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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Pooling task bar buttons.
From:       Dave Leigh <dave.leigh () cratchit ! org>
Date:       2002-02-08 12:05:37
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On Friday 08 February 2002 06:07, Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Friday 08 February 2002 08:08, James Davies wrote:
> > I like that idea a lot. The current system, which Windows XP copied (Or
> > vice-versa, I dunno), can be a little annoying at times, but the
> > example you illustrated looks a lot better.
>
> There is one problem that can be seen on the screenshots: if you have too
> many windows open you cannot read the window titles anymore. This makes the
> per-window-buttons completely useless, if somebody want to find a
> particular window he has to click through all the instances of the
> application.
>
> So instead of having a button per window you could also have a single
> button for the application and cycle through the app's windows. Or go the
> XP way, have a single button per app with a pop-up menu to select the
> windows.

Of course the problem with the "XP way" as you describe it is that you've 
then got two mouse clicks and you don't see the windows for an application 
until you've clicked on the application task button. So you're probably as 
better off using the drop-down Windowlist instead of the Taskbar.

Perhaps if the taskbar acted like a menu with drop-down (Mac-style... NOT 
pull-down) windowlists that appear as you mouse over each app icon? The 
downside of this technique is that you don't see how many windows are open 
for each app (with Sean's method it's easy to see this). This can be overcome 
by simply putting a number next to each app icon. For instance, the KWord 
icon with (13) next to it clearly shows that I need to work on my 
attention span problem. ;)


-- 
dave.leigh@cratchit.org
http://www.cratchit.org

You look like a million dollars.  All green and wrinkled.

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