engineering
x49301; 510-996-7211 work; 510-828-4454 cell
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