GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 675070
Can't make sense of alt-tab
Last modified: 2013-08-18 11:36:59 UTC
Let's look at some task groupings I might have (actually, this is very simplified) * IRC, pidgin, firefox (gmail) and such * Music using firefox (youtube) and totem * Programming involving qalculate, a couple shells, some firefox, and some tomboy notes. May have 2 or 3 of these depending on what I was working on * Videos involving a couple nautilus folders of different series I'm working through and totem if I paused it do something else (unless I then tried to use nautilus again, which'd kill whatever I paused) * Porn involving a couple nautilus folders, some firefox, and maybe totem again (with the same single-window issue) Currently I use workspaces in gnome classic because that's the best option available. How is gnome-shell's alt-tab behaviour supposed to fit in to that? Even if I use gnome-shell's workspaces it makes no sense to group based on application.
I don't see an error in the software code described here, but instead challenging design questions (which is okay, but not a "bug" by definition. I recommend trying the alternate-tab extension on http://extensions.gnome.org/ .
Bugs are used for design problems all the time. Half the point of gnome shell is to change how window management is done, but the choices made don't work in use cases like this (which IMO are very common.) My report is not intended as "help me deal with my problem", but rather "here's the use case, you should be handling this but aren't." There's also an inordinate amount of frustration from being unable to get gnome shell to do anything I wanted, which makes it hard to turn into a bug report, particularly since I don't understand the mental context that produced the design choice in the first place. Alternate-tab is irrelevant. It goes against a fundamental design choice of gnome shell, and ends up nothing more than a bandaid that only somewhat works.
At least you could have done some searching to discover this problem has already been discussed: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=product%3A%22gnome-shell%22+alt+tab If you really want to fix this, go to #gnome-design or # gnome-shell. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 621287 ***
And I'm sure it will continue to be reported in different forms until it actually gets fixed. If anything the reason there hasn't been MORE reports is that people say "well, it doesn't work for me, but surely they know what they're doing". bug 621287 is just one specific aspect of the bigger problem. bug 661119 is the only one that's similar. Why would I want to contribute when I've already been shown hostility? First claiming it's not a bug at all, then claiming it is a bug but it's already reported. I've also been on IRC and received no help, or even no response at all, which IMO is a bikeshed phenomenon: nobody understands why it's the way it is, but assume someone else does and must have done it correctly.
> First claiming it's not a bug at all, then claiming it is a bug > but it's already reported. That happens when dealing with individuals, but we're all willing to learn. :) So could you please try to describe the problem in one sentence, and replace the current bug summary with it? "can't make sense" is subjective, and while this works for you others might not find this report. Thanks!
Sorry for the other guys being a bit hostile. What you don't realize is that this has been discussed a lot, so the team might get a little tired of it :) I know to you, workspaces seem like they're *only* task groups, but a lot of people don't use them that way. They use them as a bit extra space when their desktop gets a bit too crowded. In that way, every workspace is just more space for the first, and grouping in alt-tab based on workspaces is entirely the wrong behavior to them. Unfortunately, the current behavior favors none of us, but it's been stuck this way because we don't know whether to delimit based on workspaces or not. I hope that the design team fits a solution that makes sense to both sets of people. I really hope so.
Thanks for the kind replies. I am really impressed. The short version is: there is no task grouping mechanism. Something that lets you cluster some windows together and easily switch between them. Related is that none of the task-switching allows any spatial memory, which is how my brain is wired up, but I'm sure I'm not alone. The old window list could be manually reorganized, allowing me to move certain windows to the same place every time, and new windows were always at the end (sans the occasional bug). Although it would shrink, the relative positions stayed the same, and the icons (with a touch of text) provided enough hint for my brain to keep track. Obviously not perfect and with too many similar ones (3 terminals, 8 firefox) I would often get confused. The super-switcher lacks any spatial memory. Alt-tab was only reliable as "go to last used". Even second-last I would often get wrong, any more was just trial and error. My hope is that, by finding different ways to describe the problem, a solution will emerge.
For more discussion on the issue (and patches), try: bug #621287 bug #661119 bug #660367 bug #660502 bug #674680 I'm curious if some of these should be duplicates of each other :)
I would argue that we need to totally rethink how we're doing this, rather than just putting out fires. As a starting point, why not turn the taskbar into 8 "stacks" of windows, with alt-arrow used to select between them. A window would always stay on that stack, and an overlay when switching could shown shrunken snapshots of the top of each stack to let you form spatial memory (with a nice high contrast circle or arrow for the current). Further refinement is to prefer the 4 cardinals if empty (common case of <= 4 windows becomes the simplest), but if all stacks are empty pick the least-recently-used.
(In reply to comment #9) > I would argue that we need to totally rethink how we're doing this, rather than > just putting out fires. You might be right, but that's not going to happen in the scope of a bug report. The design team are acutely aware of the issues with the workspaces and alt+tab, and we'll certainly consider them if/when we review the overall design. Thanks for the taking the time to get in touch; we are aware of the frustration this can cause, and we'll do our best to resolve it. For now I'm going to close this bug though - it's not that helpful going forward, even though the issues it raises are valid.