Re: Workspaces slowing me down.

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Sat, 2011-05-14 at 09:19 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Milan Bouchet-Valat
> <nalimilan club fr> wrote:
> Le samedi 14 mai 2011 à 10:51 -0400, G. Michael Carter a écrit :
> > Usually I work on dual 24" monitors so I'll have maybe 2 virtual
> > windows open.  But I was working on a laptop all this week and with
> > the 15" screen I've had about 9 workspaces going.
> > Moving between them I find is slowing me down in Gnome 3.
> > One thing slowing me down is when I need to go from 1 to 9.
> In System Settings->Keyboard->Shortcuts->Navigation, you can set
> keybindings to move to workspaces. Use something involving numbers, 
>and you'll be able to get directly to the workspace you want.

+1

But I only see navigation shortcuts available for "Switch to workspace
1" (which I assign to Alt-Shift-1) and "Switch to workspace 2" (which I
assign to Alt-Shift-2).  I don't know how you'd add 3, 4, 5, etc...

Generally I think a navigation shortcut for switch to last workspace
[where "last" is the highest numbered workstation, not the
chronologically previous] would be useful.  Then one could jump all the
way down and one up [for example] vs. down, down, down, down, down.

> That's probably the best solution, since people using many workspaces
> are relatively rare, and are able to customize their keybindings. Most
> users are likely to use only a few of them (I think, but of course
> I've no data on that).

I believe this is true;  I find that more than five starts to result in
a loss of productivity.  I do not believe a human can effectively
multitask to that level [an individual may believe that they can - but
they're deluded].

> 9 is a lot of desktops!  

+1

> I use a max of 6 I believe

+1

>  I never used the grid mode because it started getting complicated on
> where all my windows was.  So then I send up panning around looking
> for whatever window I wanted.

Exactly, a grid doesn't help.  Then you just have to navigate in
multiple dimensions; that is worse, no better.

> Honestly, I don't know if there is a particularly efficient way to
> deal with 9 workspaces that doesn't involve putting numbers or some
> other special function to deal with your particular workflow. 

Or... there is just no way to efficiently deal with 9 workspaces -
period.