[Tfug] Speaking of desktops (little 'd')...

[Bexley Hall]

Hi, Tim,.

--- On Tue, 11/11/08, Tim Ottinger <tottinge at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't like the way windows will often start maximized,
> blotting out anything else you might be looking at.

Hmmm... I had assumed that was "state" information that the
application (or WM?) stored for each application.  I.e., if you
were last in this application and it was maximized, then when
you next invoke it, it should reapper as maximized. (?)

> I really am against "travel", where you have to
> find something with your eye, move the cursor to wherever it
> is, and click, then return the cursor and your eye to where
> it was.  Well, I recognize why it is sometimes right, but a
> seeky-clicky interface is awful.  I should be able to do
> what I want with very little travel.   This is why palm was
> a better PDA OS than Windows.  If there isn't too much
> travel, and the targets are either largish or configurable,
> I'm pretty happy.

But, isn't that also a consequence of the Palm's display being
smaller?  I.e., your eye can almost keep everything in its field
of vision (focused) with little/no movement?  Harder with a
large screen (at basically the SAME viewing distance that you would
hold a PDA!) 

I think anything that rrequires precise maneuvering/positioning
is A Bad Thing.  This is especially true as it limits the
interface's usefulness to folks with (various) disabilities.
And, its usually not necessary if the interface had been better
thought-out.

E.g., grabbing the frame on a window to resize it is annoying
as you want frames to be thin (to minimize on the space they
waste in the display) yet the thinner they are, the harder they 
are to access.

> When there has to be travel, it needs to be to a consistent
> place.  You should know where the popup or menu or dialog is
> going to be.  Surprises are bad.

Agreed..........^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
> My windows gripe is that everything cascades and cascades
> and cascades. As a python programmer, I think flatter spaces

Yes.  :<  I think the problem is most folks writing code
think hierarchically and impose that order on the interface.
Or, try to cram too much into the interface that could best
be handled elsewhere/otherwise.

> are better.  When I have cascading menues (esp like the new
> control panel) it bugs me.
> 
> In XFCE, my biggest hate is how you have to find the exe
> and the icon to add launchers to the panels.  Gnome did this
> well.  I shouldn't have to open a command line window to
> find out what to tell my gui.   I think a launcher-adder
> there would be a good idea.   Just dragging from menu to
> panel would help.

Windows-ish.
 
> I like menu bars in the window they apply to.    It's
> less travel, there's an happy designer in me when things
> that belong together are not seperated, especially when
> they're not parts of entirely different windows.  Call
> it taste.

So, you would dislike the old MacOS approach of putting the menubar
at the top of the screen for the "current application"?  Instead,
waste screen real estate by putting the menus for each window
(even though all but one of them are inactive at any given time)
*in* each window?

I found the MacOS approach disconcerting at first.  But, over time,
found that it made more sense to me (in that I knew where it would be
and that I knew it would *ALWAYS* be "wide enough" to display ALL
of the menu choices even if the application's window had been
resized to something very skinny!)