Re: [Usability] Changing the taskbar semantics

[Maurizio Colucci <seguso forever tin it>]

On Wednesday 01 September 2004 16:01, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 00:16 +0200, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I think a change to the semantics of the taskbar could result in a
> > usability improvement.
> >
> > Currently the taskbar is a list of (open) windows.
> >
> > Idea
> > ------
> >
> > Could the taskbar become a list of (open) application instances?
>
> This is one of the things I find the most broken about OS X.  Real life
> work does not categorize itself by applications.  It categorizes itself
> by documents and tasks.
>
> Say, for example, I am "multitasking."  I have a terminal window with
> some code and a browser with an online API reference; this is my first
> task, a programming project.  I also have my word processor open and a
> browser window with some reference material open; this is my second
> task, a school project.
>
> When you group things together by application, the above scenario
> instantly breaks.  Now suddenly the desktop is oh-so-helpfully grouping
> my two totally unrelated browser windows together.
>
> The same goes for the gimp, an example you use.  I only ever have one
> instance of the gimp running, but I'm editing several completely
> unrelated documents.  An application instance can easily have several
> completely unrelated user tasks running in it.

To Sean and Reinout: you are both right. I was assuming that two windows of 
the same instance (pid) were meant to be viewed at the same time. Which is 
false. 

I was trying to solve the problem with the taskbar not grouping enough (e.g. 
gimp toolwindows), and I proposed a non-solution where the taskbar would have 
grouped too much. The right solution is to have the taskbar take the window 
hints into account, not showing the utility windows in the taskbar, and 
automatically bringing the utility windows on top when needed. It turns out 
the gnome taskbar already had this logic, and the problem was in gimp.
Sorry about that. :-)

-- 
Maurizio Colucci
http://logicaldesktop.sourceforge.net