 |
| Tasks widget with group status information |
With or without this additional information, the number of clicks to get to a window in a group is the same. Click once on the group, and then again in the resulting popup. If compositing is active, you can also just hover the group and then click on a window thumbnail.
I could not think of a single time when the extra visual information of the arrow and number ever provided value to me, and I struggled to come up with a use case where it might. So I patched out the group status information just to see what it looks like and to see if it would negatively impact how it works. It took all of probably two minutes to do and I've been using the tasks widget since without grouping status information, as can be seen in the shot below:
 |
| Tasks widget without group status information |
Visual simplicity, however, should usually not trump utility, however, so I'm trying to come up with uses for the group status information. Just because I can't think of one off the top of my head does not mean that a use case does not exist. So I thought I would ask you! Do you find this group status information useful? If so, why? If not, would you prefer it not to be there? Leave your answer in the comments section below!
Even if you don't have input to share, you at least get a glimpse into the sort of banal questions we get to ponder when working on Plasma. Not everything is about exciting shiny new toys after all. :)
Update: Decided to try another possibility: show grouping by painting the icon twice, once full color and a second time faded. Keeps the visibility of "this is a group" without taking up more space and with less visual noise. Not convinced by this, but was something that occurred to me as a possibility. :)
 |
| Using a visual "stacking" of the icon to denote a group. |
p.p.s. Please also ignore that the task icons are a different size than the other icons on the panel. I'm considering possible improvements for that too as all icons being the same consistent size, at least when there is just one row in the tasks widget, would be rather spiffy.
p.p.p.s. I am not interested in suggestions to replace the tasks plasmoid with some other plasmoid in the default layout. That is a separate discussion, and I'd like to focus on this one specific issue here.
41 comments:
I appreciate the indicator that there is more than one window open, i.e. that I know my workflow will require one extra click.
As to how many windows are actually open undear each group, that seems pretty irrelevant to me.
I agree with GregC.
I don't really need to know how many windows are open but I'd like to know whether there is one or multiple windows before I click the button in the task bar.
Perhaps adding some kind of indication instead of the number?
All the wasted space of the screenshot up top really bugs me, but not knowing what a button is going to do when I click it bugs me even more (it feels to me like lazy UI design, even though that's certainly not the case here). And, like you, I like to see my window titles.
I think you can have the best of both worlds, with a bit of image work. It's important to me that I know I have multiple windows open, but less important that I know how many are open.
I am a mere developer, and not a UI designer of any type), but I would suggest that the imagery could do the job here. You could use a different border or some trickery to make the task button look like it's two buttons set staggered on top of one another. You could even simply do that with the icon to differentiate a task group from a single task.
This way, you have the best of both worlds - I get to see single tasks and groups differentiated, and I get to keep my window titles.
I wonder why grouping is actually the default behavior at all. To me it's a slowdown for three reasons
- it requires an additional click
- it hides useful information (from the window titles) behind the generic application name which is used in the group name. Even worse that information is only visible after a click on the group
- reading takes time, and I find it easier to distinguish two, say, konsole windows as the "left" one and the "right" one than having them stacked on top of each other in a group
I agree with all of the previous comments: The basic information that one taskbar entry represents multiple windows is useful, for example as a reminder that an application still has a dialog window open but it's currently minimized together with the main window.
The point about knowing what will happen when you click the taskbar entry is valid as well, having the correct expectation matters.
And I also agree that the actual number of windows is not important, and that probably a less space-consuming indicator can be found for it.
Oh and I agree with Dennis Nienhüser as well. I'd recommend grouping only when the taskbar is full as the default as well, for the reasons he states. Grouping is better than two rows of taskbar entries or hiding entries behind a "more" button, but as long as there is enough space to conveniently show one entry for each window, thy not doing so?
a third option has been added (see the Update near the end of the blog entry).
i'm also interested in finding out if there is an actual benefit to seeing that the window is in a group versus a theoretical one.
does it improve how quickly one finds the right entry?
does it actually reduce surprise, or does it actually have little to no actual impact?
iow, has it become a "security blanket" rather than something we actually use?
Thomas: you mention knowing that an application has a dialog open. In which case is this actually useful? Keep in mind that we also have a "needs attention" state that is orthogonal to this.
@Thomas: group when full is the default.
@Dennis: it's optional precisely to cover needs of people such as yourself, but it turns out more people appreciate the grouping than don't.
.. as an unrelated aside, this is where i really, really miss not having everything 100% QML already.
once the tasks UI is redone in QML (it is in progress, but not complete) we can just publish QML files for people to try out locally without compiling or any similar nonesense.
I would recommend the third option: stacking the icons.
To have an indication that there is a group or not is useful for me to decide if I need to access a window with multiple mouse actions (i.e. 2 clicks, separated by a mouse movement; or one hover and one click separated by a mouse movement) as opposed to just one click. I may use a keyboard short-cut if I feel the mouse clicks to be too many, but I need to know that beforehand.
The number of windows in the groups isn't of value to me.
I don't use grouping because I don't like the way that the name of the icon group would disappear, leaving me with just the icon, with no notice. It has always been a sharp brain-jab for me. I would consider using grouping if I could depend on the name always being beside the icon.
Éibhear
When I click on a grouped button in the taskbar and i know it's a group one, I'm actually prepared to move my mouse slightly towards the top to choose one of the choices because I know I'll have to, even if I don't yet know the order the choices will be given.
That saves some time, even though I'm not sure that's really quantifiable.
For the test with the duplicated and stacked icon, I didn't identify it, even though (for example) I know perfectly well the Konsole icon, I just didn't see the difference.
Is it because of this specific design ? I'm not sure but I suspect the marker of 'plural' should not change with the duplicated content.
i.e. the icon marker should be the same when Konsole is duplicated and when Kontact is duplicated.
On the other hand, I feel the arrow (or something like that, doesn't need to be an arrow, but a change would require training) is necessary, but not the number of duplicates.
This questions are not "banal" if you ask me. This questions and the solution for them are a big part of good usability handling and human interface design in general.
But back to your question.
The group feature itself is pretty useful because your bar does not get cluttered that fast.
Showing the information if more than one window exists is not that important (for me) but still useful. I usually work with more then one konsole window and to see if more than one is opened simply shows me if i have to open a new one or can "recycle" an old one. If that males sense at all. :)
Here is how my dock looks: http://i.imgur.com/84uua.png As you can see. For me it is more important to see that there are more than one window open and not exactly how many.
Great you are looking into stuff like that! Keep up doing so. :)
Hi,
I expect that the UI gives clear info that the icon represent a window group. Unexpected behavior of the UI is annoying and tends to build up frustration. If when I click the window group I'm presented with a decision that I did not expect my brain must process it and act upon it. If when I travel my mouse to click it I expect to decide which window to upon the UI doesn't get as much in the way.
The indication must be clear, and i don't think the faded icon option is.
For me all the options you provided are.. not ideal.
There needs to be "some" indication that one bar represents multiple windows. Just by vaguely adding a second icon won't cut it since you will get into icon space issues if you have 3 or 4 windows of the same application.
The number is imho also kinda pointless. I think you need to keep the upward pointing arrow for the task bars.
However, when you use the "icontasks" as in just icons, then you can ignore the arrow and stack the tasks just like is done in windows vista and 7.
I agree with you and others that the number of windows in a group is irrelevant.
But, as I'm a little negatively biased towards the whole window grouping concept (more clicks), I find it important to have a visual indication of what is a group and what isn't.
I like the direction you're taking with your last proposal (stacked icons), but there are other similar possibilities to investigate: icon overlay (maybe a plus?) or maybe a small right-aligned icon but that would eat some label space.
Anyway having the group/not-group info is not vital but still valuable to me. It makes things clearer, make the navigation smoother because you can predict your next click in advance, and can help find a task a little faster.
I do also agree with GregC, and additionally really like the look of it. it really makes a lot of sense to me
Greets :)
I also do not use groups! I really hate them because i think they slow my work down! However, i do understand that others do like and use them, and in that case yes, it would be good to have a cleaner interface!
So, my suggestion would be either use the 3rd option you updated (the one whit the stacked icons) or, if possible, placing the windows count number over the application icon (a small number, of course, for example on the bottom right corner of the icon).
This would not require extra space, would indicate there are a group and also the number of windows on that group (information is important for those who do like to know)
I agree with previous comments about the group information (indicator is important, but not the number).
I don't like the visual stacking of icons, it's too hard to see if it's a group or if the icon just happens to look like that. In that case I prefer a stacked "task button", similar to e.g. Unity and recent Windows versions.
[digression]
Personally I strongly dislike grouping by application name - I work with projects (or, if you prefer, activities ;), not applications. It makes no sense to me to group two Konsole windows if they belong to two different projects.
Instead, I would probably prefer something like this (I'll try to illustrate it in ASCII):
Normal:
[(i) Information] [(@) KMail] [(K) Konqueror] [(P) Print]
Just a regular taskbar with icons and window titles.
Full:
{(i) (@) (K)} [(P) Print] [(!) Warning]
When the taskbar becomes full, automatically group a number of the leftmost tasks in the taskbar. This group will be distinctive in some way and show the icons of the windows in the group.
When hovering over the group, show the windows in it, like now.
On click, expand the group and collapse the other tasks:
[(i) Information] [(@) KMail] [(K) Konqueror] {(P) (!)}
This makes it easy to switch between groups to work with.
Now to the critical part: make it easy to move windows between groups, and to move a group to another virtual desktop or activity.
This idea just came to my mind so there are probably details I've overlooked, but that's the gist of it. I look forward to seeing a "complete" QML task manager, which should make it much easier to experiment with things like this. (Personally I'm not interested in working on it though since I don't use a task manager in my current setup. :)
third solution is good to me.
It would be cool to have task icons of equal size with indicator and launcher ones.
As an addition, I'd appreciate an option to remove text space, so to gain a dock-like feel.
Close buttons on top of window thumbails have proved to be useful to me.
Cheers, looking forward to beta-testing! :)
The stacked icons (Option 3) does not work for me. I need to pay more attention than usual to recognize that it is the stacked version of a particular icon and not a completely different one. It changes the contours and I suspect that this change alone can affect its recognizability.
Some existing solutions that could be adapted:
1. Badges - which are easily distinguishable from icons in general.
2. Current Page + Pagination indicator - Commonly seen in swipe interfaces, it gives a quantitative feedback about the number of pages available and the current page, without using text. There are a number of dull dots representing each page available, and the current page is indicated by turning the appropriate dot bright.
Thank you very much for your work!
I'd like to add yet another voice for "Show it's a group:Yes, Show the number:no". Being a Chakra user (who doesn't mess with the defaults much) I use the Icon Only Task Manager (hereafter the IOTM). The IOTM doesn't show the numbers, but does show a small green plus sign if there's more than one instance. I use that + all the time. For example, I use loads of tabs in my browser. If the tab isn't at the top of the screen and I can't remember if I closed it or not, the plus sign lets me know at a glance if it might be open in another window or not. If I just saved a document, it lets me know whether I can just quit an application, or if there are other windows with documents that will likely need saving first.
That said, I find that you only want the visual indication of more windows to be subtle. It's a binary piece of information. There either is or there isn't. The third option here increases visual clutter, slowing down reading all of the options. There's never going to be a situation where you're going to have windows with different icons grouped, so it's kind of redundant to show the same visual information twice (or god forbid, more).
Personally, I would suggest that we use the exact same small up arrow we already see when there are more system tray icons we can't see. (It's in your screenshow). Put that above the icon in the task manager. It's consistent (visually and conceptually) with a pre-existing part of the UI. It doesn't take any more horizontal space than not having it. It's visually cleaner than duplicating the icon. It makes logical sense that when you click an up arrow that something will pop up there.
Since this is KDE, I guess the right answer is "It should be configurable!".
I prefer to know that the button I'm going to press is a group, even at the cost of covering some of the group text or icon.
After years (about three, I guess) of being abused by the default task-bar and it's bugs that change or grow, but never seem to die, I turned to the icons-only task-bar.
When I started using it, I guessed I would miss seeing application title/name, and having an indicator as to how many items are in a group (it indicates a group by a + sign that covers the corner of the icon).
Even though it's more feature-rich, stable and better in every other way, and I vowed not to touch the default task-bar for two years (estimated time till maturity), I strayed after only a year and tried the default again (ran away after two weeks of bugs).
Why did I stray? because I miss labels and group item count.
I guess I miss the labels more then the item count. But I often come across two scenarios where I want to know the number of items in a group:
1. I find I accidentally opened two extra chromium windows instead of just one.
2. sometimes it's the only visual indication I could have for being in activity A and not B.
I also feel it helps me get a better idea of what's going on on the computer.
I feel tempted from time to time to try my hand at adding these features to icons-only, but I don't have the time/knowledge :-<
About how to indicate the number of items in the group, a suggestion I didn't see here was adding dots (or triangles) along the edge of a button, possibly starting with the 4 corners to reduce visual impact.
I also guess that I don't really care about item numbers between 6-15, and above 15, I'd want a special indication since something probably went wrong.
As long as user able to bring back old behavior I think most of users doesn't care.
The fact that there is an indication that there is a group is important to me, as I know to (with window compositing on) hover over the task manager entry then move my mouse up to select a window. It lets me find and select a window more quickly than if I have to guess it's there.
An alternative might be to just have an arrow, with no number, at the top of the icon.
I don't think I will spare my chance to post this, so witness something really new, never ever implemented: http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/taskbar.jpg
I want taskbar to be like this, with hideable dark part, where plasmoids could be placed. I hope something similar can be implemented.
Hi, I personally don't like the simplification.
Basically it is essential to know, if it is a single or multiple windows. On your screenshot with the diplicated icons it is much more difficult to recognize groups than with the traditional triangle. At least it is necessary to make the difference more visible.
To know the number of windows is not essential. Still I'm using this information from time to time. Example: I'm surfing with iceweasel and know, that there is a main browsing window and a download dialog. So I see in the taskbar, if a additional browser windows have been opened in the background.
Or it might be, that I open a couple of files (each takes its own window). While opening the files it makes no sence to start editing, as the cpu is busy. So I can look to the counter and see, when the files are opened.
The current solution already does not take much space. So I don't know, why sacrificing the counter, if you earn so few.
On my desktop I don't loose the window titles, if there are window groups. The counters and the triangle are righ centered. Currently I'm still on 4.8.4 as I use Debian Testing.
I don't think I will spare my chance to post this, so witness something really new, never ever implemented: http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/taskbar.jpg
I want taskbar to be like this, with hideable dark part, where plasmoids could be placed. I hope something similar can be implemented.
I used to hate auto-grouping, but have come to rely on it heavily.
The numbers next to Konqueror and Kontact are an integral part of my workflow.
For Konqueror, it let's me
* see if restoration after a crash doubled every running instance of Konqueror
* know when it's time to clean up old sessions
With Kontact, I know what emails I opened to read/write in what order and thus how many parallel things I am working on at the moment.
Fringe cases, I know. Yet, this is important to me.
If you made the stacking in option three a bit more obvious, maybe you could lose the arrow next to the number.
Alternatively, you could experiment with putting the number in front of the icon stack.
In any case: Please don't lose the numbers.
As already said, not the number but the fact of grouping is important.
BUT: I don't completly agree with your third proposal, because especially for icons you don't know so well (or for unexperienced users) i would not be visible if just the icons looks like this or if there are more than one windows open. (e.g. the KRDC icon already is doubled by default)
i threfore would propose a solution like SXE did (http://i.imgur.com/84uua.png)
or maybe like windows 7 does (http://origin.arstechnica.com/images/windows7/Windows%20Taskbar%20Previews.png)
Something that I like from KDE is the level of customization. Then, why don't put it like an option in the settings (at preferences on the whole kde or just the widget) because, my pc (and I think a lot of ppl) not only is used by me but my wife, brothers etc. and, if they want to see that "# of open windows" and I don't, well, anyone can change it.
Sorry for my bad english xD
I find the current numbered approach works best for me as I often want to know how many instances of an app I have open at glance before launching something new.
As long as it remains a configurable option to restore the current behaviour I would be happy to have what the consensus decide as the new default.
I wonder if there's a correlation between the number of open windows and the user preference of grouping.
umm, I guess I'll start...
I have a group that ranges between 2 and 11 windows (skype, my main IM), a couple of 4 windows groups a couple of 2 window groups, and about 6 single windows in my main activity that has the most windows.
Prefer a numbered indication.
I agree with most people that having some indication of grouping is good, but we don't need the exact number.
I also am not a big fan of the third picture. The grouping just doesn't seem to jump out at me, it looks too much like part of the icon so I think I would miss it. I think we need some sort of visual indication of grouping, but I don't think that approach is it.
I like someone else's suggestion of some sort of badge or other indicator that is consistent across all applications.
Icon tasks puts a second triangle below the icon if there is an extra window. I am not suggesting using icon tasks, this is just an example of an approach I think is more effective.
In this specific case, I think the arrow in the first picture might be good without the number. If there is more than one window, put the arrow either above the icon or centered above the task.
Another thought is that knowing the number of windows exactly may be less useful than knowing whether there are few or many. So if you use the arrow, add one arrow for each additional window, put have each arrow a little faded, up until maybe 5 or 6 in which case they are so faded you can't see them anymore. So users can tell at a glance how many windows there are for a small number, but when the number gets too large they just see there are many of them.
I would be curious to see if a visual indication of a group could be done by stacking the program icons in a staggered way with the receding icons dimmed. The quantity of icons doesn't have to be exact, but rather to convey there's more than one process represented there.
BTW, on the topic of taskbar desires, I wish there was an option to disable the showing of the program's textual name in the task bar, leaving only the display of the icon. Ideally, the user could decide to display either icon or label or both.
I have my taskbar docked to the side of the screen because doing so automatically hides the program name, only showing the icon, which is the only way I can make the taskbar hide the label. There is no option.
I find "icons-only" is faster cognitively to find the program I want by shape and color rather than to read a textual label.
Any way that this option could be added?
I really like this indicator as it is, I need to know how many windows are there without having to click everywhere (which would also be especially annoying because it would open the windows immediately when there's only 1).
I also agree with GregC.
Just the indicator without the number. That's the optimum imho.
As for stacking the icons: the idea is good, but not practical. Imagine an application's icon already has some kind of stacking in its design - it'll be very confusing and hard to make out if there's only one instance running or not.
[quote]Is it actually useful? Does it matter if there are 2 or 3 windows in the group? Is it important to be able to visually identify it as a group?[/quote]
You can sum up the to three times 'yes'. Well, only a part of the responders are taking use of the exact number.
Removing/hiding this features will only gain very little for the visually tidiness (window titles do not have to vanish and only groups are affected). From a usability aspect, a group indicator is necessary. A counter is not, but it wouldn't confuse users, as the meaning is obvious (even more than the triangle).
So I don't think there is a advantage to change the status quo (while one might add options).
to be honest, i dont use any grouping at all and im the fastest that way.
I tried everything, different kind of grouping and sorting, i even tried the GNOME-Shell and Unity.
But the fastest way to work for me still is to put the taskbar that large that 3 rows of open windows fits inside of it.
That way i can have 21 opened Windows without any problems of finding them or any space problems.
Maybe you can use a "light" at the bottom of the entry, a la Mac OS X's Dock. In this case, not to indicate that the entry is running, as Mac does, but rather indicates that this is not just a single window.... just my POV.
I find the actual number useful especially with Dolphin and Firefox and use them every day.
I'd prefer the number as now to be the default and a configurable option to not show the number be an option for those who prefer it that way. It would be obvious to new folks that way. Old hands could tailor it to their desires.
This would avoid the Gnome mandatory simplicity deprivation of utility.
Post a Comment