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Rethinking Window Management

263 pointsby ayoisaiahalmost 2 years ago

55 comments

iamcalledrobalmost 2 years ago
People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS.<p>Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient &quot;palette&quot; or &quot;panel&quot; windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find&#x2F;replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.<p>I&#x27;m grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple&#x27;s going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don&#x27;t really think to do it.<p>I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.<p>It&#x27;s unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.<p>(If you&#x27;ve only ever got comfortable with a windows-style &quot;maximised window&quot; approach, you&#x27;ll probably disagree with me, however).
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jwells89almost 2 years ago
As a longtime macOS user, while I don&#x27;t mind the rest of how it handles windows&#x2F;apps I&#x27;ve never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don&#x27;t maximize windows often, but when I do I don&#x27;t usually want the window to be spirited away to its own separate universe, and the apps that actually <i>need</i> fullscreen implement that functionality independent of the window manager.<p>It&#x27;s interesting they&#x27;re considering implementing a way for apps to signal to the window manager the size it prefers for its windows. This has been a concept on OS X since 10.0, though it&#x27;s only ever been used by the OS figuring out what size to zoom to&#x2F;from when the user clicks the green zoom button. If this feature makes the cut it I&#x27;ll be curious to see what other uses they find for it.<p>One concept I&#x27;d like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid virtual desktops. OS X 10.5&#x2F;10.6 had what I&#x27;d consider the best implementation of the idea and I loved it. It leveraged spatial memory much better than the linear layouts popular these days, especially with short smooth animations to make movements between desktops more concrete mentally. 2D grid virtual desktops can still be found in more &quot;old school&quot; type DEs like XFCE but the level of polish isn&#x27;t comparable.
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phkahleralmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;d love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I&#x27;m not sure why.<p>1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It&#x27;s also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.<p>2) I use a 55&quot; screen where the &quot;desktop&quot; metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don&#x27;t really need other layout methods anyway.<p>3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present. I also don&#x27;t want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That&#x27;s so jarring and completely unneeded.<p>I do like the idea they mention of a maximum sensible size for an app. That could be useful regardless of all the other stuff.<p>I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances&#x2F;documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.
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MattPalmer1086almost 2 years ago
Clearly I am a very simple person, and I don&#x27;t get all these window management wars.<p>Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed floating on top of another.<p>Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn&#x27;t as nicely integrated.<p>What is everyone doing that needs something else?
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generalizationsalmost 2 years ago
With a bit more work to not surprise the user and not break the window organization (e.g. the user really wanted these two windows next to each other), this mosaic paradigm could actually be really cool. Looking forward to see how it develops. If the kinks are worked out I may very well switch over from i3.<p>&gt; As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the windows are automatically tiled.<p>I can see this part being really cool, when the user doesn&#x27;t care about the layout, and really, really, annoying when the user does care.<p>Side note: the article should really have made a comparison between a tiling wm like i3 and this new mosaic concept, not between gnome tiling and mosaic...i3 is still way better and they&#x27;d do well to compare to the actual &#x27;state of the art&#x27;.
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mulmenalmost 2 years ago
I understand the desire to make changes, especially from people so close to a project. But as a user it is painful. If I could think of any positive changes in the last 20 years maybe I would have a different reaction. But I can&#x27;t so I don&#x27;t.<p>Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating. I have an uncomfortable visceral reaction to even seeing a Gnome desktop.<p>But bad design isn&#x27;t unique to Gnome. In the modern world we love data, but I think we are bad at collecting what matters. The number of times I say &quot;fuck you&quot; out loud to my iPhone in a day is non-zero. A good designer <i>should</i> care when that happens.<p>So, sure, move my windows around without asking. Continue with your misguided belief that you know better than me what I want. But give me a big red &quot;fuck you&quot; button to click when you get it wrong.
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niruialmost 2 years ago
&gt; Overlapping windows can get messy quickly<p>Yeah dude... that&#x27;s one reason why the Minimize button exists on Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you know it&#x27;s too important to...say...been removed (from default setting)?<p>Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important... It&#x27;s so important that on SOME desktop environment that don&#x27;t support such feature, one of it&#x27;s most popular plugin is designed to restore the functionality so the users can actually enjoy the DE instead of fighting it.
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dugmartinalmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve been using i3 (within the larger Regolith package) for a few years now and its hard for me to non-tiling WMs now. However I do think there would be a lot of improvements, especially with large desktop monitors.<p>One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.soundandvision.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;_images&#x2F;200902&#x2F;2172009173627.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.soundandvision.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;_images&#x2F;200902&#x2F;21720091...</a>). Selecting windows would swap out the main window with the scaled version on the border. This would give you the ability to focus on one window that is always centered while seeing scaled versions of all the other window&#x27;s output.<p>Maybe this has already been done?
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graypeggalmost 2 years ago
I actually like the ideas they have here! It feels inspired by the best parts of macOS, Windows, and tiling window managers, while actually being pretty novel IMO.<p>However, I actually like the &quot;overlapping sheets on a desktop&quot; metaphor because it&#x27;s still pretty &quot;task&quot; based. Their example is a little contrived, having a lot of small unrelated windows smushed into the middle of the screen is rare I think. At least for me. A more common example I think might be:<p>You&#x27;re in a web browser full screen, and then you need to drag and drop a file into a site, so you open finder&#x2F;explorer. That appears overtop of the browser. Then maybe you realize you want to remove some metadata from the file you need to upload, so you go into that file&#x27;s preferences pane, which is a whole new &quot;sheet&quot; on your desktop.<p>At any point, you can dig up the browser, since it still occupies a lot of the screen. Effectively it&#x27;s a branching undo tree. Since you connect all of these apps together manually (opening, clicking, dragging, sharing in MacOS), you&#x27;re free to go and fiddle with things that are going to be accepting something else from another window.<p>The thing I think is missing from that metaphor is that it&#x27;s really hard to get back to what you were doing if you break that undo tree. You click the browser, but now all of your other windows are behind, and the whole stack won&#x27;t come back at once.<p>If windows recovered in the stack they were opened in when you focus them, (in my contrived example, you refocus the file preferences window, OR maybe there&#x27;s some gesture&#x2F;keycombo to return to the last focus state) I think that&#x27;d make a pretty measurable effect on my window organization annoyances.
galkkalmost 2 years ago
Not sure how to feel about more windows, but the idea that first window shouldn&#x27;t take all space is certainly good. If someone will come up with better intelligent control over that placement, that will take into account actual windows length (who knows, maybe even ML for learning typical window sizes used by an operator) that will be a killer feature.<p>Default sizing is one of my pet peeves with i3, even if it is the whole idea of tiling managers. You open first window and it takes entire screen space, meaning that with 32&quot; screen (and even 27&quot;), you need to look to the far left side for actual task (e.g. if it is a terminal, or code editor with column limit of 80 chars, dictated by code style). Then you open another window and you look straight into border between those 2 windows - your app isn&#x27;t centered. etc etc<p>I have small bind in i3 that helps a bit, but it works only with one window<p><pre><code> smart_gaps inverse_outer bindsym $mod+g exec &quot;i3-msg gaps horizontal current toggle 900&quot;</code></pre>
pmontraalmost 2 years ago
Gnome developers really like automoving stuff on the screen, like activities animations. Instead I could kill a window that does not stay put were I placed it. Who does it thinks it is to know better than me how my desktop must look like?<p>Anyway, until there is a way to work as I want to, no problem with them enjoying their time. Reconfiguring the desktop to look like Gnome 2 is a tax I pay to have them keeping it compatible with the other components of the system.
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jauntywundrkindalmost 2 years ago
I get that treating overlapping windows as bad might sometimes be a thing. Trying to juggle getting sufficient data to do the job in screen can be a bit of a chore.<p>But personally I quite enjoy overlapped windows. Even when using a tiling window manager, I rely on stacked view a lot, where only one window of the stack is visible at a time. I need effective fast navigation across apps, not the simultaneous use&#x2F;view of all.<p>I feel like Gnome often decides to pick goals that it says are user friendly, but which refuse to see the utility of the established alternatives. Making a big choice here feels like it&#x27;s based entirely around a single argument that I fundamentally don&#x27;t think is valid, in many cases.<p>I also worry that they are building a three mode system, and that it&#x27;s unclear how if at all the various modes will blend. If there is a unified approach where standard&#x2F;tiling&#x2F;mosaic can coexist my concern is significantly lessened, but I&#x27;m not sure what that would look like, how mosaic would interact with standard.
gorgoileralmost 2 years ago
I have been using a tiling WM since ion2, but I’ve used other OS WMs too. It’s hard to take this article seriously when it talks about tiling window manager limitations but fails to mention one big negative for tiling WMs: they assume I want to see the whole window all of the time.<p>Overlapping windows let me put my terminal over the top of my browser. I can overlap and conceal, say, the left nav bar of a documentation website while still letting me see the body of the docs.<p><pre><code> + - - - - + |terminal |- - - + | | docs | | | | + - - - - + | + - - - - + </code></pre> Focus follows mouse (which you get in macOS, albeit only for scroll) means I can interact with the lower window without bringing it to the foreground. I’ve done this when my employment has forced me to use macOS, and it works well and much better than a tiling WM.
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dmckeonalmost 2 years ago
The windowing UI&#x2F;UX I wish for is to arrange a bunch of app&#x27;s windows on my screen, then run some tool that notices what is running, where they all are, and what has input focus, and can save that state to be reinstantiated later.<p>Think of how live stage theatre does set changes: there are tape marks on the stage floor showing where every object should go, and the crew just puts objects where the crew knows the objects belong, according to the marks. Yes, one could edit multiple fiddly ~&#x2F;.{X,x}* files with X&#x2F;Y sizes and positioning in arcane syntaxes. Is there no tool in the Gnome-everse that can handle this?
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jmclnxalmost 2 years ago
&gt;Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new windows in seemingly arbitrary positions<p>Well we have Xresources to to solve this, but the Gnome and KDE people ignore a standard that has been there for years.<p>And Fluxbox solves this issue by having point&#x2F;click option to allow you to say &quot;Make this window show up here with this size&quot;. But as usual, many GNOME&#x2F;GTK and some KDE applications ignore that to.<p>So off we go, invent a new standard that will make my (our?) lives harder.
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pentagramaalmost 2 years ago
The native Windows 11 windows management feature (called &quot;snap layouts&quot;) was great for me. I get it instantly and use it easily with the pointer or the keyboard. One of the best features of the 11 version to me.<p>I think that for regular users is a great entry point to have a more power user experience, of course it will not be enough for everyone and a lot of power users will demand more specific behaviors.<p>Demo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;t-hgwhYu0nU" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;t-hgwhYu0nU</a>
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soulofmischiefalmost 2 years ago
I wish Gnome would stop rethinking things and just reimplement the basic desktop features every major competitor has, and that Gnome 2 had.
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esjeonalmost 2 years ago
I really love the mosaic concept. I think it&#x27;s indeed the missing piece for tiling on large displays. It&#x27;s a kind of stack in usual tiling layouts, where all leftover windows are placed, but stacks tend to squeeze and deform windows, crippling many apps in the process. The mosaic approach can certainly avoid this issue, but it wastes some space (not ideal for small screens) and may not play well with big complex UIs(IDE, CAD, DAW, etc).
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WesolyKubeczekalmost 2 years ago
I don’t know. Overlapping windows may look messy, but I know where they are and their size is right for me. Not for you, for me.<p>If windows are moving all the time on their own as I open new ones, maybe it looks gorgeous on demos and screenshots, but I don’t think it’s going to be ergonomic to actually work with. And my work is not about posting screenshots to r&#x2F;unixporn.
teddyhalmost 2 years ago
&gt; <i>You can also manually tile windows. If there’s enough space, other windows are left in a mosaic layout. However, if there’s not enough space for this mosaic layout, you’re prompted to pick another window to tile alongside.</i><p>Oooh, that’s going to be a usability problem, because it introduces a special mode for answering the “prompt”. Most users will never know that this mode exists, just that the system behaves weirdly and half-maximizes a single window sometimes.<p>I see people <i>today</i> unknowingly or uncaringly invoking the window overview mode (sometimes called “Activities”), and then trying to, say, click a link in a visible browser window. They then become confused when the windows all zoom around, and the click they wanted is ignored.
fpinaalmost 2 years ago
I like PaperWM[1] a lot.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;paperwm&#x2F;PaperWM">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;paperwm&#x2F;PaperWM</a>
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markstosalmost 2 years ago
I use Sway, a tiling window manager, so the direction towards tiling seems sensible to me.<p>If Gnome implements this well enough, I might consider switching back it from Sway. We&#x27;ll see. I&#x27;m pretty pleased with Sway, though.
snidealmost 2 years ago
For Gnome users, I really enjoy using Pop Shell (the window manager from Pop OS) as a tiling window manager. It doesn&#x27;t exactly solve the problems with TWMs that this post discusses, but I often run into folks who don&#x27;t know that you can use a lot of the bits from Pop OS in generic Gnome.<p>I made a video about how to set it up if anyone is curious. The series was aimed at beginners, so feel to hop around if you just want to see what it looks like. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IoG0AsS6oPo">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IoG0AsS6oPo</a>
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low_tech_punkalmost 2 years ago
On the other side of the problem is how modern applications waste screen real-estate with empty space, bloated menus, and poor typography. The application designers also need to adopt responsive layout to make sure the app provides the right amount of information using provided space.<p>I hope a deeper rethink can consider the user&#x27;s end goal being <i>task</i> management rather than <i>window</i> management. Maybe something in the spirit of &quot;Ctrl + Z&quot; and &quot;fg&quot; can be helpful.
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spicyusernamealmost 2 years ago
Love to see this amount of thought being put into something that nearly everyone encounters on a day to day basis.<p>I greatly miss using tiling window managers, like i3, but I don&#x27;t miss having to fiddle with all the little temperamental settings to do things as common as set up my wifi.<p>Having something like this as a default would be a great middle ground.
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dpc_01234almost 2 years ago
Since there&#x27;s going to be a lot of tiling WM users looking: what&#x27;s the best way to get tiling WM and all the convenience of a &quot;full blown WM like Gnome&quot;: things like Network Manager applet, bluetooth control, audio etc. all just few clicks away.
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mooglyalmost 2 years ago
I appreciate someone looking at improving the status quo. However, I feel that there is no way something as opinionated like this will do what you actually want it to do in most cases.
and0almost 2 years ago
I like the idea of an initiative for applications to provide metadata for any window manager to handle them more intelligently. Letting the user quickly fill in the gaps in the meantime for local applications would also be nice.<p>I&#x27;ve played with super detailed Unux WMs (bspwm?) and I&#x27;ve also started using Powertoys FancyZones on Windows and in both cases it&#x27;s a lot of setup that only works ideally for rather specific situations.
cwillualmost 2 years ago
“The key point we keep coming back to with this work is that, if we do add a new kind of window management to GNOME, it needs to be good enough to be the default. We don’t want to add yet another manual opt-in tool that doesn’t solve the problems the majority of people face.”<p>This is the essence of what makes gnome user-hostile: everyone has to fit their mold.
flanked-everglalmost 2 years ago
Seeing how well Gnome has rethought window management in the past, I will take a hard pass. All the thought is not helping.
pipeline_peakalmost 2 years ago
Regular people don’t really use window managers much these days, partly because they don’t use desktops as user environments unless needed. I know a lot of you’ve heard about gen-z not knowing about file systems and it’s definitely relative.<p>Most tasks are done in browsers with tabs, and if they need to use desktop apps it’s in full screen. Have any of you tried using Spotify or VScode not in full screen? It’s obviously not how they’re designed.<p>What the gnome people in this article refuse or fail to acknowledge is that no matter if they go with stacked, tiled, floating, mosaic, it’s gonna be a struggle for form factor because that’s just not how the way modern apps are designed.<p>The first picture in that post looks like the layout of a CDE screenshot from the 90s. Two text editors and a file manager open at the same time? Get real, might as well open xclock and xcalc lol.<p>Humans can’t multitask.
sfyalmost 2 years ago
I have no problem with the way windows work in Gnome right now. Using the window switcher is really convenient. The only things I would like to be better are 1) It&#x27;s too hard to find my way back to the right window in a window group, for example if I have 4 IntelliJ-windows active and want a specific one, takes too much time to find it and they also look alike. Perhaps naming them and using some ex command (dmenu-ish) thing? 2) The window switcher is only shown on the main display. I know the Gnome devs are quite fixed in their opinions about this, but imho it would be better to show it on the active display, which I would define as where the pointer is or where I interacted last. Solve these two things and I see no need for either mosaic or tiling.
badrabbitalmost 2 years ago
Back when I first started learning C, I had an idea to have a GUI environment where instead of windows you have cubes. Not random 3d objects bit 2D compatible abstractions similar to windows that render what would be a window on one face for regular apps but for 3d apps, different faces and relationship between cubes can be configured. I coded something very basic in opengl but gave up after getting camera movements right be ause I realized then how hard it would be basically doing wayland except more (and this was before wayland).<p>I still have the idea but I have a lot more improvements to it and now I understand that the focused content on a 2d screen has to always be 2d but navigation,effects, organization and control can be 3d.<p>Compiz died too early!<p>People lament not having our promised flying cars in 2023, I lament our super cool UIs.
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uneeknamealmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;m really excited about this. Gnome already fits my needs nicely, but the changes this article suggests would make the experience even smoother. A lot of the comments here seem to be from people who don&#x27;t prefer Gnome in the first place.
Name_Chawpsalmost 2 years ago
Any system that tries to guess what I want isn&#x27;t going to work.<p>For example, when my browsers or mobile devices try to guess automatically when I want audio to start playing, they&#x27;re almost always wrong.<p>Open a browser? Why is a video playing in one of my 30 tabs?<p>Unplug earbuds from my tablet? Why is an audiobook now playing? I didn&#x27;t even have the audiobook app open, and haven&#x27;t listened to any audiobook in months.<p>If your design relies on intelligently guessing what the user wants, but doesn&#x27;t actually use any intelligence to do so, then your design is shit.<p>Give users the tools to do what they want quickly and easily. Don&#x27;t guess.
ikekkdcjkfkealmost 2 years ago
Can someone please make a window manager that fits linux? Flat, no animations, super performant, no rounded corners, no shading, pixelated icons. Never understood how all the linux desktops are so ugly and laggy
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semiregalmost 2 years ago
For macOS users I recommend moom to manage window tiling.<p>Although the defaults work fine, I always setup the following:<p>1) Bind cmd-m for activating moom. You’ll get a warning but seriously, who uses native macOS minimize? Not me, ever.<p>2) Setup single key “sizes” for keys Q, P, M, Z for the four quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower right, lower left, respectively.<p>3) Setup L and R for 50% left and right. F for full screen.<p>These 7 keys will allow you 3-finger shortcuts to any windowing. You’re free to setup the grid as fine or as coarse as you need.<p>Thank you to whoever developed moom. It’s made macOS feel mature.
abwtralmost 2 years ago
If this can be driven entirely from the keyboard I might enjoy this a lot!
goosedragonsalmost 2 years ago
Maximizing windows in their own workspace is annoying and one of the worst parts of macOS window management. I really hope they don&#x27;t bother with that. Just because I want a maximized window doesn&#x27;t mean I want it in it&#x27;s own workspace. It just makes dealing with windows harder because you now have to move to some other workspace to grab a window you want to reference first.
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rodelrodalmost 2 years ago
Pop Shell has solved the problem, please don&#x27;t rethink too much.
kaetemialmost 2 years ago
That mosaic concept sounds terrible. All the windows moving whenever a new window opens? That just sounds very annoying and very bad for my spatial memory.<p>Things should just stay where I left them.
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generalizationsalmost 2 years ago
An idea everyone will hate: feed window descriptions to a tiny local language model, which decides how to organize the current windows based on the current context and the content of the windows already open.<p>Oh, you&#x27;re coding? Put firefox to the left and keep VS Code focused. Oh, you&#x27;re messing around with file managers? Bring the new file manager instance front and center. Oh, you&#x27;ve a ton of firefox windows open? Tile the new one side by side with the last one. Worst of all worlds.
eviksalmost 2 years ago
&gt; Manually placing and sizing windows can be fiddly work, and requires close attention and precise motor control<p>Indeed, the OS support continues to be awful, and unfortunately there isn&#x27;t much &quot;rethinking&quot; here since even the new design videos show the same bad precision-based approach<p>- to close a window you have to hunt down a tiny close button in the corner<p>- to move a window you have to hunt down a tiny bar at the top<p>(and all that even after we&#x27;ve gained a dedicated Window button on many keyboards)
Andrew_nenakhovalmost 2 years ago
Every time when I look at what has become of Gnome, I wish Unity didn&#x27;t die. Almost everything I loved in Gnome2 was broken or took a turn for the worse.
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alpaca128almost 2 years ago
&gt; Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new windows in seemingly arbitrary positions<p>Not all tiling WMs are dynamic. Static tiling WMs exist and they give you both more control and more predictable behaviour. Don&#x27;t want automatic placement and windows jumping around randomly each time you open&#x2F;close something? Don&#x27;t use a window manager which was designed to do exactly that.
maherbegalmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve converted to a tiling window manager person after using Amethyst on MacOS. It&#x27;s buggy and crashes but I absolutely love using a tiling manager to handle the common scenarios of two windows side by side, or a primary window + multiple windows tiled on the second half.<p>Once you find a setup that works for you, this ends up being super easy to work with.
thecrumbalmost 2 years ago
Long time i3 user (which I still use on my work laptop) but use Pop!_OS on my workstation at home and have to say it works really well. I like how we have open source but wish we had more open collaboration instead of people wasting time re-inventing the wheel. Gnome people - call the Pop!_OS people.
adamrezichalmost 2 years ago
seems neat, but: how often do you launch a program that defaults to having a teeny-tiny window, like shown here?
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geonalmost 2 years ago
So happy to see this being worked on. I really hate overlapping windows. It was never a good idea. I think it was mainly done the fist few times because it looked impressive. Then it became so ingrained that people couldn&#x27;t imagine not having them.
tsuujinalmost 2 years ago
I can’t seem to view the videos embedded in the article on iOS, which is disappointing because I really want to see that mosaic mode.
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michaelmrosealmost 2 years ago
* Putting maximized windows automagically in their own workspace is a horrible idea<p>&gt; As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace.<p>I emphatically disagree fundamentally people want to put the windows they want in a particular workspace because they are often part of a related task. It also violates user expectations from virtually every interface on the planet including prior versions of gnome leading to confusion and frustration as the users mental model of usage will not naturally conflate making it bigger with changing workspaces.<p>* Even more broken under the broke way gnome handles multiple monitors<p>This presents additional challenges for multiple monitors if the user has enabled workspaces across multiple monitors. A feature that isn&#x27;t on by default but which as far as I know still exists.<p>EG your window gets to big and suddenly everything disappears on monitor 2 and 3 because your universe now switched to workspace 2.<p>The traditional arrangement for gnome where changing workspace only effects the primary monitor is possibly the worst thing about gnome. It turns a secondary monitor into a singular big bucket of windows you must manage manually as if virtual desktops had never been invented. It is a complete failure of design.<p>* There is a simple way to allow both usages without a configuration switch that provides users with an obvious mental model and a simple metaphor<p>An actually competent design that transparently allows both independent workspaces and workspaces across all monitors looks like this.<p>my first ascii pager<p>M1 [<i>1</i>][2][3][4][] M2 [<i>1][2][3][4][] M1 [1][2][3][</i>4<i>][]<p>Locked pagers stay where you put them unlocked change together.<p></i> Size issues.<p>Expecting windows not to expand content arbitrarily may be better handled by just not tiling windows with a small maximum size. Note hints on minimum size and maximum size have existed forever.<p>Windows with medium maximum sizes can be expanded to $SIZE in a tiled layout but if the space is too plentiful some of that &quot;tile&quot; can be left empty with the app sized appropriately within it. For instance a pdf document on a large monitor may want to be as tall as it can be but only so wide.<p>If no hints are set one can also expect window to intelligently display content within a reasonable size like how competent web pages don&#x27;t draw their content arbitrarily wide.<p>* Concerns about gnome specific designs and usability within other environments.<p>If gnome app developers rely on gnome specific affordances in other environments they may inherently look or feel like shit. At minimum work should be shared between other environments and existing affordances like WM_NORMAL_HINTS ought to be used where they can be for compatibility.<p>* Reasonable expectations<p>If this is adopted multiple monitors across desktops will be unusable thus gnome will simply disable and deprecate that feature.<p>Gnome apps will be designed in such a way as to work poorly in other environments.<p>Gnome developers response to any issues will be that you should be using Gnome.<p>KDE developers will 6 months later support whatever gnome did.
jorfalmost 2 years ago
Bring back Alt+Space+N to minimize! Grumble..
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formulathreealmost 2 years ago
Buy ultrawide. Then tiling works without screwing over aspect ratio. It&#x27;s a real estate issue. (5120 x 1440))
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pluto_modadicalmost 2 years ago
now I&#x27;m just worried if pop-OS&#x27;s gnome extension ever goes away. arc-menu, pop-shell, &amp; dash-to-panel are my jam.
rosmax_1337almost 2 years ago
They&#x27;re overthinking this issue far too much. People actually like that windows disappear into the background, it emulates the idea of stacks of paper (very intuitive) and it allows you to both focus on the stuff that&#x27;s currently important and with relative ease bring out windows from the background into view again, through the use of alt-tab or the super key. (or by clicking the little part of the background window still visible, as done by all beginner users of a window system, a very intuitive move)<p>Call me a luddite but we don&#x27;t need more innovation, just implementation.<p>- Windows should be able to tile in corners for a 4 window equal size layout by default in gnome, you currently need a plugin for it.<p>- A way to set up standard locations for windows, best managed in some kind of &quot;work-profile&quot;&#x2F;&quot;entertainment-profile&quot; way, in a tileable-esque system. This is not something most people will use, but is very helpful for people who want to get back into the workflow of a relatively complex window layout. Say you use three screens, and have a editor, devtools, browser-production, browser-docs, and chat window or music player open. Getting these windows back into a standard location can be done with various secondary tools already, but it&#x27;s never been implemented by an OS standard. Some applications with floating dockable windows already implement it for their floating windows, like Inkscape.<p>And that&#x27;s it. Bear in mind I really think that this is taking the window managment the last 10% of the way, it&#x27;s fine as is. Not just fine, good and borderline great.<p>&gt;For a web browser that might be maximized, for a weather app maybe only 700×500 pixels<p>Those examples of &quot;mosaic&quot; tiling reeks of theoretical idealism. Almost no applications work in an area as small as what, 17% of total screen estate. Taking a weather app as an example is close to disingenous, that&#x27;s the definition of an outlier regarding small windows. A common &quot;small&quot; window is something like a file manager or a OS settings page, and those arguably take up __at least__ 35% of screen real estate to work well, and are more commonly given a whole 50%. (half-side view)<p>Their demonstration goes on to demonstrate them opening 3 different weather apps and having them move around in the mosaic, like the demonstration shows a groundbreaking new way to manage what, weather apps? Completely disregarding the fact that a weather app is opened, read, and then closed. You dont&#x27; monitor the situation of the weather in your anyones workflow.<p>Now there are users who use very complex window layouts of very small windows, like some people working in sound production, but they don&#x27;t want their windows to magically just shuffle around the center of the screen, they want the &quot;open this window in this standard location&#x2F;size every time im in work-profile mode&quot;.