Programmer logic: "You are switching to something. You're switching to the same application."

I'm not sure this uncomfort is worth breaking the consistency. And I do think an empty rectangle is worse: an empty rectangle telegraphs "this is broken" to a lot of people.

Ok here comes my reply attempt:

I know that this is programmer logic showing, I'm a Gtk+ developer (that is, a guy who develops using Gtk+, but I've had already an odd patch here and there admitted to Gtk+ itself).

But, "See, this is just the programmer logic showing. The people will find out eventually what this means" isn't affordable in a world where most young people have a smartphone which, at least iOS, by which GNOME 3 and the platform certainly have been insipired, goes to great lengths not to have programmer logic showing.

A "broken image" Gtk+ icon communicates that something is broken. Please remember, something missing is a message in itself as well. Also I agree that we need to talk more or less thoroughly how exactly to change it. If people don't get the empty box, maybe they'll get it if we draw the box a bit contracted as to show "there's nothing in it". Still better, to me.

(Now I don't know whether this is good or bad for me that I post this, but here it comes)

I just went to look how Windows XP handles this, because honestly, I couldn't remember. It turns out that WinXP shows nothing at all if you use ALT+TAB with only 1 "tabable" window.

Now I'm not saying that we need to do things categorically as WinXP does it, but an OS which is in use by people worldwide for now almost 10 years, and which has seen 4 (or was it five?) Service Packs in its lifetime, would surely, if Microsoft had deemed their switcher behaviour a failure, seen an update in one of the first Service Packs, right?

I don't have a Windows7 system close by, so I can't check its behavior regarding the switcher, but for me the more important question is actually whether Win95,Win98 and Win2000 had the same behavior as WinXP already, and of course other platform (no Mac closeby, sorry, but perhaps someone else could check this on Win7, and aside from that, maybe on other mainstream platforms as well).

(In reply to comment #3)
> I don't have a Windows7 system close by, so I can't check its behavior
> regarding the switcher, but for me the more important question is actually
> whether Win95,Win98 and Win2000 had the same behavior as WinXP already, and of
> course other platform (no Mac closeby, sorry, but perhaps someone else could
> check this on Win7, and aside from that, maybe on other mainstream platforms as
> well).

Windows 7 has the desktop as an item you can switch to, which basically minimizes all windows.

There's another issue: the Alt-Tab switcher is grouped by applications, not windows. This means that if you have no other application open, but two windows of the same application, you wouldn't be able to switch windows with Alt-Tab (which would involve cursor or mouse navigation)

(In reply to comment #4)

> Windows 7 has the desktop as an item you can switch to, which basically
> minimizes all windows.

Does it also have that when all you do have "opened" *is* the desktop? Also, I remember this now, and it clearly shows that consistency is not always a straight line. It most definitely is not "We have to use the same function for this, whether it's 1 or 20 items". The Web 2.0 shot at this ("1 Minute","Many minutes","An hour","A day", etc.) is also a bit obscure, but what I'm trying to say here is -- I think -- please allow yourself to think a bit out of the box (or to make that box bigger -- one and the same thing really).

This function of Win7 with the desktop being an item you can switch to is not too bad of an example of extending semantics and yet still keeping them the same basically. "Catching up a tiny bit with reality", one could also say. Does Mac OS X allow with ALT+TAB to switch to the widget layer, in the same vein? (I don't recall right now.)
 
> There's another issue: the Alt-Tab switcher is grouped by applications, not
> windows. This means that if you have no other application open, but two windows
> of the same application, you wouldn't be able to switch windows with Alt-Tab
> (which would involve cursor or mouse navigation)

What is the problem? If there is only 1 window open in total, just either don't show anything at all (like Windows XP, even better than an empty rectangle), and if there is just one *application* open with multiple windows, show the 2nd window that appears in the ALT-TAB switcher directly.

You know, I was once working on a website (I'll try to keep it short...) which had a searchable document database in the backend, and as we were implementing a search feature, I plainly suggested to a colleague of mine "If there's just one result, why not make the search automatically take you there?" and we agreeed on it. Seems to me to be a similar case with the 2nd level in ALT+TAB.

Sorry for 2 comments in a row, I would like to add something: if you show the 2nd-level window of the switcher directly with just one app, it will make people notice the icon and name in the top panel even more, which is not a bad thing this being half-ways a novel type of display in GNOME.

(In reply to comment #5)
> What is the problem? If there is only 1 window open in total, just either don't
> show anything at all (like Windows XP, even better than an empty rectangle),
> and if there is just one *application* open with multiple windows, show the 2nd
> window that appears in the ALT-TAB switcher directly.

So, if you have one application with two windows and you press and release Alt-Tab currently, nothing happens, because you have no other application open to switch to.

While the switcher is open you can use the arrow keys or Alt-` to switch windows within the same application.

If I'm understanding you correctly, if I have one application with two windows open, pressing and releasing Alt-Tab shouldn't do anything (you're not switching applications), but pressing Alt-` or using the arrow keys shouldn't show the window you're currently using? That means that you can't navigate to the current window to "cancel" the switch.

Created attachment 197697 [details]
Mockup of proposed ALT+TAB functionality, Image #1 Wed 28th 2011

I'm sorry for not being clear enough.

What I meant is to show directly what you can see in the image attachment I just made. You skip the application icon completely when there is only ONE app (multiple windows [but just one app], are fine), and open the chooser between the ONE app's multiple windowss directly.

To compensate for the loss of the icon, a smaller one could be shown in the corner as I took the liberty to include in the screenshot.

Also, in case anyone thinks the small icon is too small, people can't look all the time at the top panel to see the icon, etc: When the user has only ONE app opened, it's more or less safe to assume he knows which app it is. Also, if he has just ONE app opened,  but 10 windows of it, let's say with some industrial design software, or CAD, or Maya by Autodesk perhaps, he will be thoroughly annoyed by the current overall switcher design (I know I would be).

Created attachment 197701 [details] [review]
altTab: "Clean up" code

Use objects for specifying which app and window to choose,
which cleans up a bit of duplicated logic.

Created attachment 197702 [details] [review]
altTab: Make Alt-<Above_Tab> switch between windows in all apps

(In reply to comment #9)
> I'm sorry for not being clear enough.
> 
> What I meant is to show directly what you can see in the image attachment I
> just made. You skip the application icon completely when there is only ONE app
> (multiple windows [but just one app], are fine), and open the chooser between
> the ONE app's multiple windowss directly.
> 
> To compensate for the loss of the icon, a smaller one could be shown in the
> corner as I took the liberty to include in the screenshot.
> 
> Also, in case anyone thinks the small icon is too small, people can't look all
> the time at the top panel to see the icon, etc: When the user has only ONE app
> opened, it's more or less safe to assume he knows which app it is. Also, if he
> has just ONE app opened,  but 10 windows of it, let's say with some industrial
> design software, or CAD, or Maya by Autodesk perhaps, he will be thoroughly
> annoyed by the current overall switcher design (I know I would be).

Special-casing a one-application setup is silly. Switch windows with Alt-` and applications with Alt-Tab.

I just started toying around with the Alt-` code to make it switch apps as well as windows. Try it out
and tell me what you think. I happen to like it.

OK you're right in that 2 separate combos is a better way. I had this thought building up in me already too. I'll try your code tomorrow afternoon, now I got to get my memory-enhancing sleep.

Created attachment 197703 [details] [review]
altTab: Make Alt-<Above_Tab> switch between windows in all apps

--

Make the initial selection a bit better.

Created attachment 198903 [details] [review]
altTab: Make Alt-<Above_Tab> switch between windows in all apps

Reattaching to fix a few bugs. Not suggesting this for re-review.

1. Fix selecting the wrong window when an app has multiple windows open.
2. FIx selecting the current window when windows are unselected.

*** Bug 662579 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I do not think that bug 662579 is a duplicate of this bug. The problem descriptions are completely different, and the patches in this thread do not fix the problems mentioned in bug 662579.

Here's an example scenario (I've also applied the patches from bug 660502): let's say I have one terminal window open and two gvim windows. It used to be (before patching) that while focused on the terminal windows, pressing Alt+` would do absolutely nothing. Now it switches to the last focused gvim window. This is great! However, pressing Alt+` a second time focuses the second gvim window, which is not the behavior I'd expect. Instead, it should return to the terminal window.

Obsoleted by window switcher / app switcher rework.