Re: Thoughts on window sizing - now tiling

[Ross Smith <myxiplx googlemail com>]

I actually think you could use both.  Done well, a set of training
videos showing off the features would be really cool.  You could have
them built into the help system, browsable, and also uploaded to
YouTube, etc.

Hell, if you want to be really flash, have 'help' or 'help videos' as
one of the categories you can browse within the document browser, with
the videos playing while you're still in the overlay.  I might just be
creating extra work for no reason now though, so feel free to ignore
that idea :-D

What I do know is that everybody I've shown the current gnome-shell
youtube videos to has been blown away (and not techies either - I've
been gauging response on ordinary folks in the office at work).
Everybody has instantly understood the concept of multiple desktops,
and most of them have seen that and gone "wow!".  Not one so far has
said "why would I want to do that?".

So, a subtle tip, along with a quick video of how to do it would be a
great way to learn.  And since it's easy to record videos with
gnome-shell, it should be easy to create them too :-D


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Greg K Nicholson <greg gkn me uk> wrote:
>> A key point to the idea is that you make the gnome-shell overlay the
>> first place to learn about this, so that people can realize that there
>> are improvements to the ways they arrange windows now.  Then once they
>> are familiar with that, the system can teach them about holding down
>> Ctrl.
>>
>> My preferred way to do that would be to pop up a tip notification the
>> 2nd or 3rd time they join windows together like this - so you're just
>> teaching the people who are actively using it.
>>
>> And once somebody has learnt about the ctrl key modifier (if that
>> proves possible), the nice thing is that it preserves existing
>> behaviour, while still making tiling very seamless.  Most of the time
>> you can drag windows around as normal, but any time you want to tile a
>> bunch together, you just hold down ctrl any time they get close.
>>
>> It makes separating windows easy too - drag without ctrl and the whole
>> group moves.  Drag with ctrl and you split a window off.  Let go of
>> ctrl while dragging, and you can place that wherever you like, without
>> any danger of it sticking to another window by accident.
>>
>
> Actually, yeah—that makes a lot of sense. Great idea.
>
> I don't think we even need the Clippy-type [;)] tooltip. MS are using
> video demos (i.e. advertising) to introduce jump menus (right-clicking
> on a taskbar button): I think we could get away with publicising the
> modifier key in the Gnome 3.0 release-buzz. It'd certainly get
> mentioned in an Ars Tech, Register or Lifehacker review, for example.
>