Re: [Usability] Metacity Proposal: Grouping Windows

[Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>]

On Mon, 2004-03-08 at 09:29 +0000, Julien Olivier wrote:
> (snip)
> 
> > Any more comments, questions, or ideas? Keep em coming!
> > 
> 
> Your mockup gave a crazy idea. But maybe it's not that bad...
> 
> How about having moving the applications menu / launchers from the main
> panel to a "workspace panel" ? When you open your GNOME session, you
> would have Nautilus' desktop, a "workspace manager" and the "actions"
> menu in one panel. The "workspace" manager would be like the current
> task list but would only show available "workspaces" (Here, a workspace
> is what you call the parent window, which contains the sub-windows). And
> in the "actions" menu, you would have a "new workspace" entry.
> 
> Clicking on "new workspace" would create an empty window containing a
> panel. This panel would contain a text entry for you to specify a name
> (by default it would be "workspace #x"), the "applications" menu, a few
> launchers icons and a task list to manage sub-windows (similar to the
> current task-list).
> 
> This way, each "workspace" would be like a desktop on its own.
> 
> Actually, the only difference with the way it is currently is that each
> workspace would be in its own window and could be managed like any
> window.
> 
> Does anyone understand what I mean ? Do I need to create a mockup ? Am I
> on drugs ?

I'm not sure if you're on drugs or not, ;) but your ideas definitely
needs some fleshing out, or justification as to how it would improve
matters. 

I do sense some commonality with Reinout/IBM's concept of workspaces,
and that its worth pursuing. I think the concept of consistent state is
very important spatially since, aside from general entropy, when we set
down real objects they tend to stay in the exact state we left them. Its
an important metaphor that IBM uses in its UIs such as Eclipse.

Cheers,
Ryan