Re: DockBar-style minimization (with crude mock-ups)

[Apoorva Sharma <appi2012 gmail com>]

I think the message area should be used for keeping hidden apps  
accesible. For exampe, if rhythmbox is no longer in the current  
workspace, then it shoul put it's icon in the summary section of the  
message area. This icon could present a menu with the following items:

    Show Rhythmbox (which would bring it to the current workspace.)
    <now playing info>
    Pause/play
    Next
    Previous
    Stop
    Quit Rhythbox


This way, there would be no real need for minimizing apps.

On Apr 12, 2010, at 8:19 PM, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> In the while I have been testing GNOME Shell, there have been two  
> major problems that me and other people have noticed.
>
> Problem 1: How do we handle minimized windows?
> Problem 2: How do we handle the notification area/system tray?
>
> Problem 2 has been officially decided upon, and the notification  
> area will be "system only", meaning that it will only provide  
> indicators for system-related things such as internet connectivity,  
> bluetooth, volume, etc. This makes the section much more organized  
> than before, where it was a mostly-random pile of icons for  
> unrelated programs. This brings up one more problem, however.
>
> Problem 3: What if I liked the old functionality?
>
> The old functionality had several uses that could be considered  
> useful. For example, lets say Rhythmbox doesn't fit into any of my  
> workspaces and I don't want to shove it away to its own workspace. I  
> could minimize it to my system tray, and if I needed to skip a song  
> or turn notifications on/off, I could right-click it and a menu  
> would pop up. Or if I wanted to run a Bit-torrent client in the  
> background without having a window up; I could minimize that to the  
> tray as well. This functionality is missing in the new, yet more  
> organized system tray.
>
> I made some very crude mock-ups to illustrate some of my own ideas  
> about how this could be fixed. This is the first time I have ever  
> used Inkscape for actual work, so don't expect them to be  
> professional-looking. My first mock-up is as follows:
>
> http://imgur.com/BoLcm.png
>
> This mock-up shows how minimized applications could be handled. It's  
> similar in a way to a popular program, DockBar or DockBarX. When  
> mousing-over the program icon, it could show a menu similar to this.  
> First the title of the program, then the windows of that program  
> that are minimized. If a minimized window wants attention, the text  
> referring to it could change color and/or italicize. Hovering over a  
> window on the list could have an "X" in a circle on the right side  
> which, when clicked, could close the window.
>
> This still leaves the problem of having programs run in the  
> background and being easily accessible. When working with programs,  
> I noticed that programs with a tray icon usually had it visible all  
> the time, regardless whether or not you had one of the program  
> windows open. This mock-up shows another way to do it while still  
> remaining organized:
>
> http://imgur.com/vJ1dP.png
>
> When you right-click a group of minimized windows, a custom menu  
> similar to how the old system tray icons worked could pop-up. This  
> menu's contents are dependent on the application, and it returns the  
> old and useful functionality in an organized, more-useful way. It  
> reduces the redundancy of having options you can access with the  
> window you currently have open by limiting you to using them when  
> the program's running in the background.
>
> I'm sorry that my mock-ups are rather mediocre, but I hope you  
> understand and/or like my ideas! If someone wants to talk about this  
> post or any of those images somewhere else, you have the permission  
> to do so under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license (just in  
> case). For attribution, the minimum required is "some person from  
> the GNOME Shell mailing list".
>
>   - Ryan Peters, GNOME Shell tester.
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