Re: [Usability]Re: Taskbar should show tasks on all workspaces by default

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

> 
> > and the second suggestion defeats the purpose of the workspace
> > switcher, which is to allow users to corral work in clearly distinct
> > areas.
> 
> Disagree, corraling work in distinct areas with workspaces is still very
> well possible with all running apps visible in the taskbar applet. The
> fact alone that there's no visible cue that a program is still running
> should be enough to never make this behavior the default.
> 
> If you want workspaces dedicated to a certain project, like the Workplace
> Shell's "Work Area" folders, do it right and make documents auto-open in
> their own workspace and auto-start all project-related programs as well in
> their last open state.
> 

Well, if we have a task button in the tasklist in every workspace for all 
running tasks, then we risk: 

- Confusing users who think that there should be only task buttons for the 
particular workspace that is currently active. 

- There could be dozens of task buttons squashed into the tasklist applet, each 
one of such a miniscule size as to be useless from a usability perspective. 

How do we know that users have a problem with the task buttons only representing 
the tasks in each workspace? Surely before this issue is listed in bugzilla for 
someone to change, there should be some sort of evaluation for the different 
scenarios? I really think that the suggested solutions to this potential 
problem, introduce more usability issues than they resolve. 

Pat