Preamble (Preramble)

The one thing (or one of) that I have been disappointed in with *nix DE's in general (okay, only GNOME and KDE, as I've only tried them) and KDE4 specifically is the taskbar. We haven't really done any innovation in that area. Sure, there's a new taskbar coming out with grouping, but what I've seen (which is very little) is not very promising so far (though it is an improvement).

Then, along came Windows 7(pre-alpha). I don't necessarily like the specifics, but the thumbnail tabbing by application was a good (though not entirely original compiz and OSX Dock ) move in the right direction. However, its not perfect.

So I set out to think about what I want in my taskbar. First thing, if implemented properly (NOT a la OSX) launcher/task duality would be very useful. Also, I like the idea of tabbed, clickable previews with window peeking on hover.

That being said, what was shown for Windows 7 fell somewhat short. There were no custom groupings, no clear way of launching a new window of an already running application (clicking, maybe, but that would be a pain, cuz people are so used to it to just switch tasks) and, of course, no multiple desktop integration.

Well, since clickable window previews (alt-tab) and window peeking (also alt-tab) are already available in KDE4, I don't see how this would be difficult to implement.

Here are my ideas for how the plasmoid would work. I would have started programming it myself, but not only do I need to learn the plasma API, but I also need to learn C++, which is making it a struggle to get started.

Idea

• Auto-ordering of launchers before tasks (or after) would be optional
• In this case, the option of a spacer between launchers and tasks would be given
• Task/launcher duality would be optional (should it be default?)
• The red plus over the icon is for adding an instance of the program.
• Text beside icons would be optional (though on by default)
• In the same way, text beside launchers would be optional (esp in side-panel layout)
• In text-on mode, the (+) would place itself in-line with the cursor on hover (or maybe the button would get wider?)
• Hovering over thumbnails would peek
• Hovering over the icon would peek at all the app windows, or the most recent
• Hovering over or clicking the app title might expose all the app windows. (context sensitive to single or multi desktop mode)
• The little arrow on top of the previews is for toggling multiple desktop view.
• Thumbnails would be draggable.
• Custom groups would go on a subsection that could be separated from the rest of the plasmoid (like Lancelot) if so desired.
• Icons could be moved to anywhere along the length of the plasmoid, or even to other taskbar sections (I don't know how possible this would be).
• Clicking the icon might make the thumbnails stay up for more complex window management (ie grouping and ordering)
• This would allow multiple groups to be visible at a time.
• Alternatively, (and I think this is better) clicking could bring the most recent app window forward, and double clicking could bring all of the app windows forward.
• Dragging a thumbnail to the taskbar might put it in a new group [TheBlackCat, kde-forum.org]
• Group window management buttons |min|max|close| could go in the top-right (?) [TheBlackCat, kde-forum.org]
• Cascade and tile might be included somewhere (if they exist in KWin)[TheBlackCat, kde-forum.org]
• Mouse actions for all components (left click, right click, middle click, up scroll, down scroll, hover) would all be customizable, and if the (+) and (^) buttons become redundant, then they should be removable.
• The over-sized close button might close the window. Middle-mouse clicking could also work, but I find that unintuitive

rev0


rev0

If you run trunk then you can already 'peek' at the windows if you have KWin compositing enabled. Just hover your mouse over a task in the taskbar. I do not know how this behaves when tasks are grouped however.

bcooksley wrote:If you run trunk then you can already 'peek' at the windows if you have KWin compositing enabled. Just hover your mouse over a task in the taskbar. I do not know how this behaves when tasks are grouped however.

What happens in that instance is that the preview is turned off. You only get a regular pop-up with just the application name. On the right hand-side of the task, there's a number indicating the number of windows of the app. Click on it and you get a pop-up list of the windows. But no preview in the popup-list.

Yes, thats what this is trying to fix. Also, the ability to show and drag thumbnails for multiple desktops is supposed to make it easier to group manage multiple virtual desktops. Again, I haven't seen much of the new taskbar, so if you have a good place to get screenshots and descriptions, or if you could provide your own, that would be helpful (I haven't had much success finding them myself, and I'm not inclined to install trunk).

Custom groupings could be done by creating a new group, then clicking on the window thumbnails you want in it, then hitting done.

What I like about your mockup is that the tooltip gets a real use instaed of just showing something.

For grouped windows that is very nice. Though I do not like the idea of removing the text in the taskbar like you (in the first picture) and Windows 7 is doing it.

But well: Hovering over a window and getting a tooltip like view of previews of all open windows of that application ( just like in your mockup) and just clicking on one of those seems very natural to me. I hope to see that in KDE 4.3

Anyway, some nice ideas. If you want to get some feedback from the plasma devs on it you should consider sending it to the plasma mailinglist.

Cool. I like your idea!

Thanks! Yeah, if I knew how the plasma mailing list worked, I might do that, but I have no experience interacting with development communities... I'm kinda chicken How does it work? And what are the general criteria for submitting ideas?

I'm not sure which I would prefer, with text or without. I think maybe with, but I haven't had the opportunity to try it. Since lots of people would be concerned about not having text, text-on would probably be default, with icon-only being a space saving option.

Something I realized was that this would be incompatible with multiple row task management, so people who have lots of different apps open might not find it beneficial, as the various applications would be difficult to distinguish without text and would take lots of space with it.

Suggestions for coping with this and any other foreseeable interface problems would be helpful, because I'm hoping to either eventually start making this, or (ideally, crosses fingers) devs would get interested and make it themselves lol. So I want to have the concept as intuitive as possible, with minimal drawbacks.

Something else I was also wondering about is inclusion of by-application expose in the widget. I'm wondering if clicking on/mousing over the title in the tooltip would be good for this, or if another button should be included. (title-bar clicking might not be very discoverable)

Also, what are peoples thoughts about having a static title location (like in the alt-tab switcher) I personally like being able to see all the titles, but the static one seems to be popular. Currently, the (+) button is in the way of this. Any thoughts?

Anyways, I'm new to this whole open-source community thing, so any further suggestions on how to get this made (or whether it should be) would be greatly appreciated

^Wow... sorry about all that text ^

Edit: The description in the original post has been updated

Dealing with a mailinglist is not much different than like a forum. And you did it pretty good. You have some nice ideas and you want input, so the basic requirements are met.
You can now either send your ideas to the mailinglist with what you have written here or simply point them to this forum entry with the wish to comment on that.

you can register in plasma mail list from here: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel

Thanks, that makes it seem much less intimidating Seeing devel in the name immediately makes me think of uptight people in lab coats (an unfortunate side effect of proprietary software). :P And thanks for the link

*updated*

Aceler on KDE-Look.org suggested a vertical version of the pop-up. What do people think?



The larger thumbnail may or may not be redundant due to peek... thoughts?
And it should probably be turned off for multi-group management...

Advantages

• Maintains horizontal separation of tasks
• Fixed width, making multi-group management easier
• More similar to current method
• Different from Windows 7

Disadvantages

• Decreases size, and thus utility, of previews
• Increases vertical sprawl
• Kludgey larger preview may be necessary
• Different from Windows 7

[size=x-small](sorry about the double post, but its been long enough since my last post that this wouldn't be noticed as an edit, and I didn't think this warranted a new thread. And its someone else's idea...)[/size]

This is a cross-post from the same thread in kde-forums.org. Further comments are in [brackets]:

I like this idea a lot. I was thinking the grouped previews Windows 7 had was a great idea, but this takes it much further.

I do have a couple of ideas.

First, for custom grouping I think a simple drag-and-drop would be best. For instance if you mouse over a group, grab a thumbnail from that group, then drop it on another group that window will be moved to the other group. Dragging a thumbnail onto a blank part of the taskbar would make a new group. If you drag a thumbnail from one group and hold it over another group, the thumbnails for the other group will pop up and you can drop the first thumbnail in a specific place. This seems the most logical way of doing it, particularly since it follows the normal click and drag-based icon system everyone is familiar with in file managers.

Second, this could make use of extenders to handle the containment for the thumbnails [if this is possible]. For one, this would allow for a built-in mechanism to handle the multiple desktops. Second, it would allow thumbnails to be undocked and placed wherever you want.

I think having a series of icons for managing windows in the group, for instance tile group, cascade group, minimize/mazimize group, close group, etc. should be available, probably in the upper right-hand corner of the popup. [Steve suggested clicking on the group's icon in the taskbar could handle minimizing/maximizing the group. There should also be some way to make use of the new window tabbing featuring that is being implemented in Kwin]

Hovering over on thumbnail for a few moments should probably enlarge it [slightly, probably not more than 10-20%].

The close button should be possible already, since right-clicking on a taskbar icon brings up a menu that allows you to close windows.