Windows 7 Taskforce

broccauley wrote on March 3, 2010, 5:23pm

[a bit of a re-post of useful info here since Long accidentaly deleted all the previous useful comments]

The main thrust of this idea is my first mock-up above for a single desktop - this simpler mock-up is what you should mainly consider looking at this idea.

However, I'd like to mention as a bit of an aside some further ideas that could be applied to the second "multiple desktops" mockup (don't vote based on any of these comments - these are just my ramblings!). Anyway, such a radical new interface (in the second "power user" mock-up) could be a good opportunity to modernise the "multiple desktops" paradigm. After all, when using a standard multiple desktops environment these days, it is not really "multiple desktops" that users want, but the ability to partition their work into "multiple tasks".

This is what I had in mind when adding the "+" icon - perhaps substitute all occurrences of the work "desktop" in the mock-up above with "task". Perhaps the user only really needs one single desktop, but on that desktop can work with several tasks. Each task has a separate taskbar, hence the word "taskbar" now would make sense! The live previews for the current task would always be closest to the taskbar, and the taskbar would change based on the current task. The pinned taskbar items would also be specific to each task. Each task could then be labelled with with the name of the task. You could also add as many tasks as you wanted by clicking on the "+" icon.

In a multi-monitor setup you could also assign each task to a particular monitor (for example, by a right-click menu on the task preview's glass)- this would make Windows' multi-monitor support much more powerful than it is at present.

Comment edited on March 3, 2010, 11:44pm

broccauley wrote on March 3, 2010, 11:43pm

I posted this also on Technet at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-U...4f91-b05a-5479f981a527 , and someone asked me a question there, but for some reason Microsoft have made this post inaccessible (too good an idea to be public, eh?! I can send you my CV your way Microsoft!! ;) :D).

Anyway, here is my loooong answer for "Noel Carboni" on Technet:
Noel,

I assume you've never experienced the power of multiple desktops on KDE/Gnome under Linux then?!! (only then can you call yourself a "power user" ;) :D )

OK, let me explain. First of all, ignore the set of apps that I have open on my mock-ups - these are not typical of such a power user scenario (just used them to create a quick mock-up), as I'd need far more windows than that to exemplify the number of windows that I have typically open on my office PC!

The main point is that you can divide your work up into several tasks - typically under Linux nowadays you would assign a desktop to each task. Windows 7 actually makes this more difficult in many ways because it always groups your windows by application on the taskbar - this is not always ideal because sometimes you may have many non-related windows from the same application grouped together. For example, I may have 15 different excel spreadsheets open, but they are split between 3 completely unrelated tasks - the Windows 7 taskbar application grouping just makes it confusing to differentiate between these. The switcher in the mock-up will switch to the appropriate task when you switch to a window from that task; the taskbar will also change when you switch task to reflect the current task; the taskbar will also only show windows from the current active task when you hover your mouse over the taskbar icon for a particular application. The "modality" that you mention is not an issue - it is not modal and the switcher will show all windows from all tasks at once - the purpose of the switcher in the "power user" mode is to *both* switch between windows (no matter which task they belong to) and to switch between the currently active task. The advantage of the implementation that I propose here over any Linux "multiple desktop" implementation that I have seen is that it offers you a way to see an organised list of *all* windows that are open, split amongst *all* desktops/tasks.



If that didn't make an sense at all, then I'll try an example. Here's a typical scenario from my own workplace where I would find several different tasks/desktops useful in my day-to-day life (I am a IC hardware design Engineer who also has to write software, and have many different jobs assigned to me that I may have to switch between during the day):

Task/Desktop 1 - General office administrative issues
This would be the main task or desktop. On this task I might have open my outlook email, web browser, powerpoint for making a presentation for the next day, maybe filling out an expenses form in excel, opening some internal company time logging apps, windows media player and any other miscellaneous application for any procrastination that I may wish to do etc. :) I would also have the relevant apps that I use most often for these types of roles pinned to the corresponding taskbar for this task - i.e. Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Firefox, Windows Media player etc.

Task/Desktop 2 - Hardware change request task 1
In my job I often have to implement several different features into the chip that we're designing - often I might spend an hour working on one of these features and then have to switch back and forward to another an hour later. For each of these features that I need to implement I may have several excel spreadsheets open to analyse data, Matlab for more analysis (5 or so windows), tens of windows of my text editor with source code open, hardware simulator (ususally can be up to 10 windows), hardware debugger (another 3 or 4 windows), 4 or 5 terminal windows, a web browser for getting technical data. I would pin the icons for the applications that I use most for this task to my taskbar

Task/Desktop 3 - Hardware change request task 2
I would use this for implementing another change request for a completely different feature that I am assigned to implement for our chip design. It would be similar to Task/Desktop 2.

Task/Desktop 4 - hardware debugging
Often I would need to debug an implementation - this would be laid out with all my debug tools and all the source files, terminal windows associated with that etc.

Task/Desktop 5 - software development
Often I also have to write software to run on our hardware - on this task I would place windows for all the software tools, IDEs, associated terminal windows, software debug tools, etc.

OK, all that was a bit complicated! Hopefully you don't have as complicated a job as me, but let me know if that made things any clearer to you! This suggestion (believe it or not!) actually would simplify my life, as it only shows me the windows that I need to see at any particular moment that are relevent to the job that I am performing, and doesn't overload me with irrelevant cluttered windows that I don't need to see at that moment in time.

Comment edited on March 8, 2010, 1:42am

broccauley wrote on March 8, 2010, 1:14am

I updated this submission with the double-click/ctrl-click to toggle through windows - this is consistent with my proposal in the suggestion at http://www.windows7taskforce.com/view/2485