Alt+Tab behavior improvement

Bug #825413 reported by Ngassam Nkwenga
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ayatana Design
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Unity
Incomplete
Wishlist
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Hi ,

First , great Job for this news Iteration of Unity.
As the main focus is on Space , I thought about how we could improve the Alt-Tab behavior and come out with 2 Idea, but I prefere just the second, so I post here only the 2nd.
Sorry for my Bad English.

What is Wrong (in my point of view) or seems wrong with the actual new Alt-Tab is that : when an application has many instances ( lets say 4, as in my Mockup) Alt-Tab draws any instance of that application in a (m)x(n) matrix manner( how does it look when we have 6 instances or more ? ) , that is a bad choice because its clutters the global look of the desktop and it feel so heavy.

I propose, instead of drawing the different instances in a (m) x (n) matrix manner, we draw it in a row [ (1) x (n) ] matrix ( n here is the number of an application instance) and instead of showing the Switch-app-dialog we show Instance dialog : That means, in my Mockup, not both are the same time: when pressing the Down Key, le picture ( 1 ) become the (2)

Vocabulary / Legend :

 #Switch-app dialog : here I mean the dialog shown when you press Alt+ Tab (in my Mockup it is the 1 draw)

#Instance dialog : maintening Alt pressed, when pressing the Down Key on Keyboard, Switch-app dialog redraw itself with only the instance of the application from where you pressed the down Key.( in my Mockup it is represented by the 2nd draw)

My design ( I'm not a designer ) propose two possibilities to Switch-app dialog and a possibility to close any instances of an application.

1- The keyboard Key Esc is used to return to the Switch-app dialog ( for Power User) , but in the instance dialog we have an entry which allow us to use the mouse to return to the Switch-app dialog.

2-Any preview of an instance have on top of them a cross button to delete that instance

3- The Instance dialog has an entry to allow us to close all instance at Once ( which could be done by closing that application from the alt-tab dialog. Of course, closing all intsnaces from here take us back automatically to the Switch-app dialog

sorry for the Mockup , I'm not a designer, so I draw it by Hand and scanned it.

Revision history for this message
Ngassam Nkwenga (cyrildz) wrote :
Revision history for this message
David Gomes (davidgomes) wrote :

That actually seems like a great idea, if it was well implemented, it could be really fantastic.

Revision history for this message
Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

Your idea is just how gnome-shell does it today, having use that can cause problems sometimes. anyways marking incomplete as we wait a view from design team.

Changed in unity:
status: New → Incomplete
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote : Re: [Bug 825413] Re: Alt+Tab behavior improvement

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I'm not sure that the Alt-TAB as you
see it today is complete; let's wrap it up the way it was designed
before iterating it further.

description: updated
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Changed in unity:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
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