[HN Gopher] Rethinking Window Management
___________________________________________________________________
Rethinking Window Management
Author : ayoisaiah
Score : 168 points
Date : 2023-07-26 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.gnome.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.gnome.org)
| thecrumb wrote:
| Long time i3 user (which I still use on my work laptop) but use
| Pop!_OS on my workstation at home and have to say it works really
| well. I like how we have open source but wish we had more open
| collaboration instead of people wasting time re-inventing the
| wheel. Gnome people - call the Pop!_OS people.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I have been using a tiling WM since ion2, but I've used other OS
| WMs too. It's hard to take this article seriously when it talks
| about tiling window manager limitations but fails to mention the
| one downfall for tiling: they assume I want to see the whole
| window all of the time.
|
| Overlapping windows let me put my terminal over the top of my
| browser. I can conceal the left nav bar of, say, a documentation
| website while still letting me see the body of the docs.
|
| Focus follows mouse (which you get in macOS, albeit only for
| scroll) means I can interact with the lower window without
| bringing it to the foreground. I've done this when my employment
| has forced me to use macOS, and it works well and much better
| than a tiling WM.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new
| windows in seemingly arbitrary positions
|
| Well we have Xresources to to solve this, but the Gnome and KDE
| people ignore a standard that has been there for years.
|
| And Fluxbox solves this issue by having point/click option to
| allow you to say "Make this window show up here with this size".
| But as usual, many GNOME/GTK and some KDE applications ignore
| that to.
|
| So off we go, invent a new standard that will make my (our?)
| lives harder.
| bpye wrote:
| Do Xresources and friends make sense now Wayland is finally
| usable for many folks? Maybe having some sort of environment
| agnostic config would be good - even with Wayland - but I don't
| know that a suitable one exists today.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Wayland is not usable for me, I am on a BSD. So my answer is
| yes, Xresources makes sense for me :)
|
| Does Wayland even have a method to specifying canned Window
| Position ?
| mariusor wrote:
| It does, kind of, statically you configure positions
| manually in the configuration file, or dynamically, you can
| use its API through a pipe to save positions and then
| restore positions.
| ecliptik wrote:
| After spending some time customizing my .Xresources I was
| amazed on how much functionality it has [1].
|
| The learning curve is a bit steep, but after taking a few
| minutes to understand it, there's a lot it can do in a simpler
| manner than more modern configuration and tooling.
|
| 1.
| https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/ixresources/xres....
| fpina wrote:
| I like PaperWM[1] a lot.
|
| 1. https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
| akvadrako wrote:
| It isn't perfect, but it does bring tiling window management to
| Gnome. The killer feature for me is that it remembers which
| workspace windows are on when external monitors are connected
| and disconnected.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I wish Gnome would stop rethinking things and just reimplement
| the basic desktop features every major competitor has, and that
| Gnome 2 had.
| elteto wrote:
| Starting with something as basic as bringing back the path
| input textbox in file dialogs. I mean... it's a file dialog!
| What else but inputting file _paths_ is it good for?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I recently got a macbook pro m2 in order to do local ML dev,
| and Finder has got to be one of the worst, most user-hostile
| programs I've ever used. It's not a good look when fucking
| windows explorer offers a better user experience.
| hactually wrote:
| what's missing that was removed in 2->3?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| If you have used GNOME 2 for an extended period of time and
| then moved to GNOME 3, I think you'd find the shorter list of
| what _wasn 't_ removed.
|
| The idea was a vast plugin ecosystem which would allow
| development of desktop features to be more distributed. The
| problem was, some of the most basic features (like a taskbar
| for displaying open windows, or panels, or applets, or sane
| window management tools) were left out.
|
| At some point it becomes a security and performance nightmare
| when the idea is that to achieve a normal desktop experience,
| you need dozens of user-supplied scripts.
|
| Of course that's not a problem in practice, because even with
| user plugins, several basic features continue to be missing.
| And the fact that most of these plugins are just recreating
| functionality that already previously existed should really
| tell you something about GNOME team's design philosophy.
|
| To quote Linus Torvalds, GNOME 3 is a "total user experience
| design failure".
|
| https://www.datamation.com/open-source/gnome-2-vs-gnome-3/
| moojacob wrote:
| For more context Linux Torvalds moved back to GNOME in
| 2013, a year after that article was posted.
|
| From https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTMxNj:
|
| > He says that GNOME 3.x has been improving and that when
| pairing the desktop with the right extensions, it's a
| rather pleasant desktop. He specifically points out
| Frippery and GNOME Tweak Tool as making a huge difference
| to his experience.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Thank you, I didn't know that and didn't mean to
| misconstrue his opinion. GNOME Tweak Tool is a critical
| part of a usable GNOME experience, but I wouldn't dare
| call that a good user experience because it's a non-
| starter for the majority of casual users.
| silon42 wrote:
| including replaceable WMs
| esjeon wrote:
| I really love the mosaic concept. I think it's indeed the missing
| piece for tiling on large displays. It's a kind of stack in usual
| tiling layouts, where all leftover windows are placed, but stacks
| tend to squeeze and deform windows, crippling many apps in the
| process. The mosaic approach can certainly avoid this issue, but
| it wastes some space (not ideal for small screens) and may not
| play well with big complex UIs(IDE, CAD, DAW, etc).
| bpye wrote:
| It seems that the wasted space issue is somewhat addressed by
| the switch to a tiling mode when the screen becomes "full"?
| generalizations wrote:
| An idea everyone will hate: feed window descriptions to a tiny
| local language model, which decides how to organize the current
| windows based on the current context and the content of the
| windows already open.
|
| Oh, you're coding? Put firefox to the left and keep VS Code
| focused. Oh, you're messing around with file managers? Bring the
| new file manager instance front and center. Oh, you've a ton of
| firefox windows open? Tile the new one side by side with the last
| one. Worst of all worlds.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| On the other side of the problem is how modern applications waste
| screen real-estate with empty space, bloated menus, and poor
| typography. The application designers also need to adopt
| responsive layout to make sure the app provides the right amount
| of information using provided space.
|
| I hope a deeper rethink can consider the user's end goal being
| _task_ management rather than _window_ management. Maybe
| something in the spirit of "Ctrl + Z" and "fg" can be helpful.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think modern SW is less thoughtful because it's easier to
| change and monitors have grown. Back in the day it was tough to
| make changes after the fact and screens were tiny. Screen real
| estate was more precious so you better put some thought into
| the layout. It's like- modern large screens create more
| wasteful bloated applications which need larger screens...
|
| The new Outlook for example: I have the standard Windows but
| this also contains search? Below that I have Home, View, Help,
| and a hamburger menu? Below that I have the Outlook "ribbon"
| Then to sort my mail I have focused or other, we are now 4
| "rows" deep in the shit now and each row wastes space. Since
| this is getting ridiculous they're starting to waste sidebar
| space as well by lining it with other apps. Stupid! Slack is
| even worse!
|
| Have some vision! There seems to be no regard for where to
| stuff new features which is ironic since that's one of the
| stated reasons for all the telemetry.
| mulmen wrote:
| The industry has also grown and the barriers to entry have
| dropped. The people making applications simply don't know or
| care about good design.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Every time when I look at what has become of Gnome, I wish Unity
| didn't die. Almost everything I loved in Gnome2 was broken or
| took a turn for the worse.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| MATE still exists
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It does, true, but it feels like a dead end.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Maybe that's because it's finished. It doesn't need any
| more revolution, just maintenance and polishing.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _You can also manually tile windows. If there's enough space,
| other windows are left in a mosaic layout. However, if there's
| not enough space for this mosaic layout, you're prompted to pick
| another window to tile alongside._
|
| Oooh, that's going to be a usability problem, because it
| introduces a special mode for answering the "prompt". Most users
| will never know that this mode exists, just that the system
| behaves weirdly and half-maximizes a single window sometimes.
|
| I see people _today_ unknowingly or uncaringly invoking the
| window overview mode (sometimes called "Activities"), and then
| trying to, say, click a link in a visible browser window. They
| then become confused when the windows all zoom around, and the
| click they wanted is ignored.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I don't know. Overlapping windows may look messy, but I know
| where they are and their size is right for me. Not for you, for
| me.
|
| If windows are moving all the time on their own as I open new
| ones, maybe it looks gorgeous on demos and screenshots, but I
| don't think it's going to be ergonomic to actually work with. And
| my work is not about posting screenshots to r/unixporn.
| pmontra wrote:
| Gnome developers really like automoving stuff on the screen, like
| activities animations. Instead I could kill a window that does
| not stay put were I placed it. Who does it thinks it is to know
| better than me how my desktop must look like?
|
| Anyway, until there is a way to work as I want to, no problem
| with them enjoying their time. Reconfiguring the desktop to look
| like Gnome 2 is a tax I pay to have them keeping it compatible
| with the other components of the system.
| dsr_ wrote:
| I rejected paying that tax, and moved to XFCE.
|
| As far as I can tell, the GNOME people have not had a good idea
| about window management since GNOME 2. If you like it, great,
| use it. The point of freedom is to be able to do things they
| way you like.
| moogly wrote:
| I appreciate someone looking at improving the status quo.
| However, I feel that there is no way something as opinionated
| like this will do what you actually want it to do in most cases.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| * Putting maximized windows automagically in their own workspace
| is a horrible idea
|
| > As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to
| make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn't fit (e.g.
| because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace.
|
| I emphatically disagree fundamentally people want to put the
| windows they want in a particular workspace because they are
| often part of a related task. It also violates user expectations
| from virtually every interface on the planet including prior
| versions of gnome leading to confusion and frustration as the
| users mental model of usage will not naturally conflate making it
| bigger with changing workspaces.
|
| * Even more broken under the broke way gnome handles multiple
| monitors
|
| This presents additional challenges for multiple monitors if the
| user has enabled workspaces across multiple monitors. A feature
| that isn't on by default but which as far as I know still exists.
|
| EG your window gets to big and suddenly everything disappears on
| monitor 2 and 3 because your universe now switched to workspace
| 2.
|
| The traditional arrangement for gnome where changing workspace
| only effects the primary monitor is possibly the worst thing
| about gnome. It turns a secondary monitor into a singular big
| bucket of windows you must manage manually as if virtual desktops
| had never been invented. It is a complete failure of design.
|
| * There is a simple way to allow both usages without a
| configuration switch that provides users with an obvious mental
| model and a simple metaphor
|
| An actually competent design that transparently allows both
| independent workspaces and workspaces across all monitors looks
| like this.
|
| my first ascii pager
|
| M1 [ _1_ ][2][3][4][] M2 [ _1][2][3][4][] M1 [1][2][3][_ 4 _][]
|
| Locked pagers stay where you put them unlocked change together.
|
| _ Size issues.
|
| Expecting windows not to expand content arbitrarily may be better
| handled by just not tiling windows with a small maximum size.
| Note hints on minimum size and maximum size have existed forever.
|
| Windows with medium maximum sizes can be expanded to $SIZE in a
| tiled layout but if the space is too plentiful some of that
| "tile" can be left empty with the app sized appropriately within
| it. For instance a pdf document on a large monitor may want to be
| as tall as it can be but only so wide.
|
| If no hints are set one can also expect window to intelligently
| display content within a reasonable size like how competent web
| pages don't draw their content arbitrarily wide.
|
| * Concerns about gnome specific designs and usability within
| other environments.
|
| If gnome app developers rely on gnome specific affordances in
| other environments they may inherently look or feel like shit. At
| minimum work should be shared between other environments and
| existing affordances like WM_NORMAL_HINTS ought to be used where
| they can be for compatibility.
|
| * Reasonable expectations
|
| If this is adopted multiple monitors across desktops will be
| unusable thus gnome will simply disable and deprecate that
| feature.
|
| Gnome apps will be designed in such a way as to work poorly in
| other environments.
|
| Gnome developers response to any issues will be that you should
| be using Gnome.
|
| KDE developers will 6 months later support whatever gnome did.
| adamrezich wrote:
| seems neat, but: how often do you launch a program that defaults
| to having a teeny-tiny window, like shown here?
| bpye wrote:
| I probably don't want a calculator to be full screen, even a
| terminal full height might make sense but full width almost
| never does.
| cesarb wrote:
| > even a terminal full height might make sense but full width
| almost never does.
|
| I disagree; things like atop can make good use of a full
| width (and full height) terminal, and log lines (for instance
| from dmesg or journalctl) are often long enough that a full
| width terminal makes reading them more comfortable.
| jiehong wrote:
| Well, people with bad eyesight use bigger fonts, making
| terminals full screen is necessary to see the whole 80 chars
| line without wrapping.
| iamcalledrob wrote:
| People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I
| feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this
| especially on iPadOS.
|
| Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-
| tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content
| e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow
| for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this
| is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my
| spatial memory.
|
| I'm grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one
| monolithic window. Apple's going down this route with their
| recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely
| due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a
| dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don't really think
| to do it.
|
| I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop
| app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and
| traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up
| ads.
|
| It's unfortunate because a single window user experience is
| limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even
| possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for
| each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the
| screen.
|
| (If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style
| "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me,
| however).
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Single window apps came in with NeXT. I heard a theory early on
| in the NeXT/Apple merger that it was because the window server
| buffering was so heavyweight on early hardware that multiple
| windows just made things too slow.
|
| While I personally agree with you, I think you're
| overestimating the desire of most users to manage multiple
| window clutter themselves except in very limited contexts.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > (If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style
| "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me,
| however).
|
| Windows-style? Microsoft's APIs and design paradigms are as
| floating-window focused as they are maximized-focused. And I
| don't think I've had a window open maximized since the XP days.
| Multiple document interfaces were a first class citizen for a
| decade and a half, so clearly they understand and encourage
| window use.
|
| Single task, maximized windows are a _user_ paradigm. Usually
| by regular old users that just want a browser, tax program,
| video game, etc and that Windows doesn 't get in the way of.
| These same people will use the expander in macOS, or just use
| their computer with a single half-sized window in the middle of
| their screen. "Power" users (devs, creatives, traders, PMs,
| CSRs, etc) will best use the environment in any OS, for their
| use case.
| adrusi wrote:
| I really appreciate apps that open new windows where it makes
| sense, but I'm pretty sure the reason it died out is because
| people started using too many windows for conventional floating
| window managers to handle. I'm not sure if many people really
| felt the burden it would have caused, because the growth in
| number of windows arguably began with having many webpages open
| at once, and firefox, and then later internet explorer with
| version 7 (or maybe 6?), introduced tabs as a core part of
| using a web browser.
|
| When I'm using a tiling window manager that supports tab-style
| layouts (i3, sway, gnome+popOS) applications that open new
| windows liberally are great because the alternative is to have
| an ad hoc bespoke window manager inside every application, and
| it's much better to have a single consistent window management
| experience at the OS level with one set of keybondings and
| predictable behavior.
|
| But if I had to have a floating window for every webpage I have
| open, I'd never find anything!
| whartung wrote:
| I honestly don't know how someone could do much of anything in
| a "single window" on a 27" iMac screen. (Anything beyond, say,
| watching a movie or the like.)
|
| On a laptop, sure, to a point. But these drive in theater style
| displays? Not quite sure how that works. Maybe it's great for
| video editing, but the screen is so large, and the eye can
| really focus on just a small portion of it, just seems like a
| lot of wasted space.
|
| For example, I have this in a browser window, on my 27", with
| the text box, at, say, 6" wide by 2" tall, is roughly centered
| on the screen, about 30% down. The unexpanded text area has,
| I'd say, 6" of "margin" on the top, 8-10" on each side, and
| similar amount to the bottom. (Arguably it's a bit too hight
| right now for me.)
|
| Not the window, mind, the text entry box (which could be
| expanded, but I don't). So, I'm easily "wasting" over 90% of my
| display right now. If it was "full screen", it would be crammed
| in the upper left corner. I'd either have to chronically cock
| my head, of simply shift the entire display over to put it in a
| comfortable position.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| This is usually where I reference the idea of toolkits taking
| to each other as pioneered during the Smalltalk era:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s
|
| See also 'toolkits, not apps' tweet by Bret Victor :
| https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I assume there's a thread there that elaborates? Can't see
| threads anymore if you're logged out of Twitter/echs.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new
| windows in seemingly arbitrary positions
|
| Not all tiling WMs are dynamic. Static tiling WMs exist and they
| give you both more control and more predictable behaviour. Don't
| want automatic placement and windows jumping around randomly each
| time you open/close something? Don't use a window manager which
| was designed to do exactly that.
| graypegg wrote:
| I actually like the ideas they have here! It feels inspired by
| the best parts of macOS, Windows, and tiling window managers,
| while actually being pretty novel IMO.
|
| However, I actually like the "overlapping sheets on a desktop"
| metaphor because it's still pretty "task" based. Their example is
| a little contrived, having a lot of small unrelated windows
| smushed into the middle of the screen is rare I think. At least
| for me. A more common example I think might be:
|
| You're in a web browser full screen, and then you need to drag
| and drop a file into a site, so you open finder/explorer. That
| appears overtop of the browser. Then maybe you realize you want
| to remove some metadata from the file you need to upload, so you
| go into that file's preferences pane, which is a whole new
| "sheet" on your desktop.
|
| At any point, you can dig up the browser, since it still occupies
| a lot of the screen. Effectively it's a branching undo tree.
| Since you connect all of these apps together manually (opening,
| clicking, dragging, sharing in MacOS), you're free to go and
| fiddle with things that are going to be accepting something else
| from another window.
|
| The thing I think is missing from that metaphor is that it's
| really hard to get back to what you were doing if you break that
| undo tree. You click the browser, but now all of your other
| windows are behind, and the whole stack won't come back at once.
|
| If windows recovered in the stack they were opened in when you
| focus them, (in my contrived example, you refocus the file
| preferences window, OR maybe there's some gesture/keycombo to
| return to the last focus state) I think that'd make a pretty
| measurable effect on my window organization annoyances.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Love to see this amount of thought being put into something that
| nearly everyone encounters on a day to day basis.
|
| I greatly miss using tiling window managers, like i3, but I don't
| miss having to fiddle with all the little temperamental settings
| to do things as common as set up my wifi.
|
| Having something like this as a default would be a great middle
| ground.
| polyamid23 wrote:
| If you use gnome, I can recommend Pop-Shell
|
| https://github.com/pop-os/shell
| zwayhowder wrote:
| On my desktop I just run i3 because I have no need for the
| regular fiddling around. On my laptop(s) I run KDE with i3.
| That to me is the best of both worlds. Easy wifi config and
| automatic setup of HDMI devices, but tiles, tiles as far as I
| want :)
| tsuujin wrote:
| I can't seem to view the videos embedded in the article on iOS,
| which is disappointing because I really want to see that mosaic
| mode.
| tpush wrote:
| That's on Apple for not supporting WebM in Safari.
| jwells89 wrote:
| As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it
| handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that
| was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the
| blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often, but when
| I do I don't usually want the window to be spirited away to its
| own separate universe, and the apps that actually _need_
| fullscreen implement that functionality independent of the window
| manager.
|
| It's interesting they're considering implementing a way for apps
| to signal to the window manager the size it prefers for its
| windows. This has been a concept on OS X since 10.0, though it's
| only ever been used by the OS figuring out what size to zoom
| to/from when the user clicks the green zoom button. If this
| feature makes the cut it I'll be curious to see what other uses
| they find for it.
|
| One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments
| are 2D grid virtual desktops. OS X 10.5/10.6 had what I'd
| consider the best implementation of the idea and I loved it. It
| leveraged spatial memory much better than the linear layouts
| popular these days, especially with short smooth animations to
| make movements between desktops more concrete mentally. 2D grid
| virtual desktops can still be found in more "old school" type DEs
| like XFCE but the level of polish isn't comparable.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how
| it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode
| that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned
| in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often
|
| As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't
| live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in
| fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just normally and
| without useless decorations like a titlebar.
|
| I love the new UI that started on Windows, where Edge doesn't
| lose a full line to a useless titlebar and close button:
| instead, there's a X at the top right.
|
| You'll wonder, but what if I need to resize the window or move
| it? But as I run my windows in fullscreen mode, I don't need to
| do that: if I want to start a terminal, it's started on another
| "virtual desktop" where it'll also be run in fullscreen mode
|
| Someone else said they thought "tabs on browsers were invented
| because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with
| a decent solution" - I don't want a decent solution!
|
| I'd rather have edge offer me vertical tabs with icons, wezterm
| offer horizontal tabs with ascii text and so on - more room for
| content! And no tabs when there's only 1 opened tab, and
| ideally, no space lost for the scrollbar either: unless I'm
| actively scrolling, I don't need to see it.
|
| > One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop
| environments are 2D grid
|
| It's too complicated: just give me a line, with numbers from
| say 1 to 9 like the numbers on my keyboard: if I press Win + 1,
| take me to that desktop. If I'm already there and the app I
| pinned to that desktop isn't there, start it.
|
| > the level of polish isn't comparable
|
| Try hyprland with Arch: before I did, I thought I hated Linux,
| turns out I just hated Gnome and Ubuntu.
| dfc wrote:
| Hyprland looks neat. I was expecting to see a FAQ entry
| comparing/contrasting to sway. What made you choose hyprland
| over sway?
| csdvrx wrote:
| > What made you choose hyprland over sway?
|
| The number of people talking about how great it was, while
| it's much more recent that sway: it was too high to just be
| by chance.
|
| Eyecandy is important, and so is flexibility: check
| https://github.com/end-4/dots-hyprland and you'll see very
| different styles made from the same hyprland that I use in
| "each window is fullscreen" mode.
|
| But to stay with a desktop, you've got to integrate it to
| your workflow, and what made me stick to hyprland is that
| it's possible to define a keyboard oriented workflow, like
| I had on Windows
| znpy wrote:
| > the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is
| identical
|
| after being given a macbook pro for work, i can't stop thinking
| that gnome developers/designers people are just people that
| didn't manage to get hired by Apple, and just keep copying mac
| os over and over again.
| snide wrote:
| For Gnome users, I really enjoy using Pop Shell (the window
| manager from Pop OS) as a tiling window manager. It doesn't
| exactly solve the problems with TWMs that this post discusses,
| but I often run into folks who don't know that you can use a lot
| of the bits from Pop OS in generic Gnome.
|
| I made a video about how to set it up if anyone is curious. The
| series was aimed at beginners, so feel to hop around if you just
| want to see what it looks like.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoG0AsS6oPo
| pushfoo wrote:
| For any readers who can't watch a video at the moment:
|
| 1. To be precise, Pop Shell is an extension for Gnome, not a
| separate window manager 2. It's available pre-packaged on
| Fedora, Arch, and Manjaro 3. It's easy to install from source
| on other distros
|
| Install instructions & source available here: 1.
| https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/ 2.
| https://github.com/pop-os/shell
|
| I use it as a daily driver on Debian 11. It's the best balance
| of tiling and "normal" desktop UI I've found so far.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I found the Forge plugin on GNOME Extensions to be a much
| better solution.
|
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
| [deleted]
| goosedragons wrote:
| Maximizing windows in their own workspace is annoying and one of
| the worst parts of macOS window management. I really hope they
| don't bother with that. Just because I want a maximized window
| doesn't mean I want it in it's own workspace. It just makes
| dealing with windows harder because you now have to move to some
| other workspace to grab a window you want to reference first.
| dabber21 wrote:
| I'm probably in the minority here, but I like that behavior
| plorkyeran wrote:
| I like it on smaller laptops and despise it with large
| external monitors.
| ecliptik wrote:
| I ended up using Moom [1] to work around some of the oddities
| of macOS window management. It's relatively low-feature, mostly
| for window arrangements and sizing. I use it on a vertical
| monitor to split window placement horizontally, since macOS can
| only natively do vertical splits.
|
| It has other features too (like saving layouts and keyboard
| shortcuts), but I don't use them that much.
|
| 1. https://manytricks.com/moom/
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| One of the things I like about Windows 11 is when you tile 2
| windows, they form a group in the alt-tab menu. That way you
| can keep using your regular workflow with the group without the
| need for another workspace.
| asoneth wrote:
| Personally I find switching between workspaces annoying, but
| not particularly more or less annoying than switching between
| maximized windows on Windows. So I am curious what you
| specifically find annoying about treating maximized windows as
| workspaces.
|
| (Also, note that you can hold the Option key and click on the
| green plus in the upper-left corner you will get the standard
| Windows maximize behavior, which macOS calls "Zoom". Even
| better, you can go to System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Double
| click a window's title bar to... and select "Zoom" to make this
| action even easier.)
| pxc wrote:
| > you will get the standard Windows maximize behavior, which
| macOS calls "Zoom".
|
| No, no you won't. Because 'zoom' is not equivalent to
| maximization. It means something like 'make this window as
| big as the current contents it has open for viewing in each
| dimension, unless that's too big (and then just maximize it
| in that direction)'.
|
| Additionally it's just window resizing, not a window _state_.
| Which means that when you move the window again, it stays
| huge-- so part of it must be offscreen-- instead of snapping
| back to a reasonable unmaximized size.
|
| > So I am curious what you specifically find annoying about
| treating maximized windows as workspaces.
|
| I'm not GP, but - there's a big, stupid, slow
| animation that must play every time you switch between
| workspaces - you cannot float windows from other
| applications over a fullscreen window
|
| It adds unnecessary delays and distractions any time you want
| to use a different application on that screen, and it doesn't
| let you multitask on that screen.
| asoneth wrote:
| > 'zoom' is not equivalent to maximization
|
| Interesting, I tried a few windows that I don't normally
| "zoom" and you are right. I suppose prior to this I only
| ever attempted to perform this action on
| browser/document/messaging/media windows that are able to
| be fully maximized.
|
| > there's a big, stupid, slow animation that must play
| every time you switch between workspaces
|
| I wondered how I never noticed this, and it looks like I
| had Accessibility > Display > Reduce Motion enabled.
|
| > you cannot float windows from other applications over a
| fullscreen window
|
| Agreed, I found it handy the first time I discovered I
| could move a floating window over a maximized window in
| Windows, but I've also noticed that I let my windows become
| a lot more disorganized when I'm using Windows. I'm not
| saying they're related, it may be that I just don't have
| enough Windows experience, but I do find that I end up
| keeping my workspace a bit tidier on macOS or a tiling WM.
| em-bee wrote:
| _I find switching between workspaces annoying, but not
| particularly more or less annoying than switching between
| maximized windows on Windows_
|
| that's not the problem (for me at least). i have both
| workspaces and multiple maximized windows on some of those
| workspaces. each workspace is dedicated to a task. all
| windows related to that task, maximized or not, are together
| on one workspace. pushing maximized windows to their own
| workspace breaks that. gnome currently behaves as expected,
| on macos i work around by resizing the window to fill size
| without using the maximize function. if each fullscreen
| window had their own space the number of work spaces would
| double, and they would not be in the order that i want them.
| asoneth wrote:
| That makes sense to me. If you have a specific use for each
| workspace then I see how reordering them willy-nilly would
| be problematic and break muscle memory.
|
| I have a multi-monitor setup and I often find myself using
| particular monitors for particular applications. I would be
| annoyed if the operating system decided to start
| reorganizing them.
| em-bee wrote:
| absolutely. i configured a fixed number of workspaces
| too, because the dynamic one were more work to set up
| each time. but either way, everytime the monitor
| arrangement changes, windows jump around to different
| workspaces, or all workspaces get merged into one. it
| drives me nuts!
|
| and it's not just muscle memory. it takes longer when you
| have twice as many workspaces in a row. if they would
| arrange in columns, say workspaces are arranged
| horizontally, but fullscreen windows are stacked
| vertically on top or below the workspace they were
| created from, i could work with that. just not the way
| macos is doing it, adding them to the end of the
| horizontal workspace list.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| When workspaces are finite and defined one can simply bind
| hotkeys to switch to a particular workspace and tend to put
| the same things in the same workspace. EG your main browser
| window is in workspace 9 full screen on your monitor and you
| can switch to it immediately with super+9
|
| Switching between windows in a unknown workspace arrangement
| is more effort because you are triggering an action, possibly
| by taking your hands off the keyboard, grabbing your mouse,
| moving it somewhere, clicking on something, hunting for the
| desired item, selecting it. This seems trivial but you are
| performing the same actually constantly.
| dbtc wrote:
| I like vlc, mpv, and alacritty because they can fullscreen
| without making a new 'workspace'. Haven't figured it out for
| emacs yet.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| +1. This behavior is really confusing if you expect a
| particular window (typically a browser) to be on a particular
| workspace (I have keyboard shortcuts for the first 4
| workspaces) and then it ends up off the end of the list because
| you happen to have been watching some content maximized.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Logged in just to say this is probably one of the _only_ things
| I prefer about macOS window management, if you are reading this
| Apple UX team please don't take it away!
| stouset wrote:
| If you option-click the green button or double-click the window
| handle, it expands a window to fill the screen without making
| it full-screen on its own space.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's better than full screen, but it's not _real_ maximised.
| In particular if you drag the right edge of the screen it
| will resize the window rather than moving the scrollbar.
|
| Honestly Windows has basically nailed window management
| (earning its name I guess). Mac is much worse and Gnome is a
| little worse.
| Steltek wrote:
| macOS manages _apps_ not _windows_. macOS (or iOS) is the last
| place to look for insights into window management because it's
| not even speaking the same language.
|
| GNOME made this mistake a long time ago, trying to cargo cult
| (orig. definition) design their window management tools.
| rollcat wrote:
| macOS manages _both_ apps and windows. A lot of the things it
| does do make sense if you follow the original paradigm from
| the ground up. Unfortunately, most platforms copying ideas
| from macOS only do so from the surface, and the effect
| usually ends up half-assed.
|
| Want a good idea to copy?
|
| Ctrl-C in the terminal should copy text when something is
| selected, and send interrupt otherwise. In the macOS
| Terminal, you can rebind Copy from Cmd-C to Ctrl-C; when you
| do so, this is what happens. I will pledge my unending
| loyalty to the first terminal emulator on X11/Wayland that
| can implement this - I've tried over a dozen and none of them
| do.
| [deleted]
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Since there's going to be a lot of tiling WM users looking:
| what's the best way to get tiling WM and all the convenience of a
| "full blown WM like Gnome": things like Network Manager applet,
| bluetooth control, audio etc. all just few clicks away.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I use Forge, it works really well most of the time.
|
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
| Nullabillity wrote:
| At least KDE (not sure about other DEs but I'd assume most
| except GNOME) supports EWMH, which lets its widgets control
| with any compliant window manager. Xmonad has a wiki page on
| this.[0]
|
| One gotcha is that many full DEs use compositing window
| managers, which tilers usually don't. You can get around this
| by running a standalone compositor (such as picom).
|
| [0]: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE
| greggyb wrote:
| XFCE is super modular. You can turn off individual components.
| You can enable any program to start with the XFCE session.
|
| So, for example, disable xfdesktop and xfwm; enable other
| window manager of your choice. Then, when you run xfce4-session
| via any mechanism you get all of XFCE, but with another window
| manager. You can pull up xfce4-settings manager to handle all
| system settings as you would in any other XFCE session.
|
| I am pretty sure that LXDE/LXQT allows this sort of modularity
| as well. I have no clue about KDE and Gnome.
|
| Of particular note, you can combine XFCE's panel applet with a
| tiling window manager. So then you can keep an application menu
| and notification area (with associated notification settings)
| from XFCE with an arbitrary window manager.
| wesapien wrote:
| I did this. Xfce and Bspwm along with Sxhkd works well.
| raccolta wrote:
| pop-shell (can be used as an extension to gnome shell on most
| distros) has a toggle for tiling windows. Otherwise it's all
| the Gnome DE.
| yepguy wrote:
| I'm using xmonad inside of KDE Plasma.
|
| It's not flawless. I had to patch plasma-desktop to get it to
| work at all, and there are still some bugs around widgets and
| toolbars I haven't found a solution for. But I'm still pretty
| happy with it. I have window animations with picom, and even
| window decorations that blend in pretty well, such that a
| casual observer probably wouldn't even notice that I replaced
| the window manager.
|
| I'm pretty pumped that both Plasma and GNOME are now working on
| better tiling support by default. Maybe in a year I'll be back
| to using kwin or GNOME Shell.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Seeing how well Gnome has rethought window management in the
| past, I will take a hard pass. All the thought is not helping.
| abwtr wrote:
| If this can be driven entirely from the keyboard I might enjoy
| this a lot!
| markstos wrote:
| I use Sway, a tiling window manager, so the direction towards
| tiling seems sensible to me.
|
| If Gnome implements this well enough, I might consider switching
| back it from Sway. We'll see. I'm pretty pleased with Sway,
| though.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nirui wrote:
| > Overlapping windows can get messy quickly
|
| Yeah dude... that's one reason why the Minimize button exists on
| Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature
| exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you
| know it's too important to...say...been removed (from default
| setting)?
|
| Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also
| important... It's so important that on SOME desktop environment
| that don't support such feature, one of it's most popular plugin
| is designed to restore the functionality so the users can
| actually enjoy the DE instead of fighting it.
| phkahler wrote:
| I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm
| not sure why.
|
| 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back
| when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility,
| under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not
| right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM
| to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.
|
| 2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt.
| Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which
| don't really need other layout methods anyway.
|
| 3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present. I also don't
| want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that
| panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
|
| I do like the idea they mention of a maximum sensible size for an
| app. That could be useful regardless of all the other stuff.
|
| I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop
| environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution
| for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect
| there is more that could be done.
| pmontra wrote:
| There are extensions to disable any kind of animation. I use
| the Windows key to open the app list/search and hot keys to
| move between virtual desktops (activities, but I use the la
| name). Nothing moves and resizes on my desktop.
| jancsika wrote:
| > I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop
| environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution
| for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I
| suspect there is more that could be done.
|
| Alternatively, I would love a window manager that is just a
| maximized Firefox patched to display all native apps inside
| browser tabs. :)
| garou wrote:
| Sway (i3) can stack any program as tabs.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows,
| which don't really need other layout methods anyway.
|
| Strong disagree here. I use a 38" Ultrawide and I have 10
| workspaces open at the moment. All of them dedicated to a
| single in-flight task.
|
| If a workspace is a desktop multiple workspaces is a workshop.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Pop Shell has solved the problem, please don't rethink too much.
| and0 wrote:
| I like the idea of an initiative for applications to provide
| metadata for any window manager to handle them more
| intelligently. Letting the user quickly fill in the gaps in the
| meantime for local applications would also be nice.
|
| I've played with super detailed Unux WMs (bspwm?) and I've also
| started using Powertoys FancyZones on Windows and in both cases
| it's a lot of setup that only works ideally for rather specific
| situations.
| dugmartin wrote:
| I've been using i3 (within the larger Regolith package) for a few
| years now and its hard for me to non-tiling WMs now. However I do
| think there would be a lot of improvements, especially with large
| desktop monitors.
|
| One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a
| single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows
| around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy (https
| ://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/21720091...).
| Selecting windows would swap out the main window with the scaled
| version on the border. This would give you the ability to focus
| on one window that is always centered while seeing scaled
| versions of all the other window's output.
|
| Maybe this has already been done?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The centeredmaster patch for dwm works roughly like that - the
| master window(s) is in the center of the screen and the rest is
| stacked on the left and right.
| kergonath wrote:
| This sounds a bit like the Stage Manager thing in newer macOS
| versions. Except that they do this with groups which can have
| more than one window.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That sounds like how dwm tiles windows
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Dynamic tiling window managers like dwm and xmonad can do this.
| They default to a 'master/stack' layout but you can change the
| layout algorithm. You esentially have a 'master' window and a
| stack of secondary windows. You can promote a window with
| super+enter and it gets swapped into the master area.
|
| There are some autotiling scripts for i3 that can emulate this
| behavior as well.
| yakubin wrote:
| AwesomeWM as well. It allows you to write your own tiling
| algorithms in Lua.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| I thought that xmonad just changed the windows dimensions and
| location for most of the layout configurations, can it change
| scale of the windows as well?
| wang_li wrote:
| Many years ago, 1982, there was an applie ii video game named
| Dung Beetles. It was a pac man style dot chomper in a maze.
| Except the maze was quite large and the area around the player
| was viewed as if through a magnifying glass. I would find it
| interesting -- but probably unworkable -- if my virtual desktop
| were 5x and any window not focused were small and when focused
| it blows up to normal size. With some options of being able to
| make windows stay large when not focused and etc.
| k4rli wrote:
| Pretty sure it's doable with i3 although needs some tinkering.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Clearly I am a very simple person, and I don't get all these
| window management wars.
|
| Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two
| windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed
| floating on top of another.
|
| Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top
| in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn't as nicely
| integrated.
|
| What is everyone doing that needs something else?
| ur-whale wrote:
| > What is everyone doing that needs something else?
|
| You omitted to explain what you do for a living.
|
| I write code for a living, and what you describe simply doesn't
| work for me given the many different things I need to look at
| and refer to in parallel (without having to perform a hard
| context switch such as moving to another workspace or un-
| maximizing a window) to be able to cobble together code that
| works.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Currently I work as a security architect. I have previously
| worked as a software developer, solution architect and
| systems administrator.
|
| I do like having more than one screen available. Having three
| is ideal but I mostly just have two. But I just maximise a
| window on each screen, or have two windows on one of the
| screens. No advanced window management needed!
| fatfingerd wrote:
| I find the trouble to be kitchen sink apps, IDEs in
| particular.
|
| For one task one window stuff it is easy to use full
| screen/half screen workspaces jumping about on 2 screens..
|
| For a kitchen sink app there's some invented tiling, and
| ever changing requirements of what sub windows to fit, and
| they usually add some blocking float windows that need data
| I would copy paste from the main window..
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Some people like beer, some people like wine, some people like
| sugary drinks. Why don't people just drink water?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I'm not saying that everyone should be like me. I am
| genuinely asking what the use cases are for something else.
| nektro wrote:
| yeah same, i3 does this for me perfectly. the only nit i would
| give it is that i wish the list of window tiles made it a
| little more apparent the borders, like including app icons or
| something like that
| NotEvil wrote:
| There was an extension fir it. In polybar i think. Hyrlsnd-
| autoname is one for hyprland
| uhmyeh wrote:
| [flagged]
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Here are some sample workflows where I have a bunch of
| different windows open. But I also have three screens (38"
| ultrawide - so I have close to 180* of screen around me).
|
| * Full stack dev. One window for backend code (sub-tiled into
| two or three editor windows). One window for terminal (subtiled
| into two or three consoles). One window for Sublime with
| various notes and configs. One window for front-end code. And a
| bunch of minimized windows for docker desktop, file managers,
| Chrome, etc etc.
|
| * 3D graphics. One window (sub-tiled into a couple of views)
| for 3D viewing and editing. One window for reference materials
| and textures. One window for render output.
|
| * Scientific compute. A window with PDFs; window with Chrome
| with towardsdatascience / kaggle / stackoverflow; window
| subtiled into several ipynb (editor) views. Maybe some more
| diagrams / graphs / etc for a good measure.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yes, I also like having multiple screens. But window
| management isn't an issue. Just maximise a window on each
| screen, or have two on one screen.
| uneekname wrote:
| I'm really excited about this. Gnome already fits my needs
| nicely, but the changes this article suggests would make the
| experience even smoother. A lot of the comments here seem to be
| from people who don't prefer Gnome in the first place.
| formulathree wrote:
| Buy ultrawide. Then tiling works without screwing over aspect
| ratio. It's a real estate issue. (5120 x 1440))
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I get that treating overlapping windows as bad might sometimes be
| a thing. Trying to juggle getting sufficient data to do the job
| in screen can be a bit of a chore.
|
| But personally I quite enjoy overlapped windows. Even when using
| a tiling window manager, I rely on stacked view a lot, where only
| one window of the stack is visible at a time. I need effective
| fast navigation across apps, not the simultaneous use/view of
| all.
|
| I feel like Gnome often decides to pick goals that it says are
| user friendly, but which refuse to see the utility of the
| established alternatives. Making a big choice here feels like
| it's based entirely around a single argument that I fundamentally
| don't think is valid, in many cases.
|
| I also worry that they are building a three mode system, and that
| it's unclear how if at all the various modes will blend. If there
| is a unified approach where standard/tiling/mosaic can coexist my
| concern is significantly lessened, but I'm not sure what that
| would look like, how mosaic would interact with standard.
| mulmen wrote:
| I understand the desire to make changes, especially from people
| so close to a project. But as a user it is painful. If I could
| think of any positive changes in the last 20 years maybe I would
| have a different reaction. But I can't so I don't.
|
| Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been
| incredibly frustrating. I have an uncomfortable visceral reaction
| to even seeing a Gnome desktop.
|
| But bad design isn't unique to Gnome. In the modern world we love
| data, but I think we are bad at collecting what matters. The
| number of times I say "fuck you" out loud to my iPhone in a day
| is non-zero. A good designer _should_ care when that happens.
|
| So, sure, move my windows around without asking. Continue with
| your misguided belief that you know better than me what I want.
| But give me a big red "fuck you" button to click when you get it
| wrong.
| generalizations wrote:
| With a bit more work to not surprise the user and not break the
| window organization (e.g. the user really wanted these two
| windows next to each other), this mosaic paradigm could actually
| be really cool. Looking forward to see how it develops. If the
| kinks are worked out I may very well switch over from i3.
|
| > As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to
| make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn't fit (e.g.
| because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace.
| If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the
| windows are automatically tiled.
|
| I can see this part being really cool, when the user doesn't care
| about the layout, and really, really, annoying when the user does
| care.
|
| Side note: the article should really have made a comparison
| between a tiling wm like i3 and this new mosaic concept, not
| between gnome tiling and mosaic...i3 is still way better and
| they'd do well to compare to the actual 'state of the art'.
| [deleted]
| kaetemi wrote:
| That mosaic concept sounds terrible. All the windows moving
| whenever a new window opens? That just sounds very annoying and
| very bad for my spatial memory.
|
| Things should just stay where I left them.
| mulmen wrote:
| Imagine a desk in a windy park. Maybe the next innovation from
| the Gnome devs can be a "paperweight" you can drag onto your
| windows to keep them from blowing away.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Can someone please make a window manager that fits linux? Flat,
| no animations, super performant, no rounded corners, no shading,
| pixelated icons. Never understood how all the linux desktops are
| so ugly and laggy
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| https://dwm.suckless.org/
| akira2501 wrote:
| dwm is great. I took it and ripped all the tiling manager
| code out of it and turned it into a generic window manager.
| What has kept me using it all these years is the "window
| move" and "window resize" system that fell out of this
| change.
|
| Hold down ALT and CLICK1 on a window, _anywhere_ on that
| window, and you go into "window move" mode. No need to seek
| out the "titlebar", just click and move.
|
| Hold down ALT and CLICK3 on a window, _anywhere_ on that
| window, and you go into "window resize" mode. No need to seek
| out the "corner edge", just click and it resizes the window.
|
| With just that I can entirely rearrange my desktop with
| almost no effort and in very little time. It becomes second
| nature very quickly, and the need for "forced tiling"
| basically disappears. The problem with WMs isn't the layout
| strategy, it's the lack of user optimized layout controls.
|
| I've been using this hacked up WM for 15 years. I will use
| this until I'm dead. I have yet to find anything which I find
| superior.
| vially wrote:
| sway does all those things very well: https://swaywm.org/
| ignitionmonkey wrote:
| "Fits linux" is an odd statement. Most of the things you stated
| can be done by changing the theme of most desktop environments.
| For performance, I used LXQT recently to revive an old laptop,
| it's great. https://lubuntu.me/
| dmckeon wrote:
| The windowing UI/UX I wish for is to arrange a bunch of app's
| windows on my screen, then run some tool that notices what is
| running, where they all are, and what has input focus, and can
| save that state to be reinstantiated later.
|
| Think of how live stage theatre does set changes: there are tape
| marks on the stage floor showing where every object should go,
| and the crew just puts objects where the crew knows the objects
| belong, according to the marks. Yes, one could edit multiple
| fiddly ~/.{X,x}* files with X/Y sizes and positioning in arcane
| syntaxes. Is there no tool in the Gnome-everse that can handle
| this?
| dave7 wrote:
| Back in the day I had an Autohotkey script to do exactly this
| on Windows. Was very simple with the WinGet, list, WinGetPos
| and WinSetPos in loops with window title, x,y,w,h, persisted to
| a .ini file
|
| I wonder how you might do this on Gnome or KDE these days.
| fleg wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that this (and a little bit more) is already
| present in KDE and it's called Activities. It's not very
| popular, possibly because it's not "marketed" enough IMO.
| zgluck wrote:
| Not Gnome, but you're kind of describing the mac Stage Manager
| feature. It's quite nice with _most_ apps.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| They're overthinking this issue far too much. People actually
| like that windows disappear into the background, it emulates the
| idea of stacks of paper (very intuitive) and it allows you to
| both focus on the stuff that's currently important and with
| relative ease bring out windows from the background into view
| again, through the use of alt-tab or the super key. (or by
| clicking the little part of the background window still visible,
| as done by all beginner users of a window system, a very
| intuitive move)
|
| Call me a luddite but we don't need more innovation, just
| implementation.
|
| - Windows should be able to tile in corners for a 4 window equal
| size layout by default in gnome, you currently need a plugin for
| it.
|
| - A way to set up standard locations for windows, best managed in
| some kind of "work-profile"/"entertainment-profile" way, in a
| tileable-esque system. This is not something most people will
| use, but is very helpful for people who want to get back into the
| workflow of a relatively complex window layout. Say you use three
| screens, and have a editor, devtools, browser-production,
| browser-docs, and chat window or music player open. Getting these
| windows back into a standard location can be done with various
| secondary tools already, but it's never been implemented by an OS
| standard. Some applications with floating dockable windows
| already implement it for their floating windows, like Inkscape.
|
| And that's it. Bear in mind I really think that this is taking
| the window managment the last 10% of the way, it's fine as is.
| Not just fine, good and borderline great.
|
| >For a web browser that might be maximized, for a weather app
| maybe only 700x500 pixels
|
| Those examples of "mosaic" tiling reeks of theoretical idealism.
| Almost no applications work in an area as small as what, 17% of
| total screen estate. Taking a weather app as an example is close
| to disingenous, that's the definition of an outlier regarding
| small windows. A common "small" window is something like a file
| manager or a OS settings page, and those arguably take up __at
| least__ 35% of screen real estate to work well, and are more
| commonly given a whole 50%. (half-side view)
|
| Their demonstration goes on to demonstrate them opening 3
| different weather apps and having them move around in the mosaic,
| like the demonstration shows a groundbreaking new way to manage
| what, weather apps? Completely disregarding the fact that a
| weather app is opened, read, and then closed. You dont' monitor
| the situation of the weather in your anyones workflow.
|
| Now there are users who use very complex window layouts of very
| small windows, like some people working in sound production, but
| they don't want their windows to magically just shuffle around
| the center of the screen, they want the "open this window in this
| standard location/size every time im in work-profile mode".
| galkk wrote:
| Not sure how to feel about more windows, but the idea that first
| window shouldn't take all space is certainly good. If someone
| will come up with better intelligent control over that placement,
| that will take into account actual windows length (who knows,
| maybe even ML for learning typical window sizes used by an
| operator) that will be a killer feature.
|
| Default sizing is one of my pet peeves with i3, even if it is the
| whole idea of tiling managers. You open first window and it takes
| entire screen space, meaning that with 32" screen (and even 27"),
| you need to look to the far left side for actual task (e.g. if it
| is a terminal, or code editor with column limit of 80 chars,
| dictated by code style). Then you open another window and you
| look straight into border between those 2 windows - your app
| isn't centered. etc etc
|
| I have small bind in i3 that helps a bit, but it works only with
| one window smart_gaps inverse_outer
| bindsym $mod+g exec "i3-msg gaps horizontal current toggle 900"
| okasaki wrote:
| [flagged]
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The problem with this fairly complex solution is that the
| easier path by far is simpler window arrangements, multiple
| monitors, and many workspaces. Once you have more windows than
| fit on a workspace its easier just to have more workspaces and
| 1-3 windows is what basically universally fits on most
| monitors.
|
| If you organize more things in the same space you probably need
| indivdual apps that themselves have tabs like browsers,
| editors, IDEs rather than more windows.
|
| Personally I use https://github.com/chmln/i3-auto-layout to
| make slightly better layouts automatically be automatically
| alternating between v and h splits and find this fits my needs
| 95% of the time.
|
| Shit work under i3 is already very small but if you wanted to
| reduce it further I think you could probably go a long way with
| a very simple feature.
|
| Add a save button that saves current layout to a list like so
|
| Browser, calculator
|
| Browser, pdf reader
|
| terminal terminal terminal
|
| ide terminal terminal
|
| Then have a restore function that simply walks the list finds
| the entry that matches the kind and number of window and shoves
| existing windows into that layout. You can at creation time use
| something like i3-save-tree, edit the json, yada yada but its
| all fairly manual and I think for the use case it would be
| relatively simpler. The few non standard all match for me a
| simple pattern eg there really isn't 2 different ways I want
| IDE terminal terminal
| jwells89 wrote:
| In my experience it depends on the user's workflow and
| preferences. Whenever I'm using a tiling-first desktop I find
| myself micromanaging my windows a lot more because inevitably,
| some windows tile in a way that's not usable or limits
| usability. It feels like I'm fighting it constantly, and the
| only way to fix it is to opt out of tiling, at which point I
| have to wonder why I'm using a tiling WM.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Exactly. I have dozens of different ways I like to organize
| my windows, depending on which task I'm doing or what I need
| to focus on.
|
| The best I could manage so far with GNOME was the gSnap
| extension but it's still work and I've just noticed I've
| switched back to no tiling for a few days now.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but please don't fulminate or call names on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Shorel wrote:
| Gnome doesn't even have functional drag and drop for files
| between two of their file windows. Every time I need to do that
| I end up selecting a lot of files, because that's the only
| thing that can be done with the mouse.
|
| Then I use Double Commander or something similar to do the
| work.
|
| If they can't get the basics right, what can we expect about
| more complex stuff like tilling?
| browningstreet wrote:
| All of my windows are set up in a stair-stepping manner, meaning
| the window in the lower left corner is the smallest, and all
| windows step up towards the upper right. I can see all my browser
| tabs (I have a work browser and a personal browser) plus note
| taking plus... I don't really expect any app to ever make this
| happen for me, alas.
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