Re: [Usability] [Fwd: shortcuts to move between desktops/workspaces]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu> writes: 
> The important thing is the term; "Workspaces". I think having Workspaces
> be geometrically contiguous is better than the current setup, because it
> gives a physical analogy to the operation. I don't think things like the
> panel cause a real conceptual problem here, they are like things glued
> onto the piece of glass you are looking at the workspace through. The
> important thing is that having geometric connection provides an
> accessible conceptual model so users feel like there's a tangible space
> to their desktop.
> 
> Disjunct spaces with no physical relation isn't a very common phenomenum
> in the real world.

The only practical difference at issue is whether windows are clipped
to their current workspace or can overlap multiple spaces.

I've heard users call the workspaces "screens" and think of them as a
series of monitors lined up next to each other. Seems like a
reasonable physical analogy. My girlfriend has her workspace with her
apps open all the time and switches to it in order to use the
computer.

To me having the windows clipped to the workspace is useful, 
because I don't want to see the bottom of some window on another
workspace that happens to exceed screen size. The idea here is that
you have unrelated stuff on the different spaces.

If you allow windows to overlap between workspaces, then you
essentially have one big desk that's annoyingly not all visible at
once, instead of logically distinct desks, where you really don't
_want_ it all visible at once.

You would clearly need to do user testing to see which people find
more useful/understandable. My guess is they wouldn't notice a
difference at all until they happened to have a window larger than the
screen, in which case the funny bottom-of-the-window on one of the
other workspaces would either make sense or be annoying.

I would also give some weight to the fact that KDE uses only the
clipped-to-workspace mode, so interoperation is simpler if we do that.

Havoc