[haiku] Re: On Window Switching
- From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:24:27 +0100
Ankur Sethi <get.me.ankur@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> IMO, window switching in Haiku is currently less than optimal. I see
> two major problems with it.
>
> 1. Pressing Ctrl+Tab on a modern PC keyboard is painful. You have to
> hold down Ctrl with your pinky, then twist your hand so you can get
> your middle finger to the Tab key, which gets painful. The second
> method involves moving your hand off the home row of the keyboard so
> that your thumb shifts from the Spacebar to the Ctrl key, which is
> again quite painful. Command+Tab and Command+` are currently not
> bound
> to any action in most apps, perhaps Twitcher could use those instead
> of Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+`. I know I can use Ctrl+I to switch windows,
> but
> that requires the use of two hands and, IMO, just feels weird.
Command-Tab is actually used in applications, and it would be a
compatibility problem to change that. For example, Pe would switch
between the header and the source file with this shortcut by default
(that's what would be Control-Tab on other platforms).
So while switching might be a good idea, and might actually simplify
the finger acrobatics, it needs more investigation before doing so
deliberately.
Furthermore, we use "Alt" as a general command key, not "Control". That
the Alt-Tab behaviour is switched to is actually consistent; if you
switch to Windows/Linux command key behaviour, you will use Alt-Tab to
switch the apps, just like in Windows/Linux.
> 2. Desktop widgets such as LaunchBox and Workspaces constantly get in
> the way when you're switching through a large number of windows.
> There
> could perhaps be a flag you could set on these applications
> (B_GET_OUT_OF_THE_WAY?) to stop them from appearing in the Twitcher.
> Either that, or make both these apps 100% keyboard accessible so that
> at least switching to them is worthwhile for a heavy keyboard user.
I would rather call it B_NO_WINDOW_NAVIGATION, but that would probably
make sense. BTW Deskbar should be usable via the keyboard at least.
Bye,
Axel.
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