Comment #5 : Bug #896709 : Bugs : Unity

Comment 5 for bug 896709

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bowser (bwbernard-wong1) wrote :

I would just like to say that I agree with Chris.

Since Unity is ostensibly designed to attract new users, I think the experience of new user (rather than Ubuntu veterans) should be paramount in this discussion. It is not uncommon even for relatively inexperienced computer users to say, open a bunch of documents or pdf files. If the instances are minimized, it is natural for the user to reach for the Unity bar and attempt to open an instance. In Windows 7 if you hover the mouse above the application's icon window preview will show all the instances in thumb nails and the user would simply have to choose and click one. In the Cairo dock each instance has a separate icon, it may not be very eficient but it is easy enough to use.

In Unity there is no way to choose instances of minimized instances of program with simple point and click. Just no way!

 When you click on the icon all instances will be unminized. That is rather unsophisticated for a launcher. Yes, alt+tab and <super> + w + ` (not work in Natty) works fine if you already know the hot keys but it is neither obvious nor intuitive. Remember the rationale for Unity is to reach for new users and Mark Shuttleworth's ambition of reaching 200 million users. I suspect most of those new users wouldn't be keyboard jockeys and probably wouldn't be too interested in learning a whole bunch of rather arcane and arbitrary key combos to do simple task because Unity's design has focused so much on the keyboard and neglect simple point and click use cases.

Finally I agree with Walter that many applications *should* have tab, but often they don't. I have yet been able to find a native Linux pdf reader that supports tab. So until the evince devs decide to create tab support what are users supposed to do if they have to cross reading a bunch of pdfs?