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Bug 300631 - Option to list windows in most-recently-brought-to-front order in Window Selector
Option to list windows in most-recently-brought-to-front order in Window Sele...
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: libwnck
Classification: Core
Component: selector
2.8.x
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: libwnck maintainers
libwnck maintainers
: 339547 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-04-14 16:14 UTC by Seb Wills
Modified: 2018-01-24 13:27 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: Unversioned Enhancement



Description Seb Wills 2005-04-14 16:14:04 UTC
I'm sure there's some sensible logic to the order that windows are shown in the
Window Selector menu, however I think it might be more useful if the menu was
sorted in order of "how recently the window was last brought to the front". That
way you know immediately that things near the top of the menu are the windows
you've recently been using, and the ones lower down are things you've had around
for ages and not used.

Most of the time people are probably wanting to choose a window they used
relatively recently. With this feature, they would know it will be listed near
the top of the menu and would be able to find it quicker.

No doubt some people wouldn't want this behaviour (and I can see there is merit
an alternative algorithm which attempts to keep windows at the same position in
the menu throughout a session, so you learn where they are). In this case,
perhaps Window Selector could be given a Preferences dialog where you can choose
what ordering to use?
Comment 1 Stefan W 2005-11-09 19:47:22 UTC
If such an ordering were implemented, could it also be reversed when the Window
Selector applet is on a panel at the bottom of the screen?  The idea being to
place the most-recently-raised windows closest to the mouse pointer.  I've no
idea what's best for vertical panels, except that arbitrary and consistent is
better than overly clever and mysteriously surprising.

Listing windows in the current stack order (minimized windows at the end) might
also appeal to some people.
Comment 2 Vincent Untz 2005-12-31 11:17:43 UTC
Reassigning.
Comment 3 Chris Koresko 2006-09-01 20:15:01 UTC
I agree with the first poster that it would be useful to have options for choosing the sorting order of windows in the Window Selector.  As it is, the list seems to get re-ordered frequently in a non-obvious way, making it hard to find particular windows, especially when the list is long and there are several identical entries (e.g., four or five named "Terminal").  Off the top of my head, I can think of several useful options:

  * Fixed: Put newly-created windows at the bottom of the list, and never re-order the list.  This way you learn over time where the windows appear on the list, so it gets easier to find them.

  * Recently-used First: As the first poster suggested, sort the list in order of the time since the window last had focus.  This one will have problems, though, in focus-follows-mouse mode.  You could work around that by sorting in order of the last time the windows got mouse clicks or keystrokes instead of simply focus.

  * Alphabetical by Title: This makes searching quick if you know the title of your window (some titles change frequently, though, like the one on Firefox).

  * Heirarchical: This one's my favorite.  Like the very nice windows menu in Sawfish, have submenus for each window type, e.g., my four Firefox windows go into one submenu, whose entries are the "page-specific" parts of the titlebar titles.  If you want to get fancy, make submenu entries for the individual tabs (for applications that support tabs; I'm not sure whether there is an easy way to do this, but it would be nice).

  * Grouped by Workspace: Optionally maintain a separate sub-list for each virtual desktop, with the above sorting options applied within the sub-lists.
Comment 4 Vincent Untz 2007-05-18 11:35:58 UTC
*** Bug 339547 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Elijah Newren 2007-05-18 13:28:52 UTC
See also bug 52225 comment 17, which is related but discusses this in the context of the tasklist rather than the selector.  Of course, the selector and tasklist may be different enough that the comments there don't carry over, but it might.  I figured it was at least worth mentioning as food for thought.  :)
Comment 6 Callum Macdonald 2007-09-05 14:58:03 UTC
I agree with comment 3, it would be useful to be able to choose the order. I personally think grouped by workspace would be the most useful, I think that's how users think about their desktops (it's certainly how I think about my desktop).

It would also be great to be able to manually re-order the Window List (not the menu, the list).
Comment 7 A.Pirard 2010-10-16 19:32:01 UTC
I think that, the goal being to access mostly recently used windows,
the *default* order should be :
- current desktop exterior (at the bottom for a bottom panel)
- LRU windows exterior (windows in stack position order)
Lazy default making an even better reputation of Window Selector.

It might also not group windows, but open a list of all the windows opened by the program the mouse lingers on.

See 339547 -300631 - 346308 - 408288 - ...
Comment 8 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-01-24 13:27:25 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libwnck/issues/46.