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Maniphest T14386

VDG - Overview
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Description

There has been many discussion of having a new Overview effect - similarly to Parachude - that acts both as a Present Window and as a Virtual Desktops effect. A generally agreed upon improvement that this Overview could also bring is a Activity tab to organize windows between them.

Here are some mockups from disrooter:

The scrollbar in right top corner is for zoom: 4, 3, 2 or 1 row(s) of virtual desktops
Settings (the button is in top right corner)
Type to search in KRunner and filter windows at the same time
Select multiple windows at the same time to move them all together to another Activity (useful if you want to move all the windows of an application, just type its name to filter the windows)
Move windows to Activities tab bar like on Dolphin's tab bar
Hovering the tab bar switch Activity

Here are a couple of mockups by me (u/veggero):

To trigger overview: topleft corner or meta+tab (or panel button?)
To switch from view 1 to view 2: clicking outside the central desktop, scroll down, meta+tab again
To switch from view 2 to view 1: scroll up, click on a desktop
In view 1, to switch from a desktop to another: arrow keys
To switch between activities: alt+left, alt+right
To exit overview: esc, meta+tab while in view 2, clicking on a window in view 1 (will raise it)

VDG-wise, I'd like us to have a clear idea on what we want to achieve. Namely, we should answer the following questions:

  • Should this effect go along with Present Windows and Desktop Grid, or replace them entirely?
  • Should an Activity bar be added?
  • Should a search bar be added (searching krunner + active windows (yes, it's technically feasible, I can assure you of that.))?
  • Should we have a desktop grid in such effect?
  • Should the panel be visible? If not, should we still show fav apps to make them easier to open?
  • How should it look?

(This task focuses purely on the VDG side, not the actual implementation.)

niccolove created this task.Apr 20 2021, 8:57 PM
niccolove updated the task description. (Show Details)
cblack added a subscriber: cblack.EditedApr 20 2021, 9:00 PM

I am strongly against overcomplicating a UI for switching between windows. What Present Windows has currently now is what I consider to be the ideal in UX: simple mouse-driven window switcher with a visually appealing animation.

ahiemstra added a subscriber: ahiemstra.Apr 20 2021, 9:26 PM

I'm not a fan of adding all the launcher functionality, that really distracts from something that (I assume) is meant for window switching.

niccolove added a comment.Apr 20 2021, 9:32 PM

Makes sense; so let's try to keep it barebone. I think that we at least need the activity tabs and the desktop grid functionality. It's fair to assume that switching windows in your desktop on the fly will be harder if you get a desktop grid as soon as you open this effect, which is why I had preferred for a 2-step effect where you can first see your desktop and then de-zoom to see all the other ones. A shortcut could also be made to trigger the grid directly, but switching between the two would still be possible (and easy, e.g. scrolling or arrows I guess) and we'd unify the two effects. I think it's a simple yet effective solution.

linuxpusher added a subscriber: linuxpusher.Apr 21 2021, 7:37 AM

disrooter's mockups look quite nice and is a good basis to proceed from. However, many of the settings exposed in them could prolly be put elsewhere or grouped under a menu instead. The main view should at least have a desktop grid and activity tabs with wallpaper thumbnails below them (like in the mockups). Window search could be done in a couple of ways, such as:

  • Desktop grid will show the workspaces from different activities containing the matching window titles
  • Thumbnails in the Activities view at the top will get replaced by matching window titles

The first option would likely be more appealing visually, however it could get cumbersome with lots of windows and activities.
The second option would be less on the visuals, but may be better with plenty of windows and activities.

Perhaps some combination of the two may yield the best result, but I don't have any in mind for now.

trapped-in-dreams added a subscriber: trapped-in-dreams.Apr 26 2021, 12:58 PM

I don't quite understand why do we need another way to search, there are kickoff and krunner already. Activity bar might be a nice idea, but I think it would be better if one could actually see the contents of activity without having to click it (like in activity pager plasmoid).

zzag added a subscriber: zzag.Aug 4 2021, 7:47 AM
abetts added a subscriber: abetts.Jan 26 2022, 3:37 PM

Just wanted to add a couple of suggestions for features:

  1. Add the ability to group select windows to move them to another virtual desktop. Maybe using key + click, or by entering a selection mode
  2. Add the ability to drag search result items into a virtual desktop where they will open a new instance