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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Show desktop behaviour
From:       Martijn Klingens <klingens () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-09-29 20:39:40
Message-ID: 200509292239.40825.klingens () kde ! org
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On Thursday 29 September 2005 22:23, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> i'm not particularly interested in personal opinions or arguments of
> "logic" on this one due to the fact that obviously no matter what is done,
> someone will be uncomfortable. i have no particular leaning myself. perhaps
> our usability expertise can weigh in here.

I'd rather try to gather some statistics from formal usability testing on this 
matter actually.

As far as I'm concerned, 'show desktop' is a rather complex paradigm to get. 
Even for me it's hard to define what I'd "expect" it to do. To some it is 
"Minimize All", like it's called in Windows I think. That at least is easy to 
define, since by definition either all windows are minimized, or none are, 
and the button is basically a toggle. With some animation when it's 
auto-untoggled as new windows appear that can even be explained to people who 
are not familiar with the feature.

The label "show desktop" makes it more complex to define. For me it means "go 
to an empty virtual desktop" (it really does, since that's what I do, I don't 
use the button, and I use 5 desktops normally and have 6, so usually there's 
one being empty). However, introducing some special virtual desktop and 
switching back to the previous one as soon as windows are shown doesn't sound 
like the right solution to me at all. The closest would be a single shot 
minimize that cannot be undone, essentially leaving the windows minimized. 
It's hard to define either way.

So, in my view the feature itself is hard to define unambiguously and thus 
implement. Hence you'll get bugs whatever you do :/

-- 
Martijn
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