Re: Idea for non-overlapping maximized windows using guidelines

[Alessandro Crismani <alessandro crismani gmail com>]

Il giorno mer, 24/11/2010 alle 11.09 +0100, Andreas Wallberg ha scritto:
> Hi all!
> 
> I often find myself wanting to have a main window taking up about 2/3
> of the screen and a second window using the remaining space. I have
> not been very impressed with the tiling window managers that I have
> tried over the years as they seem to lack the flexibility that I need
> to get my work done, like switching between tiling and non-tiling and
> defining areas and borders and so on.
> 
> While working on an illustration in Inkscape it struck me that Gnome
> Shell could perhaps provide a working interface to simple tiling by
> borrowing the concept of guidelines. Basically, I suggest having a
> window guideline for the X-axis and for the Y-axis of a workspace,
> which should be accessible from the "workspace" interface to freely
> subdivide a workspace into a maximum of 4 areas. Pressing the maximize
> button on a window while in one of those areas would maximize the
> window to fit that area. Dropping an application launcher or window in
> that area would start it and/or resize it to the area. When looking at
> the workspace overview, the windows should retain the position and
> dimensions.
> 
> I am sure there are some usability aspects of this that needs to be
> assessed but I think it is a novel approach to non-overlapping windows
> that should be discussed, before it is dismissed :-)
> 
> I link to a fugly mockup here:
> http://db.tt/DaUaP2Y
> 
> Best regards,
> Andreas
> 

I think this might be a good idea, even though I think it should be
optional. I myself am seeing new users distracted by this and somethimes
I just want to maximize a window. However there are hundreds of
scenarios where this will be a lifesafer!

Furthermore, do you think it should be configurable per workspace or all
the workspaces should share the same config?

Cheers,
Alessandro