GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 335654
Alphabetical window list order when grouping is confusing
Last modified: 2006-03-25 16:16:06 UTC
Please describe the problem: If the windows list applet is set to group windows, it sorts the windows in alphabetical order according to the window title. This can be confusing because the user can't figure the position of window without reading the whole list. Steps to reproduce: 1. Open a web browser window(Firefox, Epiphany, any). Let's call this window W1. 2. From W1 open a link in a new window. You will get window W2. 3. Back to W1, open another link in a new window, to get window W3 Actual results: The actual order in the window list depends on the windows' titles, which can't always be figured by the user. Expected results: I'd expect the windows to be ordered according to opening order: W1 on top, then W2, then W3. This was the behaviour in Gnome 2.10. Does this happen every time? every time Other information: The problem is even worse if two or more windows have the same title: those windows would be sorted according to opening order, while other windows would still be sorted alphabetically. My suggestion is to revert to the 2.10 behaviour.
See bug 171804 for the original bug. I believe the alphabetical sort is better, but I can't really explain why. Elijah, what do you think about this?
To be honest, I think grouping is insanely stupid due to being inherently buggy and unfixable, making this question almost irrelevant...if only we could nuke that entire feature. I don't think alphabetical sorting is optimal for this case, but nor is mapping order. I think this is just another case where we're forced to pick our poison. I don't use grouping but I think Peter's comments in bug 171804 seem to make sense as to which poison to pick.
(In reply to comment #2) > To be honest, I think grouping is insanely stupid due to being inherently buggy > and unfixable, making this question almost irrelevant...if only we could nuke > that entire feature. I love your optimism :-) Giovanni, I'm sorry but the consensus is that the current sorting is the best (or the "less worse"...) option right now. There might be another scheme that we didn't think about, though...
(In reply to comment #3) > Giovanni, I'm sorry but the consensus is that the current sorting is the best > (or the "less worse"...) option right now. There might be another scheme that > we didn't think about, though... > Ok. But can I just point out that other gnome apps behave differently? gedit, gnome-terminal, epiphany all list tabs by mapping order in their Tabs menu, unless the user explicitly moves the tabs around. Doens't having the windows list sort windows alphabetically violate the principle of minimum surprise?