Re: Desktop/Window alignment (spatial?)

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 11:12, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > At the moment, unvisited windows are just placed by metacity like normal
> > windows. However, i think your idea actually has some merits in the
> > general case too. If you open a new small window, any window, chances
> > are that you don't want it to cover the typical icons on the left hand
> > (and possibly right hand) side of the desktop.
> 
> And in fact this was one of the main issues coming out of one of the Sun
> usability studies, which didn't seem to get published :( Calum?

Yeah, we didn't publish it at the time because JDS was still an
unreleased product, but there was supposed to be some effort to get it
out afterwards.  I'll ping the relevant folks and see what happened to
that.

As it happens I've been thinking about this problem over the past couple
of days too, but I don't have any magic solution so far... simplest idea
I had was just to try and make sure windows appear centred on the
current screen the first time you open them (since unless they're really
big, that should still keep them clear of any icons down either side of
the screen), and always remember their previous position after that. 
Possibly supplemented by easier ways to access desktop icons if they do
accidentally get obscured, e.g. a Desktop submenu on the GNOME Main menu
that stayed in sync with the contents of the desktop.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems