your desktop switcher is really nice. But still not quite where I need it to be to be able to make use of it.
I think the most important missing feature, if it is at all feasible to add, would be to have the cmd-tab bar that appears in the center of the screen on osx to only show the apps that are available on that desktop. Then your desktop app would really help in reducing the cmd-tab searching that one needs to do to jump from one app to another. It would then really make sense to have different desktops, as they tend to gather the windows between which one jumps most often:
- So in an editor desktop I jump a lot between the shells, the editor, and a documentation browser.
- When I need to write a mail, I then often also have a mail related browser open to which I jump to look up quotations or some such thing.
- I may have a fun desktop open with iTunes, JNN (James Gosling's Juicy News Network), or some other such tools.
I think all the linux pagers offer that behavior.
It looks really promising otherwise. I look forward to future improvements.
Henry
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Which linux pager offer this behavior? From what I know, in X usually the window manager handles alt-tab. I think on OS X, the dock handles cmd-tab, I am not sure if wsmanager can hook into it and modify its behavior.
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Good point. I don't know if the pager of the window manager offers that behavior under linux. The pager clearly uses this feature to its great advantage.
It would be nice if OSX could offer the same. But I have no idea if it does or how one would use it. If OSX does not then it should be a feature request. You would be in a good position to make such a request.
All the best,
Henry
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The only way I could think of to accomplish this would be to call TransformProcessType or a similar function for each application with no windows on the current desktop every time the desktop switches (i.e. make applications with no visible windows background-only). But I think that would probably be too much overhead for desktop switching, especially if you have a lot of applications open (and such a feature would only really be useful with a lot of applications open).
Such a feature would also be limiting -- for instance if Safari was open on one desktop, you wouldn't be able to open Safari windows on any other desktop.
All in all, it's probably not a good idea.
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What about an alternate keystroke - say option-tab rather than cmd-tab - that cycles through the desktop manager's internal list of the _windows_ that are open on the current desktop, regardless of application? That's what alt-tab does in linux (at least in kde; I think gnome does the same thing). It wouldn't involve the dock at all, which means more work (popping up our own central bar with the window icons and titles), but it'd mean we're free to do it however we want. That is the functionality I miss most from my transition from linux to mac; I now have to use cmd-tab to switch apps, and then pull down that app's Window menu to get the window I want. This would let me tab directly to the window I want without having to move my hand over to the mouse.
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your desktop switcher is really nice. But still not quite where I need it to be to be able to make use of it.
I think the most important missing feature, if it is at all feasible to add, would be to have the cmd-tab bar that appears in the center of the screen on osx to only show the apps that are available on that desktop. Then your desktop app would really help in reducing the cmd-tab searching that one needs to do to jump from one app to another. It would then really make sense to have different desktops, as they tend to gather the windows between which one jumps most often:
- So in an editor desktop I jump a lot between the shells, the editor, and a documentation browser.
- When I need to write a mail, I then often also have a mail related browser open to which I jump to look up quotations or some such thing.
- I may have a fun desktop open with iTunes, JNN (James Gosling's Juicy News Network), or some other such tools.
I think all the linux pagers offer that behavior.
It looks really promising otherwise. I look forward to future improvements.
Henry
Which linux pager offer this behavior? From what I know, in X usually the window manager handles alt-tab. I think on OS X, the dock handles cmd-tab, I am not sure if wsmanager can hook into it and modify its behavior.
Good point. I don't know if the pager of the window manager offers that behavior under linux. The pager clearly uses this feature to its great advantage.
It would be nice if OSX could offer the same. But I have no idea if it does or how one would use it. If OSX does not then it should be a feature request. You would be in a good position to make such a request.
All the best,
Henry
The only way I could think of to accomplish this would be to call TransformProcessType or a similar function for each application with no windows on the current desktop every time the desktop switches (i.e. make applications with no visible windows background-only). But I think that would probably be too much overhead for desktop switching, especially if you have a lot of applications open (and such a feature would only really be useful with a lot of applications open).
Such a feature would also be limiting -- for instance if Safari was open on one desktop, you wouldn't be able to open Safari windows on any other desktop.
All in all, it's probably not a good idea.
What about an alternate keystroke - say option-tab rather than cmd-tab - that cycles through the desktop manager's internal list of the _windows_ that are open on the current desktop, regardless of application? That's what alt-tab does in linux (at least in kde; I think gnome does the same thing). It wouldn't involve the dock at all, which means more work (popping up our own central bar with the window icons and titles), but it'd mean we're free to do it however we want. That is the functionality I miss most from my transition from linux to mac; I now have to use cmd-tab to switch apps, and then pull down that app's Window menu to get the window I want. This would let me tab directly to the window I want without having to move my hand over to the mouse.