Dock behaviour with multiple workspaces

[ghost]

The problem

The current behavior of the dock is such that if you have multiple running apps on multiple workspaces you get no indication of which apps are running on which workspace. Also, there is a visual disconnect between the dock and the running apps and worksapces when you change workspaces, because the dock moves with the workspace thus making it feel like a different dock is running on each workspace.

Possible solutions (with bad design)

• Show only running apps in the dock for the active workspace:

  The Dock is the only place you see your running apps at any moment, the idea of showing only the running apps on the current workspace is bad design practice because then you loose any indication of which other apps are also running on other workspace which requires a complete rethink of how you'd indicate multiple running apps.

• Visually isolate apps in the dock for each workspace:

  Isolating apps to workspaces is also not so great because it doesn't solve the first issue of visual disconnect between apps and workspaces but also adds complexity to how the user should perceive what is "running", is it only the icons with the blue dot? or only what is in the dock? also it makes a problem distinguishing between "pinned" apps and running apps on other workspaces.

If an app is running, it should have an indicator, if its pinned then it shouldn't. Any other behavior complexion is too much on the user. There should be no "specific indicators", either the app is running or its not.

Proposal

The solution is simple.

Keep all of the running apps in the dock with their regular indicator for running apps, lock the dock to the view port and move only the workspaces, thus having a visual connection between a click on the application icon in the dock and the movement to the workspace on which that application is currently running.

Example

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/68272253/117281264-224b6700-ae6c-11eb-96c7-9bcb38a10345.mp4

• An important note to make: If this behavior to be applied to the Dock, the same should be considered for the Wingpanel for consistency, thus the only moving thing would be the desktop it self along with all of the currently running applications on that specific desktop.

[Blast-City]

What about:

Running app on other workspace - Monochrome dot indicator (Black/White depending on the Dark Mode). Running app on the same workspace - Color accent dot indicator. App requires attention - Icon flashes.

Since elementary always place app windows in the center position, sometimes I find it hard to know if I already opened an app on the current workspace if an app is already open on another workspace. Gnome tackles this with the activities feature.

[danirabbit]

Closing as a duplicate of #134 since there's more discussion over there