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elementary / dock

A quick app launcher and window switcher for Pantheon and elementary OS
https://elementary.io
GNU General Public License v3.0
87 stars 24 forks source link

Explicit workspace switching #224

Open danirabbit opened 3 months ago

danirabbit commented 3 months ago

Problem

Currently running apps are all presented as a list at the end of the dock but there's no real indication about which workspaces those apps exist on.

It can also be cumbersome to access the multitasking view via launcher to then access the workspace switcher. So we're presenting two UIs to represent running applications with the one that communicates information about workspaces being hidden

Proposal

Integrate the workspace switcher into the dock

Prior Art (Optional)

https://github.com/orgs/elementary/discussions/337

danirabbit commented 3 months ago

@leolost2605 from https://github.com/elementary/dock/issues/134#issuecomment-2032727903

And on the right we have the workspaces like in the mockup but for workspaces with multiple apps it expands on hover and shows it apps with launcher size where clicking will activate on single window and show a spread for this specific workspace on multiple windows. So that you have a workspace/multitasking area with some finer grained focus control.

There's no hover for direct input devices like pens or touch, so I don't think it's a good idea to gate features behind hover.

My initial idea was, if you click a workspace that you're not on it navigates to it. And if you click a workspace that you are on, you get multitasking view. It's the same amount of movement as doing a window spread but then you have a quick way to access the whole multitasking view :shrug:

leolost2605 commented 3 months ago

Are running apps shown somewhere else then as well? Because if not this would add a lot more movement for an app with just a single window open. Instead of click -> focus, you go click -> multitasking view -> search -> click -> focus

leolost2605 commented 3 months ago

Maybe if only the workspace you are currently on is "expanded"? This would help to easily show which workspace you are on and you have the apps from you current workspace nicely packed together for easy switching, interacting etc. Just for opening the multitasking view we already have the multitasking view icon i guess :shrug:

danirabbit commented 3 months ago

I think this probably needs like some more drawings or diagrams or something to kind of flesh out how things are supposed to work 😅 maybe a flowchart lol