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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Fwd: [Usability] Metacity Proposal: Spatial Window Grouping
From:       solo turn <soloturn99 () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2004-03-05 10:36:18
Message-ID: 20040305103618.69261.qmail () web40903 ! mail ! yahoo ! com
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thanks for posting this! i like the approach a lot, cause current development goes even further to
circumvent window management deficiencies. an example is the gui part of web-portal technology,
implemented in e.g. in jetspeed. there you have "windows" inside the browser window (or inside a
browser window tab). often just for grouping some browser windows of (maybe different size)
together in one window (maximize them on one click, etc.).

if window management could do things like described below, a lot of user interface problems would
go away.

-solo.


--- Maurizio Colucci <seguso.forever@tin.it> wrote:
> I found this on the gnome-usability list. It seems very interesting. Take a 
> look
> 
> Maurizio
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> 
> Subject: [Usability] Metacity Proposal: Spatial Window Grouping
> Date: Friday 05 March 2004 05:06
> From: Ryan McDougall <ryan.mcdougall@telusplanet.net>
> To: usability@gnome.org
> 
> Proposal to Add Grouping to Metacity, and some Rationale
> 
> 0. Abstract
> 
> Solution presented for solving problems associated with window
> management by allowing users to categorically organize windows by
> defining custom window groups, and performing window transformations on
> the groups as if they were true objects in "desktop space". The purpose
> of this proposal is to improve the spatial properties of Metacity so
> that it fits into a long term goal of spatial consistency within the
> GNOME UI.
> 
> 1. Problem specification and background
> 
> The Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointer paradigm has given our computers
> excellent spatial multitasking abilities. Unfortunately like the clutter
> of paperwork that occasionally builds up on our real world desks, a
> profusion of windows can mean a real nuisance or even hindrance to
> usability due to manual window management.
> 
> 1.1. The problem in Linux/GNOME platform
> 
> 1.1.1 Window Management with Virtual Desktops
> 
> The traditional Unix approach to window organization is multiple
> desktops. This technique helps us to categorize our windows into
> meaningful groups, and reduces many window management tasks into
> clicking on a desktop pager. However the setup and management of those
> desktops is entirely manual, and does not allow one to interact with the
> desktop as if it was a true, first class object in "desktop space" -- we
> can't pull them or push them, resize them, mould them, or make them hide
> away.
> 
> 
> Also, currently virtual desktops are very handy, but provide an
> inconsistent spatial representation. With a real desk the entire extent
> is always visible; it is a whole that is easily discover-able, and
> consistent with all the other desks one has seen. With a virtual desk
> one has to realize that clicking on the pager jumps you one of these
> desktops, and all windows and actions on windows are mutually exclusive
> of windows on other desktops. From a spatial point of view, jumping to a
> new desktop might as well be jumping to a new dimension, therefore its
> inconsistent with physical reality.
> 
> 
> More abstractly, the concept of multiple "virtual" desktops may be
> confusing to new users:
> 
> A random, non-scientific sample of 20 junior Computer Science students
> at a major university running Ximian GNOME 1.4 on Sun workstations,
> shows that only 3 users made use of more than one desktop. All were
> running multiple tasks/windows (usually emacs, terminal, mozilla). When
> 5 students were asked why they weren't using the extra desktops, three
> didn't know what that they existed, and two didn't consider it worth the
> effort to maintain multiple desktops. This is purely anecdotal and
> *unscientific*, but hopefully illustrative.
> 
> 
> With the people I looked at above, the issue seems to be about the
> discover-ability of virtual desktops. It doesn't seem intuitive *enough*
> for them to easily grasp it even though they see the pager. Additionally
> they will even see their peers using multiple desktops, yet they appear
> to have no desire to make use of the same feature.
> 
> 
> Virtual Desktops are basically passive bins which hold windows and thus
> can categorize, but they can be manipulated as spatial objects; and I
> while I have no intention of removing them from GNOME, I think we can do
> better. What that I think my survey shows is that people *like* to
> organize their windows into categories that are meaningful to them. What
> I propose isn't to remove the ability to organize, but take that ability
> to the next level by shifting the paradigm slightly.
> 
> 1.1.2 Document-Tabbed UIs
> 
> Recent UI changes in GNOME, have lead to a resurgence in interest for a
> solution to manage the proliferation of windows that can happen in any
> spatial environment.
> 
> The popularity of Tabbed and MDI UIs in some applications is a direct
> result of a user's annoyance with the current status of window
> management. Tabbing allows the user to not only automatically group
> document windows according to application, and thus according to user
> meaningful types (the GNOME task bar currently has such a grouping
> feature for multiple similar windows), but allows the user to apply
> windowing transformations to all document windows at once. The
> interaction is not passive, as a virtual desktop, rather one can
> actively transform all windows as a whole group. Currently Tabbed
> applications allow one to transform a set of document windows by issuing
> commands to the parent, ie "resize GEdit (and by implication all sub-
> documents currently open therein)", and has become a crowd favourite.
> 
> The reasons are simple, organization is automatic:
> 
> 1. Each sub-document is owned by the parent app, not free-floating or
> manually attached to the parent. The parent app represents a semantic
> whole, of which the sub-documents are an integral part.
> 
> 2. The application provides an easy to understand, spatially consistent
> UI metaphor for accessing the sub-documents.
> 
> 3. Any window management action taken on the parent applies uniformly to
> the sub-document windows.
> 
> 
> 1.1.3 Spatial Nautilus
> 
> Also, the spatial behaviour of the new Nautilus has highlighted the
> existing problems with manually managing UI objects. Each spatial window
> of Nautilus adds to the complication of managing that many windows, and
> users are rightly concerned. However if we revert or break spatial
> Nautilus, the symptoms will be lessened, but the problem will never go
> away.
> 
> 1.2. Existing Solutions on other platforms
> 
> Apple has taken a very innovative approach, called expose, with the
> technology in OSX which allows the user to apply a couple predefined
> transformations to the open windows on a desktop. One thumbnails all
> open windows, the second packs all open windows into the screen, the
> third packs all open windows belonging to the foreground application
> into the screen. While these methods can only categorize windows by
> foreground application (3rd method), unlike virtual desktops which can
> be arbitrarily categorized, the significant improvement with expose is
> that with one keyboard sequence or mouse gesture, one can act upon the
> windows in an easily understandable, well-define, spatial way.
> 
> 1.3. Current Status on Linux/GNOME platform
> 
> While XFree lacks the technical ability to graphically mimic Apple's
> expose feat, there is nothing stopping the WM from attempting a similar
> feature set, although perhaps without the prettiness.
> 
> 2. Proposal and Implementation
> 
> 2.1. Solution to Managing Windows
> 
> My proposal is two-step, and as far as I can tell, presents no major
> technical hurdles:
> 
> First, users need a way to more intuitively group their windows, and
> groups of windows, into user-meaningful categories. Human understanding
> heavily uses hierarchical categorization, and virtual desktops and task
> bars show that we like to organize our windows into groups that hold
> meaning to us as individuals. Allowing users to "grab" a set of windows
> or set of groups of windows, and form them into a semantic group will
> help us do so in a spatially consistent way. The method of grabbing a
> set of windows should be more intuitive (than Virtual Desktops) for any
> user who has performed a similar operation in selecting a bunch of files
> via and modern file manager.
> 
> Second, users need a way to specify transformations on those groups of
> windows. Expose provides such transformations, but they are limited to
> three kinds, and have no concept of application groupings, nor any
> understanding of the irregular grouping that make sense to us. Using the
> arbitrary conceptual groups defined above, and arbitrary transformations
> on said groups, we can mimic in desktop space the behaviour our hands,
> arms, or other tools might have in real space. Some useful
> transformations would be to "Tile all selected windows", "Iconify all
> selected windows", or "Move all selected window to the left", etc.
> 
> 2.2 Solution Implementation Details
> 
> The default group is "All Windows or Sub-groups", and can be acted upon
> with keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures when no Sub-groups are in
> Focus (ala expose).
> 
> 2.2.1 Managing Group Lifetimes
> 
> The Metacity menu will provide three grouping options, tentatively
> called:
> 
> 1. "Ungroup"
> 
> This option changes the mouse icon to a cut lasso (or similar). If the
> user then clicks on any grouped window, the component sub-windows or
> sub-groups become disassociated and no longer behave as a group.
> 
> 2. "Group Together"
> 
> This option changes the mouse icon to a lasso (or similar), with a user
> defined bounding box underneath. Any window or group of windows that
> intersects with the bounding box becomes part of the new group. This
> operation is similar to "shift-selecting" a group of icons in a file
> manager.
> 
> Metacity then forms a new parent window surrounding the union of all
> windows and sub-groups as they preexisted in desktop space. Any
> windowing transformation done on the new parent window applies to all
> 
=== message truncated ===

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