Proposal regarding multitasking view in mobile-shell-convergence.png
Hello! First off I would like to say that I really like the concepts illustrated and I am looking forward to these designs making it in some form into the gnome shell experience. One suggestion I would have is regarding the multitasking view presented in mobile-shell-convergence and more broadly this equivalent to the activity overview. This is the relevant section of the mobile-shell-convergence.png:
The main shortcoming of this design is that the app drawer is so prominently displayed when usually most users want to have an overview of their opened apps and workspace arrangement in this view. Therefore, what I propose is that the app drawer is relegated to a bottom area (maybe in the form of a button or the visible start of a drawer, such as in the mobile equivalent) and the app overview of the current workspace as it is in the current gnome shell is displayed. However, this would not use the opportunities provided by this new horizontal arrangement of the workspaces to the full extent.
In order for it to be more integrated and present a nicer overview and workflow I propose a suite of integration improvements. First off, I must admit that I really am a fan of how the blank workspace apps look with only their icons as featured in the image above. It is very easy to distinguish what apps are and how they are grouped and gain a broader overview. I always thought that the workspace previews were too small to properly distinguish what is happening in the applications within them and as such, having the actual content of the windows rendered would not only be pretty useless, but also add clutter that is not visually informative. However, what would be a really intuitive and streamlined design in which it visually easy to distinguish and make sense of the arrangement of windows the outline of the tiling arrangement is a design of the workspace preview with the icons present the way they already are in the picture, and perhaps at the most the window titles (although I only see this as needed for single window workspaces in order to distinguish them from each other, it is not as relevant for the tiled ones because how often is the exact arrangement of windows found in two different workspaces? I think that that case is prevented by tabbed functionality in most applications). In this way, space can also be saved by making the previews a bit smaller, to give more space to the actual current workspace window previews (that have the window content in them) and the app button/drawer start at the bottom.
Now, what is needed to round off this design is an intuitive mouse/keyboard workflow. This is where the design really shines, as with a mix of previews the desired action can be done very fast and intuitive. The workflow is as follows:
- hover the mouse over another workspace preview to preview the entire workspace in the large area (where the current workspace is currently previewed). This can also be done with the left and right arrows to navigate with the keyboard.
- click on a workspace preview to switch to that workspace, this can also be done with enter on the keyboard.
- click/type a letter on the button/ drawer start of the app drawer to enlarge it. In the case of a letter being typed, the search also starts with that letter. This can also be done with the down arrow on the keyboard.
- drag a window in any workspace preview and be able to send it to any workspace preview in a tiled configuration that is previewed large in the main area where the current workspace is initially previewed, so that the entire context of the workspace is seen and windows can be arranged precisely.
This is the principal view of the workflow. The main emphasis is that the main largest area of the overview, the initial preview of the current workspace (which is the same thing with the center area of the current gnome shell activity overview and which is in the above picture mainly occupied by the app drawer) is used as a preview of whatever workspace is hovered and whatever workspace is currently modified. This allows better context by presenting all the windows in the currently modified workspace with their actual content and in a large enough manner for this content to be actually useful, as well as enabling precise window managing because of this larger space without encountering precision issues by operating on the small workspace preview in the horizontal preview space bar.
To sum up, I think that this workflow is very intuitive and really highlights what is important in order to multitask properly, namely the context of the current workspace or the workspace to be modified or switched to, as well as the general outline of the workspace arrangement, without emphasizing unneeded detail such as the exact window contents of the apps in other workspaces that are not currently in view/modified/previewed, and thus avoiding clutter and emphasizing the general arrangement and context of the workspaces through their tiling features and application icons.
Thank you for the great work done so far and I hope some nice design decisions can come out of discussing this proposal!