[haiku] Re: Suggestions to change double click on window title behaviour

  • From: Johan Aires Rastén <johan@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 19:03:13 +0100

Wow, lots of good input now! :)

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 5:21 PM, PulkoMandy <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> Think with Stack&Tile in mind.
> It makes sense to close a single window from a stacked group, and to resize
> all of them. For this you need a "maximize to content" button in each of the
> windows, maximizing to the content of this one window, and resizing all the
> windows of the stack to the same size.
>
> It makes no sense to hide/minimize only one of the windows, you want all of
> them to go. So you don't want one separate minimize button on each tab.
>

Sounds like a very good argument. Haven't had an opportunity to try s&t yet
though. When will it appear in the nightlies? (or is it already there, but
requires some magic street fighter key combo to activate? :D)

So double clicking the title of any window in a stack hides them all?


>
> Close the window, the application can run without windows opened. Double
> click a playlist in tracker, it replace the current one and start playing.
> Why would you need a window for your music player ? :)
> Same apply for IM with the IMKit, it's just integrated into tracker and
> windows are opened only when you are chatting.
> No need for windows when the application should be running in the
> background of other things :)
>
> Interesting thought. But without a window, how do you jump to a specific
part of for example an audio book? Or how do you stop the music? If one
pauses the song and closes the window, will it keep running in the
background and thus taking memory if I forget about it?
And I like to have a window with my playlist nearby, in case I want to
change songs. Even if the need for a music player window is eliminated, I'd
need an extra tracker window instead.

Don't get me wrong, I really like these kinds of solutions.. Just thinking
about potential problems and how one might solve them.

An opened window is like a working sheet where you can make changes without
> saving for trying out things. When you try to close it, the program asks you
> if you want to save your changes.
>

Well that's how it works today, but is it optimal or done because it's the
easiest solution for programmers and people are used to working that way? Is
there any situation where unlimited undos (we're still talking about
theoretical ideal computers :)) and a well implemented history interface
couldn't do the same thing? If you know you're experimenting you could
easily clone a document and work with that.
If you imagine showing Haiku to a person who's never used a computer (it's
getting very theoretical now, as those persons are quite rare). I think
they'd get opening and closing documents pretty fast. When you see the
program it's there and when you close it it's not, but you can always open
it again. To me it feels consistent with how you work with stuff in the real
world.
Do you think they would equally easily understand the concept of hidden
programs? It's a little like a third state which overlaps the concepts of
open and closed.


> Also, keep in mind that the program<>window link is not (or at least should
> not be 1:1. You can have multiple window in a program. You may want to close
> some or all of them, but the program will still be running. Look at tracker
> : each folder remember its window size and position, so it opens back at the
> same place next time. You may occasionally want to hide/minimize a window
> because you want to see something below, but know you'll want to use these
> files again. But you can also close it and when you want to reopen it, you
> have to browse trough the filesystem, for example using the "X-Ray" menus.
>
> True.. Programs ought to be intelligent, only running when necessary and
swapping stuff to to disk etc.


> It's the only proper use case I see for minimizing a window, so it's almost
> already somewhat a shortcut for powerusers :)
> If you want to do multiple different things, it makes more sense to use
> workspaces instead.
>
> Maybe minimizing/hiding is something that should be a thing of the past..



@Eddy
I'm really not a fan of minimizing to title. It causes problems like other
windows ending up on top of the minimized programs and it forces the user to
handle layout/organization of inactive application.
And regarding moving many windows to another workspace, I think it's a valid
point but there might be better solutions to this problem. Take a look at
Gnome Shell for an example. Maybe OSX Spaces is something similar, I'm all
for copying good ideas from anyone :D


@Maxime
I might have been unclear, but I want double click on title bar to do
_nothing_ by default. I just meant that maximize is in some aspects better
than hide, because it's easier to figure out what happened. I'm all for
letting users to set whatever to double click on title bar, but IMO it
should be off as standard.


@Jonas
Do you stack a lot of windows, so you need the space? I rarely feel the need
to stack more than 2 or 3. When you stack large windows you have a lot of
space anyway and small windows can be tiled instead of stacking :) However,
after PulkoMandy's insightful post I think I'm giving up my demands for a
hide-button - we should try to create better solutions so that regular users
don't need to hide windows (and let power users do it with some key-combo).
And as you say, window context menus aren't an elegant solution either. I'll
support better solutions if someone comes up with something! One feature I
think might be useful is "toggle show on all workspaces", but I haven't made
up my mind on that one yet :)

//Johan

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