From the «did not ask for this» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: GNOME: rethinking window management
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:56:30 -0400
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/136522/gnome-rethinking-window-management/
While most of us are used to this system and its quirks, that doesn’t mean it’s without problems. This is especially apparent when you do user research
with people who are new to computing, including children and older people. Manually placing and sizing windows can be fiddly work, and requires close attention and precise motor control. It’s also what we jokingly refer to as shit work[1]: it is work that the user has to do, which is generated by the system itself, and has no other purpose.
Most of the time you don’t care about exact window sizes and positions and just want to see the windows that you need for your current task. Often that’s
just a single, maximized window. Sometimes it’s two or three windows next to
each other. It’s incredibly rare that you need a dozen different overlapping
windows. Yet this is what you end up with by default today, when you simply use the computer, opening apps as you need them. Messy is the default, and it’s up to you to clean it up[2].
There are a lot of interesting ideas in what GNOME is working on to address these issues, and it includes a lot of new thinking and new approaches to windowing. I have a lot of reservations, though.
I do not like it when windows do something out of their own volition. A window
should be where I put it, and manipulating one window should not make any changes to the shape or position of other windows, unless I’m specifically asking the window manager to do so (e.g. using the side-by-side snap feature, which I never do). There’s nothing I hate more than my UI deciding what’s best
for me. Windows should be where I put them – until I explicitly instruct my window manager to put them somewhere else.
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I just don’t
get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my windows ever go fullscreen,
whether it be on a small 13″ laptop display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I
find fullscreen claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You just end up
with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with fullscreen as a corner stone absolutely baffles me.
As such, some of these ideas for GNOME worry me a tiny bit, since they go against some of the core tenets I hold about my UI. I’ll see how it works out
when it ships, but for now, I’m cautiously worried.
Links:
[1]: https://zachholman.com/posts/shit-work (link)
[2]: https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2023/07/26/rethinking-window-management/ (link)
On 7/31/23 4:59 AM, Retrograde wrote:
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I
just don’t get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my
windows ever go fullscreen, whether it be on a small 13″ laptop
display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I find fullscreen
claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You
just end up with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with
fullscreen as a corner stone absolutely baffles me.
As such, some of these ideas for GNOME worry me a tiny bit, since
they go against some of the core tenets I hold about my UI. I’ll
see how it works out when it ships, but for now, I’m cautiously
worried.
Still using fvwm95, which was the most completely configured WM when
I started using slackware. I have now set it so that a left click on
any edge or the title bar moves a window; a right click on any edge
or corner resizes it. I've also done stuff with mouse focus/raise to
make MY life easier. All this stuff should be user-settable.
Period.
Full-screen is a nuisance, especially when dealing with occasional
Windows use. Really tired of having to beat things into submission :-(
The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/31/23 4:59 AM, Retrograde wrote:
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I
just don’t get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my
windows ever go fullscreen, whether it be on a small 13″ laptop
display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I find fullscreen
claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You
just end up with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with
fullscreen as a corner stone absolutely baffles me.
As such, some of these ideas for GNOME worry me a tiny bit, since
they go against some of the core tenets I hold about my UI. I’ll
see how it works out when it ships, but for now, I’m cautiously
worried.
Still using fvwm95, which was the most completely configured WM when
I started using slackware. I have now set it so that a left click on
any edge or the title bar moves a window; a right click on any edge
or corner resizes it. I've also done stuff with mouse focus/raise to
make MY life easier. All this stuff should be user-settable.
Period.
Fvwm2 here, and I've done similar configs so I can move/resize any
window from any edge or corner. But perhaps the most useful config
tweak I added to fvwm2 was a "click to lower window" command. Most
UI's provide way to "raise" windows, but seem to omit the inverse
operation of "lower window - revealing what is underneath". Being able
to push a window on top down to the bottom turns out to be very useful.
Full-screen is a nuisance, especially when dealing with occasional
Windows use. Really tired of having to beat things into submission :-(
If you ever get a chance to observe very non-technical users using a computer, you'll often also find them using exclusively full screen
windows for everything -- even when it makes no sense. Full screen
windows are much more common than you'd think, because there are more non-techical users than there are of us. And for tablets/phones,
everything is almost exclusively "full screen windows" (although that
often makes more sense there given the smaller display surface area in
those devices).
On 2023-07-31, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/31/23 4:59 AM, Retrograde wrote:
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I
just don’t get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my
windows ever go fullscreen, whether it be on a small 13″ laptop
display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I find fullscreen
claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You
just end up with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with
fullscreen as a corner stone absolutely baffles me.
As such, some of these ideas for GNOME worry me a tiny bit, since
they go against some of the core tenets I hold about my UI. I’ll
see how it works out when it ships, but for now, I’m cautiously
worried.
Still using fvwm95, which was the most completely configured WM when
I started using slackware. I have now set it so that a left click on
any edge or the title bar moves a window; a right click on any edge
or corner resizes it. I've also done stuff with mouse focus/raise to
make MY life easier. All this stuff should be user-settable.
Period.
Fvwm2 here, and I've done similar configs so I can move/resize any
window from any edge or corner. But perhaps the most useful config
tweak I added to fvwm2 was a "click to lower window" command. Most
UI's provide way to "raise" windows, but seem to omit the inverse
operation of "lower window - revealing what is underneath". Being able
to push a window on top down to the bottom turns out to be very useful.
Full-screen is a nuisance, especially when dealing with occasional
Windows use. Really tired of having to beat things into submission :-(
If you ever get a chance to observe very non-technical users using a
computer, you'll often also find them using exclusively full screen
windows for everything -- even when it makes no sense. Full screen
windows are much more common than you'd think, because there are more
non-techical users than there are of us. And for tablets/phones,
everything is almost exclusively "full screen windows" (although that
often makes more sense there given the smaller display surface area in
those devices).
Cwm user here. One you have tmux, virtual desktops as tag, xclock
and a bunch of cli, tui and light X tools such as MuPDF working,
everything else doesn't matter.
Zukitre and Tango make the perfect GTK theme for cwm with 2px border.
The netbook (Atom N270, 1GB) runs fast and quiet.
Mail is managed by isync (mbsync), msmtp and mutt in a batch basis.
Ditto with RSS and NNTP.
I have a script with downloads the most recent feeds, podcasts,
and lastly sents mail and news posts from a queue.
This way I can answer to any mail/news posts offline.
Also, I have offpunk to read gemini/gopher sites offline too,
with the add, tour, and sync commands from within offpunk.
But offpunk --sync works fine, too.
But I know some people who don't even know there are options/settings/preferences. Out of the box is good enough. Go
figure.
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I just don’t
get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my windows ever go fullscreen,
whether it be on a small 13″ laptop display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I
find fullscreen claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You just end up
with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with fullscreen as a corner stone absolutely baffles me.
I always use maximised windows. And I use alt-tab and alt-esc to switch between them. I wish they would switch between browser tabs too. It
drives me nuts when alt-tab does not take me to the last tab I was
looking at.
From the «did not ask for this» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: GNOME: rethinking window management
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:56:30 -0400
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/136522/gnome-rethinking-window-management/
Basically I want window management to 'just work', but the only way
I've seen is a tiling window manager, which is awful once you go above
a handful of windows and even worse on a laptop screen.
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
Basically I want window management to 'just work', but the only way
I've seen is a tiling window manager, which is awful once you go above
a handful of windows and even worse on a laptop screen.
I guess it depends on what you do and what software you are using. I've gotten used to letting dwm manage the windows on my laptop. It's a
simple tiling window manager but you can also switch it to `floating layout´, if you have an application which doesn't work well in tiling
mode.
I usually have one to five windows in one `tag´ (some kind of virtual desktop), mostly emacs and xterm, plus things like mupdf or
firefox. dwm has nine tags, which is enough for my demands. I like that,
with the exception of firefox, I hardly ever have to use the
mouse. Emacs windows and xterms are created where I expect them (in the master area) and I can immediately start typing. To switch between
windows or tags I can use keyboard shortcuts. It's not perfect but it
feels convenient.
I understand that tiling is not for everyone, but for some reason
dwm has become my favorite window manager, especially on small displays.
Regards
On 7/31/23 12:59, Retrograde wrote:
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows. I just don’t
get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my windows ever go fullscreen,
whether it be on a small 13″ laptop display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I
find fullscreen claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You just end up
with tons of wasted space. Designing a UI with fullscreen as a corner stone >> absolutely baffles me.
It's what non-IT people are used to on a mobile phone, and even before
that - what non-IT (mainly elderly) people do when first presented a windowing operating system, they do not or understand window features
such as minimise/maximise/move/dock etc....
The view of their favourite application (email) is king and they do not
like distractions.
Try explaining it how GUI multitasking and app switching works ....
again and... again and... etc..
I give up.
Once a long ago, folks used to be able to switch apps by pressing
labelled keys on the keyboard, like folks changed TV channels on their
remote control.
Some items of IT should go back to that, following with the numbered
choice menus beloved of DOS.
I'd be happy if websites were no longer designed to be viewed on=20
something you can hold in your hand. Not likely to happen, though.
From the «did not ask for this» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: GNOME: rethinking window management
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:56:30 -0400
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/136522/gnome-rethinking-window-management/
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows.
I just don’t
get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my windows ever go fullscreen,
whether it be on a small 13″ laptop display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I
find fullscreen claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You just end up
with tons of wasted space.
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:59:47 -0000 (UTC)
Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
From the «did not ask for this» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: GNOME: rethinking window management
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:56:30 -0400
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/136522/gnome-rethinking-window-management/
[...]
I also do not understand this obsession with fullscreen windows.
There is no obsession , just preference.
I just don’t
get it. Unless it’s a video or a game, none of my windows ever go fullscreen,
whether it be on a small 13″ laptop display, or on my 28″ 4K desktop monitor. I
find fullscreen claustrophobic, and it almost never makes any sense anyway since
virtually no application actually makes use of all that space. You just end up
with tons of wasted space.
On 8/1/23 07:32, Richmond wrote:
I always use maximised windows. And I use alt-tab and alt-esc to switch^M between them. I wish they would switch between browser tabs too. It
drives me nuts when alt-tab does not take me to the last tab I was
looking at.
I've seen it suggested before that tabs and other sorts of multiplexing should be exclusively in the domain of the windowing system, a sentiment
that over time i've found myself agreeing with more and more.
The flip side is that putting browser tabs into your task switcher (as Android can do) is utterly un-scalable when you have a lot of browser tabs. At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs in a Firefox window, and that would completely overwhelm any kind of Alt-Tab mechanism.
Theo wrote:
At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs
Wow. How do you keep track of them ? I mean how do you decide which tab you want to go to and how do you switch to it ? And how much memory does Firefox use with that many tabs ?
On 02 Aug 2023 13:40:49 +0100 (BST)
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
The flip side is that putting browser tabs into your task switcher (as Android can do) is utterly un-scalable when you have a lot of browser tabs. At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs in a Firefox window, and that would completely overwhelm any kind of Alt-Tab mechanism.
Wow. How do you keep track of them ? I mean how do you decide which tab you want to go to and how do you switch to it ?
And how much memory does Firefox use with that many tabs ?
Basically I want window management to 'just work', but the only way I've
seen is a tiling window manager, which is awful once you go above a handful of windows and even worse on a laptop screen.
So I'm always keen to watch developments in this area, even if I've never found the sweet spot.
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
Basically I want window management to 'just work', but the only way I've seen is a tiling window manager, which is awful once you go above a handful of windows and even worse on a laptop screen.
So I'm always keen to watch developments in this area, even if I've never found the sweet spot.
That problem can be solved with virtual desktops. FVWM does it quite well and it is even possible to subdivide each virtual desktop into several virtual screens. To change virtual screen/desktop either click with the mouse in a pager in the corner of the screen or with a keybiding (ModifierKey+cursor arrows), which is useful in the case of an
imprecise laptop trackpad. That's how I can keep dozens of windows
opened in a small laptop screen and never minimize anything.
The thing I don't like about virtual desktops is how your windows just all vanish if you switch desktops. eg I managed to get a browser window on a second desktop, and when I Alt-Tabbed to it suddenly all my other windows were gone. This is very disconcerting if you do it by accident.
It would be nice if you could say to the WM 'this window is on all my desktops'
Fvwm2 has a "sticky" attribute that can be applied to windows (either pre-configured in fvwm2rc when the window is launched or applied
ad-hock via fvwm2 commands) that does exactly this:
...
Whether other WM's, or gnome, ever incorporated such a feature I do not
know.
Javier <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
Basically I want window management to 'just work', but the only
way I've seen is a tiling window manager, which is awful once you
go above a handful of windows and even worse on a laptop screen.
So I'm always keen to watch developments in this area, even if
I've never found the sweet spot.
That problem can be solved with virtual desktops. FVWM does it
quite well and it is even possible to subdivide each virtual desktop
into several virtual screens. To change virtual screen/desktop
either click with the mouse in a pager in the corner of the screen
or with a keybiding (ModifierKey+cursor arrows), which is useful in
the case of an imprecise laptop trackpad. That's how I can keep
dozens of windows opened in a small laptop screen and never minimize
anything.
The thing I don't like about virtual desktops is how your windows
just all vanish if you switch desktops. eg I managed to get a
browser window on a second desktop, and when I Alt-Tabbed to it
suddenly all my other windows were gone. This is very disconcerting
if you do it by accident.
It would be nice if you could say to the WM 'this window is on all my desktops', so you could eg have access to your email when doing any
task,
Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
Theo wrote:
At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs
Wow. How do you keep track of them ? I mean how do you decide which tab you >> want to go to and how do you switch to it ? And how much memory does Firefox >> use with that many tabs ?
I've had over 1,000 tabs in the past, like pseudo-bookmarks, I'm a bit
more ruthless in getting rid of them these days, actually firefox is
pretty good at "unloading" idle background tabs.
You lose them all by accidentally opening something in a new window,
probably behind the 1k-tab window that you're using, and closing the
1k-tab window before you find the stupid new window which is now the
previous incarnation of FF when you open it tomorrow.
The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> writes:
But I know some people who don't even know there are
options/settings/preferences. Out of the box is good enough. Go
figure.
I use twm, full screen only for movies. I've been penguinating since
1999, used Unix intermittently for a decade before that. I'm no pro
code wrangler but I do a lot of tweaking, scripts, not afraid of a
compiler etc.
And I just got my very first cell phone. I hate the touch-screen UI
and the apps (I have to learn to say "apps":-) for which there are no manpages that explain just exactly what they do, how to use them or,
for that matter, much of anything at all. I knew I was going to hate
it.
The only bright side so far is that after a few days, my hatred of the
UI hasn't increased exponentially.
It does remind me just how annoying, not to say intimidating,
computers and the internet can be for folks (especially those of my
age bracket) who are novices. Thirty years ago I was telling all my
friends they should find a way to do email and they replied, "Oooohhh,
too geeky. I hate computers!" Now those same people say, "What? You
don't do Facebook? Don't do Twitter? You don't have stuff on U-Tube?
You don't even have a cell phone? Whaddya, some kind of Luddite?"
Well, now I at least have a cell phone.
Bad enough that Android doesn't do USB storage and ya gots to muck
with mtp ware to address a protocol that doesn't really grok "files"
to begin with; they sold me a defective cable so I spent a couple of
hours in the touch-screen swamp trying to make it work before I
determined that. Feh.
On 8/2/23 6:58 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
Theo wrote:
At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs
Wow. How do you keep track of them ? I mean how do you decide which tab you >>> want to go to and how do you switch to it ? And how much memory does Firefox
use with that many tabs ?
I've had over 1,000 tabs in the past, like pseudo-bookmarks, I'm a bit
more ruthless in getting rid of them these days, actually firefox is
pretty good at "unloading" idle background tabs.
1K. I'm aghast. There's an extension that will list all of them in
case you lose them all, but I don't remember what it is.
You lose them all by accidentally opening something in a new window,
probably behind the 1k-tab window that you're using, and closing the
1k-tab window before you find the stupid new window which is now the
previous incarnation of FF when you open it tomorrow.
On 2023-08-01, Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
Bad enough that Android doesn't do USB storage and ya gots to muck
with mtp ware to address a protocol that doesn't really grok "files"
to begin with; they sold me a defective cable so I spent a couple of
hours in the touch-screen swamp trying to make it work before I
determined that. Feh.
On Android, don't lose your time with MTP. Use Primitive FTPD from
"F-droid", use a nice FTP client such as ncftp under *nix copy your
files away over a Wireless LAN.
On 2023-08-01, Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
Bad enough that Android doesn't do USB storage and ya gots to muck
with mtp ware to address a protocol that doesn't really grok "files"
to begin with; they sold me a defective cable so I spent a couple of
hours in the touch-screen swamp trying to make it work before I
determined that. Feh.
On Android, don't lose your time with MTP. Use Primitive FTPD from "F-droid", use a nice FTP client such as ncftp under *nix copy your files
away over a Wireless LAN.
The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/2/23 6:58 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
Theo wrote:
At the moment I have (checks) 398 tabs
Wow. How do you keep track of them ? I mean how do you decide which tab you
want to go to and how do you switch to it ? And how much memory does Firefox
use with that many tabs ?
I've had over 1,000 tabs in the past, like pseudo-bookmarks, I'm a bit
more ruthless in getting rid of them these days, actually firefox is
pretty good at "unloading" idle background tabs.
1K. I'm aghast. There's an extension that will list all of them in
case you lose them all, but I don't remember what it is.
You lose them all by accidentally opening something in a new window,
probably behind the 1k-tab window that you're using, and closing the
1k-tab window before you find the stupid new window which is now the
previous incarnation of FF when you open it tomorrow.
Settings -> General: Confirm before closing multiple tabs
It's saved me many times!
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