GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 86185
Feature request: Group tasks by desktop
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Description: Currently (if 'Show windows from all desktops' is selected) the tasks are ordered by startup regardless of the workspace they were started on - that is, the first program started is the left-most in the task list, the second one is the second, etc. What I'd like to see is this: If 'Show windows from all desktops' is selected all tasks are shown but they are grouped by workspace (with some space or a vertical bar seperating windows from different workspaces) and only wihtin these groups they are ordered by startup. That way one could easily group and thereby categorize tasks. The first workspace could function as the "communication workspace" on which all tasks are somehow related to irc/icq/napster; the second workspace is the "devel workspace" for compiling and editing things - and so on. You can then reach the environment you want by clicking on one of the tasks belonging to it. A practical example: 1. On workspace1 you open xchat. 2. On workspace4 you open galeon. 3. On workspace2 you open a terminal to do a cvs update. 4. On workspace1 you open a terminal to browse some irc-logs. 5. On workspace2 you open a terminal to edit the new de.po of lopster. 6. On workspace1 you open lopster. With the mechanism I propose this would lead to the followong tasklist: [xchat][terminal (logs)][lopster] | [terminal (cvs)][terminal (de.po)] | | [galeon] which would greatly improve usability. This behaviour is "stolen" from KDE 1.1's panel (don't know about later versions).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 52225 ***
Wow, this is a nice suggestion! If it can be implemented via a simple-to-apply patch, I'd be happy to test it in the Ximian usability testing lab and post results for ya. -Anna