Re: interapplication communication

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-12-29 at 20:37 +0100, Johannes Schmid wrote:

[...]

> > Now, the goal of GNOME Shell isn't to be something radically new and
> > different, it's to be a great user interface for GNOME 3, so maybe we'll
> > need to go ahead and make a big switch to something more conventional;
> > maybe the current ideas just aren't right. But we definitely want to
> > finish our current design ideas and get some experience with users
> > before we make such a move. (The message tray is probably the last large
> > remaining piece; we're hoping to get that landed next week.)
> 
> Sure, user feedback is probably the most important point. (One of the
> reasons that I didn't post here before having used gnome-shell for a
> while).
> Regarding the task list I am all against a button panel but I still
> thinnk there needs to be a fast way to change the window (not
> essentially the same as the task) using mouse only without the overlay.

Why "without the [overview]"? - I can think of several reasons offhand
why a task list might be preferred to the overview for window switching:

 - You can look find a window with your eyes and then mouse directly
   to it.

 - There's less window motion, so it's easier to understand the
   change when a window is raised or lowered and thus easier to
   build a mental model of where things are.

 - The overview takes a fraction of a second to come up, and more
   if the shell is performing badly on your system.

 - If you have multiple desktops, the overview isn't an efficient
   way to switch between windows on the current desktop, since
   you have to find the current desktop and then identify small
   thumbnails in it.

But if you just say "without the overview" then you are defining the
problem being in terms of the solution; we can't discuss how the
overview might be modified to improve it, or what the pros and cons
are of non-overview solutions.

> If you read the archive you will see a lot of post dicussion various
> ideas because people are very used to it, even those power-user
> keyboards freaks.

Just because people miss the way that things used to be isn't by
itself a sign that things shouldn't have been changed. The real
question is whether people are adapting and finding new ways of
working that work just as well. If they are, then we need to figure
out how to guide people to those ways faster. If they aren't
then we need to fix that.

(I'm positive that there will be multiple tasklist and/or dock
extensions for the shell. That's a solution for people who are highly
change resistant, or who have very specialized work flows. It's not
a solution in general.)

> Just another idea that poped into my mind: What about having the alt-tab
> chooser as kind of dock that pops up when you move the mouse to the
> buttom of the screen?

How would this interact with the message tray which also pops up when
you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen?

- Owen