I always liked these 'dock' task managers, such as the Apple Dock, Windows Superbar, Unity Dock or Icon Tasks (icons-only task manager) and I'm glad it's now integrated into Plasma 5.1 (Kubuntu Next) and works fine so far [except for this annoying workspace-update bug], but all docks I used so far are fine for one window, but are annoying if you have multiple windows of an application.

The problem is: Either you have to click twice or more or wait until some window popup appears to click on your window.

Windows:


Unity (may be old):


Plasma (not an actual example, but similar):


How to get all the positive aspects of a dock (Easier starting of applications, running applications are put into one place, less space consumption, ...) but also make it easier to use multiple windows for one application without waiting for a popup or clicking on a thumbnail?

An easy solution may be: "OK, just disable popup delay: No extra clicking"
This would solve the "click here and then click there" problem, but

• I don't like these popups: You have to focus an element on the screen (Icon), move mouse on it and then focus another element on the screen, which wasn't there before
• Instant popups tend to accidently open if you move your mouse just a bit on the icon - this is annoying

Another possible solution could be: Make the icon itself more interactable. It could be divided in sections (like if you configure your workspace switcher to be almost square sized).

Example:


The left icon would represent the normal state, while the two other icons are reacting to hovering over the icon [could also work with touch interfaces if the icons are big enough: This would show while the user is touching the icon]

I like these indicator arrows, they could be more 'interacting', too (should be possible ?). With these dynamic indicator arrows as shown in my example, the user would know that each 'sub button' represents one window and while hovering are 'presented' to the user (by 'presenting' the arrows). [The user should figure out in short time arrow <-> window]

Note: This 'sub button icon task thing' should always be configurable:

• Enable/Disable it
• Set maximum count of windows until switching to fallback mode (eg. 'Present windows')
• Enable/Disable preview while hovering on button

Another Note:
Context menu could be more context sensitive and offer options for this particular window [Should be configurable if context=ALL->WINDOW or WINDOW->ALL]

Aaand another note:
Yes, this "solution" is a pixel hell; if you have any ideas to make multi-window handling in icons-only tasks better, just say it

Sorry if there's something unclear or strange; i'm tired and celebrated halloween by doing homework for university

i really like how it is done in windows 7. It's basically the same in my current latest KDE 4 configuration. The main difference which I hate in KDE is hover to highlight windows. In windows if you drag over the icon no window is highlighted and dragged to foreground. Only if you drag over actual instance of application this one window is highlighted. This way you can quickly peek what's happening there and come back to doing whatever. On KDE however its highlights all instances of window after dragging over icon. Which is so annoying so I disabled this.
Only problem right now on KDE 5 is the preview is too big. It looks perfect how it is in KDE 4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz7iup ... sp=sharing

How buttons should act in my opinion.
On icon:
Left click - bring latest instace of app
Middle click - open new instance
Hover - open popup with instances (no highlightning)
On instance:
Left click - open
Middle click - close
Hover - highlight and bring to foreground (I would really like to see option to blur all other windows and desktop as I like blur )

Yes, it's very good in Windows 7 and after switching to KDE4, some behaviours annoyed me.

How buttons should act in my opinion.
On icon:
Left click - bring latest instace of app
Middle click - open new instance
Hover - open popup with instances (no highlightning)
On instance:
Left click - open
Middle click - close
Hover - highlight and bring to foreground

I would like to have a setting to determine what action should be taken if you left click on a icon:

• Bring the last app back
• Open the 'switcher bar', which is also opened by hovering

The second option wasn't just there (And is still not)

Ahh, it annoys me: There must be a good way to make popups (optional and for a limited count of windows) obsolete!

What about these:

rumangerst wrote:Ahh, it annoys me: There must be a good way to make popups (optional and for a limited count of windows) obsolete!

What about these:

Why do you want to have pop ups obsolete?
You want me to click this little icon in the middle of other 9 icons to open instance(even for 3 instaces, well for 2 its ridiculous)? The way it works now is fine. I don't think anybody needs indicator of how many windows are open. It's pointless. Right now it just shows that you have more than 1 instances open which is fine.
What makes icon task manager bad is the idea behind breeze theme. Which is to make big borders.

Why do you want to have pop ups obsolete?

I try to figure out how to make popups as obsolete as possible, because they influence my (and maybe other peoples) workflow.

I don't think anybody needs indicator of how many windows are open.

Uuuuhh, yes? Even Windows 7 does it until there are too many windows are open.

The way it works now is fine.

This is the attitude how not to make something better at all. Win95 task bar is working fine, too.

Maybe changing the icons-only task manager is not reasonable, but we could add more task managers for different needs (Currently there are 3 task managers).

rumangerst,

firstly, well done for taking the trouble to do the mockups and put them out there - if no one ever tried anything a bit different then we'd never try anything new, so kudos!

The only way that i can think of to improve switching when an app has multiple windows, is to have a very simple way of indicating that the app has multiple windows (leave it kind of as it is now) but change the behaviour when the app icon in the task manager is left clicked on. The first left click opens the most recently accessed window (no preview or anything, the window itself is just bought to the front & given focus) then each of the following left clicks cycles through the rest of the windows of that app, bringing each of them to the front & giving it focus.

Compared to a system like Ubuntu's, it's unlikely that it will need fewer clicks to get to the window that you want so no real advantage there. But in Ubuntu you need to double click on the icon in the 'dock' then mouse across to click on the window preview that you want, instead in the 'left click on the taskbar icon a few times' idea there would be no mouse movement at all - just a few left clicks to find the window that you want so it should feel quite quick.

One reason that i think thumbnails / previews might not be the best idea & you might be right to brainstorm ways to try & avoid them, is that if you loose some awareness of where on the screen that window is. If you do what i suggested & just show the actual window & not a preview then you can see exactly where the window is, if i've got multiple terminals open, i'd know that the one that i want is in this area of the screen, making it easy to identify the right terminal. In Gnome shell that's a problem!

I'm not saying this is a fantastic idea - just that it's the only way that i can think of, of improving what we've got!

rumangerst wrote:

Why do you want to have pop ups obsolete?

I try to figure out how to make popups as obsolete as possible, because they influence my (and maybe other peoples) workflow.

I don't think anybody needs indicator of how many windows are open.

Uuuuhh, yes? Even Windows 7 does it until there are too many windows are open.

The way it works now is fine.

This is the attitude how not to make something better at all. Win95 task bar is working fine, too.

Maybe changing the icons-only task manager is not reasonable, but we could add more task managers for different needs (Currently there are 3 task managers).

Sometimes when you change something you're making it worse (khy gnome 3 khy).
I agree with last sentence. You should try and design another task manager to suit your and other people needs I don't see why not. We now have "Alternative" feature introduced in KDE 5 I think it's all right.
Coming back to icon task manager. I think KDE's is better than windows in terms of information provided look and feel and options. What needs to change it's how we interact with it(changes I introduced in my first post).

Good input! Clicking on the icon should indeed be improved.
Currently cycling is done by scrolling your mouse, but I fail to 'learn' this - clicking is just more intuitive.

OK, what do we want to do with multiple windows:

1. Select one window - check (Scroll/Click)
2. Select one specific window - ?
3. Close all - ?
4. Close current window - ?
5. Minimize/Restore all - ?
6. Which window is opened now/Where am I? - ?

2. If you want to select eg. Window No.5, it could be possible just to put your mouse on the icon and press '5'. To support window counts >9, there should be a tiny delay, enabling to enter a greater number.

3./4. I'm addressing this, because currently, Right Click -> Close closes all open windows. There should be two options, offering to close the current open window and to close all.

5. Minimizing and restoring is currently implemented as context menu (it's good there). Additionally double clicking the icon could offer a faster way to minimize/restore a group.

6. Cycling through previews solved the 'where is my window?' issue, while I really don't like to be unaware, which window is currently open (Imagine 6-10 instances of dolphin [with tabs] and you want to know which one is currently open).
[Also you need a clue which index belongs to a window to use 2. ]

A modified indicator could offer non-intrusive information:


An alternative is showing the window index in the icon for a short time while cycling through the windows.

@fatino:

Sometimes when you change something you're making it worse (khy gnome 3 khy).

Yes. But if you want to make something better, you usually just have to get worse, first:


[Note: we're not exactly on top of this mountain, but relatively next to the 'maximum' - still room for improvements left]

You have a solution for a problem and it's good. But there's somewhere a better solution. Improving the current solution is usually greedy [It takes the next best solution next to your current solution] - It makes the current solution better, but at the end, you can't go further. To find a better solution, you might to get worse (or faaaar worse), but the new approach leads to a better solution if you keep it and improve it.
According to some people, who were shocked by Gnome3, they are slowly improving [Althrough Gnome3 will never be my Desktop, because I want to customize everything]

Some scientists also think that squids/calamari/... [don't know the exact english word] are stuck because of this phenomenon: Their eyes are good - really good, but not as good as our eyes. It's unlikely for them to get better eyes [if not something random happens], because they have to 'reinvent' their eyes to improve [Their eyes are on the smaller mountain's top].

So, back to Plasma 5 icons-only task manager
-> Try new concepts with 'reinvented' task managers

I lost my whole pretty post so I'm gonna write it ugly.
1. Scrolling is good for maybe 3 instances. For more it can't replace previews.
2. So you want the user to hover and click a number key on keyboard and guess what will be opened? If you want to open something you look for something specific. I agree with what's been done in unity superkey+1-9 opens pinned icons in dock. They are not dynamic so you can easliy remember which is which.
3. AFAIK right click is for context menu and should be left like it is. You are left with left click and middle click. And you can't really have that easy key to press to do something that impactful. Close all should stay in context menu.
6. It shows you absolutly nothing. It's just a dot in the middle of other dots. You don't know which one is which. It's pointless to know how menu instances of the app are there as you can't tell them apart. It just for you to know that there are more than 1 instance.

Just so you know I'm talking about KDE 4's icon task manager as KDE 5's is not feature complete AFAIK. So Windows like previews. Not full screen floating windows kinda like in unity.

I'm fine with your idea being an alternative. Just don't change the current icon task manager(KDE 4's one, hope it will be similar in KDE 5 when it's finished).

1. Scrolling is good for maybe 3 instances. For more it can't replace previews.

OK, but then we would have the problem ken300 mentioned: The position of the windows.
Currently, there're two properties to identify a window: Name, Preview

The position of a window should be also considered (A solution would be using previews if more than x windows are grouped [Default=0 for unexperienced users], which are modified, so you can see where the window is)

So you want the user to hover and click a number key on keyboard and guess what will be opened?

6. It shows you absolutly nothing. It's just a dot in the middle of other dots. You don't know which one is which. It's pointless to know how menu instances of the app are there as you can't tell them apart. It just for you to know that there are more than 1 instance.

For an unexperienced user, these features are not really helpful. But for experienced users, it should be a an extremly powerful way to quickly switch to your desired windows, because the numbers are not random: They are the order of opened windows of this application ( eg Dolphin, Dolphin<2>, Dolphin<3>, ....)

Imagine you have 5 terminals with ironpython, aptitude, maxima .... blah. You could quickly associate that 1=Konsole(ironpython) 2=Konsole(aptitude), ...
You have firefox opened with a wiki, telling you about some commands for your python program. You switch to ironpython [Hover]+[1] and your program didn't load.
You go back to firefox, where you read that you programmed something wrong and you need to install python-rope. OK: [Hover]+[2] install python-rope,
you check your formula in maxima [Hover]+[3] and copy it back to your program [Hover]+[1], aaahh, check if the installation is finished: [Hover]+[2], OK, unfinished: [Still hovering]+[1]

These arrows/triangles determine which of the windows is opened - remind: They are ordered by opening order

3. AFAIK right click is for context menu and should be left like it is. You are left with left click and middle click. And you can't really have that easy key to press to do something that impactful. Close all should stay in context menu.

Yes (did I write something else?). But I would like an additional 'Close current window' to be added to context menu. [And maybe double-left-click as minimize/restore]

rumangerst wrote:Imagine you have 5 terminals with ironpython, aptitude, maxima .... blah. You could quickly associate that 1=Konsole(ironpython) 2=Konsole(aptitude), ...
You have firefox opened with a wiki, telling you about some commands for your python program. You switch to ironpython [Hover]+[1] and your program didn't load.
You go back to firefox, where you read that you programmed something wrong and you need to install python-rope. OK: [Hover]+[2] install python-rope,
you check your formula in maxima [Hover]+[3] and copy it back to your program [Hover]+[1], aaahh, check if the installation is finished: [Hover]+[2], OK, unfinished: [Still hovering]+[1]

This seems like something that could be solved by Virtual Desktops / Activities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for added control where possible, but hovering over a UI element and pressing a key at the same time sounds a bit unintuitive to me.

I think that the only way to test if this is a good addition is to test it. I modified the task manager plasmoid to switch to given task id if you press 1-9
But I'm struggling to install it. Even the tutorial plasmoid won't install for me (plasmpkg -i <folder> will add the plasmoid ['successful'], but It just won't appear on the list of plasmoids). I can't use CMake, because it's never explained anywhere how to get you qml2-plasmoid to install using CMake. And using 'manual' install by creating a *.plasmoid file (don't know which archive type + *.zip files throw EOF error if you use plasmapkg -u <zipfile>) won't result in anything.

Frustrating.