People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS.
Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.
I'm grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple's going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don't really think to do it.
I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.
It's unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.
(If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however).
> (If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however).
Windows-style? Microsoft's APIs and design paradigms are as floating-window focused as they are maximized-focused. And I don't think I've had a window open maximized since the XP days. Multiple document interfaces were a first class citizen for a decade and a half, so clearly they understand and encourage window use.
Single task, maximized windows are a user paradigm. Usually by regular old users that just want a browser, tax program, video game, etc and that Windows doesn't get in the way of. These same people will use the expander in macOS, or just use their computer with a single half-sized window in the middle of their screen. "Power" users (devs, creatives, traders, PMs, CSRs, etc) will best use the environment in any OS, for their use case.
In addition, maximized windows are ubiquitous on mobile platforms and are a paradigm that Apple seems insistent on, considering how hard the Android (and Microsoft before their inevitable mobile death) companies are working on solving the multi-tasking problem. Even now, I can have multiple floating, resizable windows on a Galaxy device; while I can not on an iOS one.
Windows 10 brought in some decent tiling/snapping, and windows 11 greatly expanded the tiling options for windows.
It’s not i3 or bspwm or anything, but Microsoft does at least seem to understand desire for the window manager to help you nicely place several windows in to nice places.
I really appreciate apps that open new windows where it makes sense, but I'm pretty sure the reason it died out is because people started using too many windows for conventional floating window managers to handle. I'm not sure if many people really felt the burden it would have caused, because the growth in number of windows arguably began with having many webpages open at once, and firefox, and then later internet explorer with version 7 (or maybe 6?), introduced tabs as a core part of using a web browser.
When I'm using a tiling window manager that supports tab-style layouts (i3, sway, gnome+popOS) applications that open new windows liberally are great because the alternative is to have an ad hoc bespoke window manager inside every application, and it's much better to have a single consistent window management experience at the OS level with one set of keybondings and predictable behavior.
But if I had to have a floating window for every webpage I have open, I'd never find anything!
Not everybody works in a browser. I usually have an Edge, a Teams , an Outlook, a Total Commander and an Excel window always open. Then the working windows depending on the task: doors, CAD tools, etc.
Window management is a solved issue: just give me a fvwm window manager and i'm happy.
But of course, on Windows (see above) no fvwm and Gnome must reinvent the wheel every other year.
I would take issue with your first claim. People, in general, have very mixed spatial sensibilities. Is why it takes herculean efforts to keep dishes organized in a family. Some people have organizations they want. Some have different and incompatible organizations they want. Some people just don't care.
Seriously, look at the insane amount of effort that a grocery store has to go through to keep things organized. Keeping things spatially coherent is just not a thing that people do for things they don't care about.
To get even crazier, look at the vast differences in how different clothing stores spatially organize each other. Each is organized. Each is fairly incompatible with the others. Even department stores have a great deal of variability in the different departments.
So, any attempt at rethinking window management with the idea that you can find a superior form of management is so doomed to failure that it is kind of comical.
Not only this, after decades I have decided that fewer visible windows is better for my focus. I went from using ultrawide and multiple monitors to a single 27” 5k monitor and find myself more productive than ever.
If the window is out of the way, on another virtual desktop or behind the current window it takes less of my attention.
I don’t respond to email or chat as fast because I’ll only check these apps infrequently throughout the day. At most I’ll have two app windows on display at once now.
Everyone is different and people are different from one day to the next.
I wouldn't cite grocery stores as a model for "organization" given that their "information architecture" of where things are in relation to another is driven by dark design patterns like "put the most often sought after items at the BACK of the store (like milk / eggs) so people have to walk through and see all the other products". There's nothing "organized" about this insofar as being an optimal organization for anything but manipulating people.
> I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.
It's weird that ability to see 2 chats at once is now both more arcane and complex than when the chat apps started; in most you'd need to explicitly have 2 separate instances of either webapp or webpage running to do that.
This is exactly how I feel, and you put it very well. The one nice thing (to be fair, there's probably others but I haven't used it very long) about Win 11 is that your external monitor remembers your exact window configuration at the time of disconnection, so when you plug your laptop back in, you're good to go.
But the broader issue of spaced out information, wasted space, and a lack of *density* is what really drives me nuts. Cyberpunk promised me pic related (https://i.redd.it/dqipakmui3161.jpg) but we got tiling into preset (aka rigidly defined) configs instead. Note that I'm talking about the by-default experience.
Single window apps came in with NeXT. I heard a theory early on in the NeXT/Apple merger that it was because the window server buffering was so heavyweight on early hardware that multiple windows just made things too slow.
While I personally agree with you, I think you're overestimating the desire of most users to manage multiple window clutter themselves except in very limited contexts.
that sounds very weird to me. NeXT applications very much had multiple windows, and NeXT computers as well as PCs running NeXTStep could handle multiple windows just fine. even the app menu was its own window floating independently from the actual application window. so i really do not see where the claim would come from that multiple windows made things slow.
I honestly don't know how someone could do much of anything in a "single window" on a 27" iMac screen. (Anything beyond, say, watching a movie or the like.)
On a laptop, sure, to a point. But these drive in theater style displays? Not quite sure how that works. Maybe it's great for video editing, but the screen is so large, and the eye can really focus on just a small portion of it, just seems like a lot of wasted space.
For example, I have this in a browser window, on my 27", with the text box, at, say, 6" wide by 2" tall, is roughly centered on the screen, about 30% down. The unexpanded text area has, I'd say, 6" of "margin" on the top, 8-10" on each side, and similar amount to the bottom. (Arguably it's a bit too hight right now for me.)
Not the window, mind, the text entry box (which could be expanded, but I don't). So, I'm easily "wasting" over 90% of my display right now. If it was "full screen", it would be crammed in the upper left corner. I'd either have to chronically cock my head, of simply shift the entire display over to put it in a comfortable position.
> I honestly don't know how someone could do much of anything in a "single window" on a 27" iMac screen. (Anything beyond, say, watching a movie or the like.)
Well, IDE windows have sub-components while still techncially being "single window". CAD/graphics related ones like space. Most other apps don't need more than half of that screen.
> Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience,
I think so, too, but I wouldn’t bet on it being true. I think we spent a lot of time rearranging windows, losing productivity, especially on the small screens of the day.
In some cases I think that was worth it in the sense that you could set up your workspace with the tools you needed for the job at hand.
Maybe, the issue is more that modern applications dictate your work setup too much, not allowing you to make them feel your own?
> and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop.
That’s true, but I think the usefulness of drag and drop is limited, anyways (for example, when did you last drag and drop a picture between windows or a text selection? And aside: do you know iOS supports dragging and dropping text selections?)
> To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.
I don’t follow that chain of thought. How does activating your spatial memory make an OS great for creative tasks?
Also how are the current single-window-with-inbuilt-palettes applications worse for “activating your spatial memory”? The palettes still are there, and in more predictable locations.
You made me think about how my phone has 5 times as many pixel across as my first PC(I personally owned) yet I can't do half as much with those pixels as I could with that PC....
How is 3000 pixels not enough to let me arrange windows myself but 640 was?
I know you are just ranting, but the size of the corresponding pixels is just vastly different. You can VNC/RDP into a desktop from your phone — try to actually click what you want afterwards. Let’s not pretend that designers are mentally challenged or something.
I think we'll see gui toolkits adopt something like reactive design, where if you have the screen real estate the single-window-with-tabs will permit you to break them out to a dockable window, a modal, etc. Less choice, but I could see it going this way.
Conversely I regard modal dialogs as one of the worse sins a ui designer can commit. Sometimes necessary, but they should never willingly interfere with interactivity. This then sort of leads into the next point.
Overlapping windows. It lets you put more applications on the screen at once but it does not really do much for the user in terms of workflow. The window underneath is obscured so I can't really use it without fishing for it. When I am working I ether want to see a few windows at once(documentation|editor) (reference|photoshop) (chat|web) or I want to only see one application, I never go "Oh boy I am glad I can only see half this window". So tiling window managers are close to the end game for desktop productivity. It is a shame that windows/mac are so entrenched in mediocrity and make implementing them fiddly and awkward.
> When I am working I ether want to see a few windows at once(documentation|editor) (reference|photoshop) (chat|web) or I want to only see one application, I never go "Oh boy I am glad I can only see half this window".
Actually, thanks to "responsive design" and whatever other new inventions, I often go "boy, would I like to only see half this browser window" when I want to have the (documentation|editor) setup on a smaller screen (i3 on a laptop). Because I want to see the actual documentation, not the multiple navigation menus that take up half the browser window. And no, I can't zoom in and pan, because then it will trigger some breakpoint and whatnot and the text becomes comically huge as it thinks I'm reading on a phone.
As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often, but when I do I don't usually want the window to be spirited away to its own separate universe, and the apps that actually need fullscreen implement that functionality independent of the window manager.
It's interesting they're considering implementing a way for apps to signal to the window manager the size it prefers for its windows. This has been a concept on OS X since 10.0, though it's only ever been used by the OS figuring out what size to zoom to/from when the user clicks the green zoom button. If this feature makes the cut it I'll be curious to see what other uses they find for it.
One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid virtual desktops. OS X 10.5/10.6 had what I'd consider the best implementation of the idea and I loved it. It leveraged spatial memory much better than the linear layouts popular these days, especially with short smooth animations to make movements between desktops more concrete mentally. 2D grid virtual desktops can still be found in more "old school" type DEs like XFCE but the level of polish isn't comparable.
> the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical
after being given a macbook pro for work, i can't stop thinking that gnome developers/designers people are just people that didn't manage to get hired by Apple, and just keep copying mac os over and over again.
What GNOME takes from macOS is mostly things that are shared with iPadOS, interestingly. The Mac-unique bits, especially anything power user oriented, don’t typically get copied.
So if anything I’d say that GNOME is more like a desktop reimagining of iPadOS.
> As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often
As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just normally and without useless decorations like a titlebar.
I love the new UI that started on Windows, where Edge doesn't lose a full line to a useless titlebar and close button: instead, there's a X at the top right.
You'll wonder, but what if I need to resize the window or move it? But as I run my windows in fullscreen mode, I don't need to do that: if I want to start a terminal, it's started on another "virtual desktop" where it'll also be run in fullscreen mode
Someone else said they thought "tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution" - I don't want a decent solution!
I'd rather have edge offer me vertical tabs with icons, wezterm offer horizontal tabs with ascii text and so on - more room for content! And no tabs when there's only 1 opened tab, and ideally, no space lost for the scrollbar either: unless I'm actively scrolling, I don't need to see it.
> One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid
It's too complicated: just give me a line, with numbers from say 1 to 9 like the numbers on my keyboard: if I press Win + 1, take me to that desktop. If I'm already there and the app I pinned to that desktop isn't there, start it.
> the level of polish isn't comparable
Try hyprland with Arch: before I did, I thought I hated Linux, turns out I just hated Gnome and Ubuntu.
macOS's full screen mode is like the experience of using hyprland. It is vastly inferior. Yes, it hides window decorations and that is good. But its lacking shortcuts to switch directly to a particular workspace (so it lacks the Win + 1 feature that you are talking about, you can only transition between workspaces with a keyboard in order with ctrl + left or right)
I’ve taken a peek at hyprland in the past and it looks great for what it is, but tiling is not my cup of tea, and even if it can be configured to float everything by default its design isn’t floating-first.
I use almost exclusively fullscreen windows in macos. A couple of apps are splitscreen. I like to have 2 terminals side by side. And there is a kitchen sink screen where I put random windows.
I tried that (e.g. having one workspace for my fullscren IDE, then to the "right" of that a workspace with a fullscreen terminal), but I found macOS rearranged my workspaces, so about 10% of the time when I went to the app by Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right I'd end up looking at a different app. So annoying!
I found there was an "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" which I could switch off, which helped, but it still did it sometimes (I can't remember why now).
So now I just don't use that feature at all, which is a shame. It was just too jarring to be looking at the wrong thing 10% of the time, really broke the flow.
Plus when you use Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right you have to wait for the animation to end before typing, otherwise your key presses are lost, which isn't great when you want to Ctrl-Right twice to get to the terminal and then type a command. Have to always remember to wait 0.5 seconds or so before typing otherwise you've typed "s -l" rather than "ls -l" etc.
Do you have the same problems, and if so how did you solve them? I'd love to be able to use this feature but for me it was just too annoying.
I hate fullscreen mode, and I use an addon, Rightzoom, to disable it. I don't use gestures, and I sold my Magic Trackpad. I use a PC mouse on my Mac, with 5 buttons, including critically a middle button, which I use hundreds of times a day. And a mechanical clicky full-travel keyboard. I have 2 × 27" monitors and each is usually showing at least 2, maybe 3, windows. I only keep Spaces enabled for the independent menu bars; I never use the functionality.
I am not saying you're wrong. I just find it an amusing example of how different separate people's preferences can be.
I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm not sure why.
1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.
2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway.
3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present. I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
I do like the idea they mention of a maximum sensible size for an app. That could be useful regardless of all the other stuff.
I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.
I have keybindings that go directly to the workspace that I am interested in. Fifteen years ago I dedicated 10 workspaces to fullscreen tasks I do daily and now I can go to my browser with a keybinding or to my code editor with another. I have been on workmates computers with tens to a hundred windows open and I am dumbfounded on how they get anything done.
A task should operate on one workspace and there should be keybindings to go directly to that task. Of course I am a pro power user and normies would be horrified at my workflow. Gnome devs try to consider everyone and sometimes miss the mark and make everyone unhappy. So I am going to volunteer to use their concept and provide feedback.
1) Always remember location and size hashed by monitor(s) arrangement.
2) Get rid of "Maximize" and go back to "Zoom" where I can switch between 2 positions/sizes: one is the smallest window that will fit and layout everything perfectly without scroll bars, and the other is point 1) remembered location/size.
3) Simple floating panels/palettes/icons. Nothing jarring. One menu bar:
* Application File Edit View Help Wed 3:59 PM ⏻
Software Update... Switch User
- Log Out...
File Browser -
Web Browser Restart
Text Edit Shut Down
Terminal
> I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.
Alternatively, I would love a window manager that is just a maximized Firefox patched to display all native apps inside browser tabs. :)
True, really it should be the window managers job to provide tabs. I think browser tabs came about because people wanted many browser windows open and the windows desktop was not really providing an ideal user experience, so the browser vendors said "fine we will do it our self".
But really, if done correctly every application could be tabbed, and the application would not have to do anything.
I think that describes aptly why no paradigm is fitting for everyone...
> 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.
I want to explicitly put them where I want (on which virtual desktop) and have it always be the same on reboot. If I want to change the default location, I want to change it explicitly.
Reason is because then I can have single shortcut that always leads me to the right VD with right app. <Super> + 4 is always IDR, <Super> + 2 is always Firefox etc. and I don't want that to change because yesterday for work I did I needed a bit different layout temporarily.
> 2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway.
I'd probably just had it split it in tiles. I never want to move a window and I never need to have space in-between them.
I want to put apps that I interact with constantly near eachother and references I use close, and preferable just have easy keyboard/mouse way move/swap them around
My current setup is just 2 fullscreen apps on 2 monitors. I'd sometimes want third (or big one split into tiles), but that's about it. I sometimes split one in 2, say 2 pieces of documentation, or chat + something else but many apps benefit from full wide on 24 inch screen.
> 3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present.
I don't get the point of launcher ever showing up uninvinted
I don't see the need of launcher ever sharing same space with apps, it's not like they interact. It's for launching.
alt+f2, type what I need to run, enter, that's entire interaction required. I guess I wouldn't mind if some extra widgets could live there like rss/mail/weather, as there is plenty of space, but it is for launching, so it should be overlay
So, what is someone's idea of perfect desktop might be hell for someone's else. It's basically no size fits all.
> I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
At this point I think GNOME guys are looking for reason they are still employed and change shit for no good reason.
> > I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
At this point I think GNOME guys are looking for reason they are still employed and change shit for no good reason.
Or you know, people are visual - it’s much easier to find that open document based on its outline than based on YourEditor - A… title and an icon that is shared by many windows.
There are extensions to disable any kind of animation. I use the Windows key to open the app list/search and hot keys to move between virtual desktops (activities, but I use the la name). Nothing moves and resizes on my desktop.
Clearly I am a very simple person, and I don't get all these window management wars.
Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed floating on top of another.
Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn't as nicely integrated.
Here are some sample workflows where I have a bunch of different windows open. But I also have three screens (38" ultrawide - so I have close to 180* of screen around me).
* Full stack dev. One window for backend code (sub-tiled into two or three editor windows). One window for terminal (subtiled into two or three consoles). One window for Sublime with various notes and configs. One window for front-end code. And a bunch of minimized windows for docker desktop, file managers, Chrome, etc etc.
* 3D graphics. One window (sub-tiled into a couple of views) for 3D viewing and editing. One window for reference materials and textures. One window for render output.
* Scientific compute. A window with PDFs; window with Chrome with towardsdatascience / kaggle / stackoverflow; window subtiled into several ipynb (editor) views. Maybe some more diagrams / graphs / etc for a good measure.
I do all that (well, similar enough stuff). I just have virtual-desktop-per-app (or pair of apps and switch between them
<super>+1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 for left-side windows, <super>+F1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 for right side.
+ sometimes a floating terminal window. I3 allows to bind window to "scratchpad" which is basically overlay windows that can be shown/hidden with one key
> What is everyone doing that needs something else?
You omitted to explain what you do for a living.
I write code for a living, and what you describe simply doesn't work for me given the many different things I need to look at and refer to in parallel (without having to perform a hard context switch such as moving to another workspace or un-maximizing a window) to be able to cobble together code that works.
Currently I work as a security architect. I have previously worked as a software developer, solution architect and systems administrator.
I do like having more than one screen available. Having three is ideal but I mostly just have two. But I just maximise a window on each screen, or have two windows on one of the screens. No advanced window management needed!
yeah same, i3 does this for me perfectly. the only nit i would give it is that i wish the list of window tiles made it a little more apparent the borders, like including app icons or something like that
With a bit more work to not surprise the user and not break the window organization (e.g. the user really wanted these two windows next to each other), this mosaic paradigm could actually be really cool. Looking forward to see how it develops. If the kinks are worked out I may very well switch over from i3.
> As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the windows are automatically tiled.
I can see this part being really cool, when the user doesn't care about the layout, and really, really, annoying when the user does care.
Side note: the article should really have made a comparison between a tiling wm like i3 and this new mosaic concept, not between gnome tiling and mosaic...i3 is still way better and they'd do well to compare to the actual 'state of the art'.
I understand the desire to make changes, especially from people so close to a project. But as a user it is painful. If I could think of any positive changes in the last 20 years maybe I would have a different reaction. But I can't so I don't.
Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating. I have an uncomfortable visceral reaction to even seeing a Gnome desktop.
But bad design isn't unique to Gnome. In the modern world we love data, but I think we are bad at collecting what matters. The number of times I say "fuck you" out loud to my iPhone in a day is non-zero. A good designer should care when that happens.
So, sure, move my windows around without asking. Continue with your misguided belief that you know better than me what I want. But give me a big red "fuck you" button to click when you get it wrong.
> Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating.
The changes they made to GNOME 10-15 years ago was enough to get me to abandon Linux and switch to macOS all those years ago. Every time I look at GNOME, I just keep seeing features they removed rather than the ones they added.
Yeah dude... that's one reason why the Minimize button exists on Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you know it's too important to...say...been removed (from default setting)?
Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important... It's so important that on SOME desktop environment that don't support such feature, one of it's most popular plugin is designed to restore the functionality so the users can actually enjoy the DE instead of fighting it.
Yet many people set it to autohide. At that point the difference between pressing super, a hot corner or autohide is quite minor.
> one reason why the Minimize button
One feature I like in gnome is the title bar clicks. Double-click or middle-click anywhere on the title bar feels much nicer than hitting the specific tiny maximize/minimize buttons. Unfortunately, as far as I remember that is also off by default (though easily turned on in tweaks). However, I would be perfectly on board, if gnome had that as the default instead of minimize buttons.
Well, I set my Dash To Dock to autohide only when a window maybe overlapping with the dock. As soon I move the window away, the dock pops back up. Which is the best of both worlds setting IMO.
There are great benefits of having an (almost) always-visible taskbar, one is that it allows you to plan your actions before you move and click, and it also enables more efficient actions when you want to bring up/down more than just one window (simply due to the shorter distance the cursor/hand/finger has to move between).
Also, I'm not really talking about maximizing windows, that problem has already been solved IMO. But as far as I know, by default, there is no similar-acting alternative for minimizing window besides Super+H hotkey which for me is a bit awkward to press, plus I don't really have big hands :( also, I rest my left pinky on the left side of left Control, move it to Super sounded like a lot of effort (and then I've to also locate H???, you know what? I'll survive a few unminimized windows :)).
The Minimize button is still accessible on some windows if you right click the title bar and select "Hide". So the function is still there, just more annoying to access.
And the Dock/Dash problem is actually linked to the minimize feature. Because when user click Minimize, the window then needs a place to be "minimized to" (and an animation is also need to show how it happened). Maybe the lack of Taskbar could be one of the reasons why Minimize button was removed? Just me guessing.
I do respect your use case, but as a desktop environment, I don't think GNOME should implement it as default. But on the other hand, if GNOME is really committed to be a tiling-first desktop environment, then removing the Minimize button could be a reasonable plot on the roadmap.
I've been using i3 (within the larger Regolith package) for a few years now and its hard for me to non-tiling WMs now. However I do think there would be a lot of improvements, especially with large desktop monitors.
One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy (https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/21720091...). Selecting windows would swap out the main window with the scaled version on the border. This would give you the ability to focus on one window that is always centered while seeing scaled versions of all the other window's output.
Dynamic tiling window managers like dwm and xmonad can do this. They default to a 'master/stack' layout but you can change the layout algorithm. You esentially have a 'master' window and a stack of secondary windows. You can promote a window with super+enter and it gets swapped into the master area.
There are some autotiling scripts for i3 that can emulate this behavior as well.
I thought that xmonad just changed the windows dimensions and location for most of the layout configurations, can it change scale of the windows as well?
Many years ago, 1982, there was an applie ii video game named Dung Beetles. It was a pac man style dot chomper in a maze. Except the maze was quite large and the area around the player was viewed as if through a magnifying glass. I would find it interesting -- but probably unworkable -- if my virtual desktop were 5x and any window not focused were small and when focused it blows up to normal size. With some options of being able to make windows stay large when not focused and etc.
The centeredmaster patch for dwm works roughly like that - the master window(s) is in the center of the screen and the rest is stacked on the left and right.
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Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.
I'm grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple's going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don't really think to do it.
I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.
It's unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.
(If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however).
Windows-style? Microsoft's APIs and design paradigms are as floating-window focused as they are maximized-focused. And I don't think I've had a window open maximized since the XP days. Multiple document interfaces were a first class citizen for a decade and a half, so clearly they understand and encourage window use.
Single task, maximized windows are a user paradigm. Usually by regular old users that just want a browser, tax program, video game, etc and that Windows doesn't get in the way of. These same people will use the expander in macOS, or just use their computer with a single half-sized window in the middle of their screen. "Power" users (devs, creatives, traders, PMs, CSRs, etc) will best use the environment in any OS, for their use case.
In addition, maximized windows are ubiquitous on mobile platforms and are a paradigm that Apple seems insistent on, considering how hard the Android (and Microsoft before their inevitable mobile death) companies are working on solving the multi-tasking problem. Even now, I can have multiple floating, resizable windows on a Galaxy device; while I can not on an iOS one.
Windows 10 brought in some decent tiling/snapping, and windows 11 greatly expanded the tiling options for windows.
It’s not i3 or bspwm or anything, but Microsoft does at least seem to understand desire for the window manager to help you nicely place several windows in to nice places.
When I'm using a tiling window manager that supports tab-style layouts (i3, sway, gnome+popOS) applications that open new windows liberally are great because the alternative is to have an ad hoc bespoke window manager inside every application, and it's much better to have a single consistent window management experience at the OS level with one set of keybondings and predictable behavior.
But if I had to have a floating window for every webpage I have open, I'd never find anything!
Window management is a solved issue: just give me a fvwm window manager and i'm happy.
But of course, on Windows (see above) no fvwm and Gnome must reinvent the wheel every other year.
That's how I do it (and prefer it!)
I am very allergic to tiling windows and somewhat allergic to tabs. I want everything to be a free-floating window so I can organize things as I wish.
Seriously, look at the insane amount of effort that a grocery store has to go through to keep things organized. Keeping things spatially coherent is just not a thing that people do for things they don't care about.
To get even crazier, look at the vast differences in how different clothing stores spatially organize each other. Each is organized. Each is fairly incompatible with the others. Even department stores have a great deal of variability in the different departments.
So, any attempt at rethinking window management with the idea that you can find a superior form of management is so doomed to failure that it is kind of comical.
If the window is out of the way, on another virtual desktop or behind the current window it takes less of my attention.
I don’t respond to email or chat as fast because I’ll only check these apps infrequently throughout the day. At most I’ll have two app windows on display at once now.
Everyone is different and people are different from one day to the next.
It's weird that ability to see 2 chats at once is now both more arcane and complex than when the chat apps started; in most you'd need to explicitly have 2 separate instances of either webapp or webpage running to do that.
But the broader issue of spaced out information, wasted space, and a lack of *density* is what really drives me nuts. Cyberpunk promised me pic related (https://i.redd.it/dqipakmui3161.jpg) but we got tiling into preset (aka rigidly defined) configs instead. Note that I'm talking about the by-default experience.
While I personally agree with you, I think you're overestimating the desire of most users to manage multiple window clutter themselves except in very limited contexts.
NeXT sold megapixel displays as standard. It was considerably more window-heavy than most GUIs because it was only sold to power users.
Hell, even menus went in their own window!
On a laptop, sure, to a point. But these drive in theater style displays? Not quite sure how that works. Maybe it's great for video editing, but the screen is so large, and the eye can really focus on just a small portion of it, just seems like a lot of wasted space.
For example, I have this in a browser window, on my 27", with the text box, at, say, 6" wide by 2" tall, is roughly centered on the screen, about 30% down. The unexpanded text area has, I'd say, 6" of "margin" on the top, 8-10" on each side, and similar amount to the bottom. (Arguably it's a bit too hight right now for me.)
Not the window, mind, the text entry box (which could be expanded, but I don't). So, I'm easily "wasting" over 90% of my display right now. If it was "full screen", it would be crammed in the upper left corner. I'd either have to chronically cock my head, of simply shift the entire display over to put it in a comfortable position.
Well, IDE windows have sub-components while still techncially being "single window". CAD/graphics related ones like space. Most other apps don't need more than half of that screen.
See also 'toolkits, not apps' tweet by Bret Victor : https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057...
I think so, too, but I wouldn’t bet on it being true. I think we spent a lot of time rearranging windows, losing productivity, especially on the small screens of the day.
In some cases I think that was worth it in the sense that you could set up your workspace with the tools you needed for the job at hand.
Maybe, the issue is more that modern applications dictate your work setup too much, not allowing you to make them feel your own?
> and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop.
That’s true, but I think the usefulness of drag and drop is limited, anyways (for example, when did you last drag and drop a picture between windows or a text selection? And aside: do you know iOS supports dragging and dropping text selections?)
> To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.
I don’t follow that chain of thought. How does activating your spatial memory make an OS great for creative tasks?
Also how are the current single-window-with-inbuilt-palettes applications worse for “activating your spatial memory”? The palettes still are there, and in more predictable locations.
How is 3000 pixels not enough to let me arrange windows myself but 640 was?
Overlapping windows. It lets you put more applications on the screen at once but it does not really do much for the user in terms of workflow. The window underneath is obscured so I can't really use it without fishing for it. When I am working I ether want to see a few windows at once(documentation|editor) (reference|photoshop) (chat|web) or I want to only see one application, I never go "Oh boy I am glad I can only see half this window". So tiling window managers are close to the end game for desktop productivity. It is a shame that windows/mac are so entrenched in mediocrity and make implementing them fiddly and awkward.
Actually, thanks to "responsive design" and whatever other new inventions, I often go "boy, would I like to only see half this browser window" when I want to have the (documentation|editor) setup on a smaller screen (i3 on a laptop). Because I want to see the actual documentation, not the multiple navigation menus that take up half the browser window. And no, I can't zoom in and pan, because then it will trigger some breakpoint and whatnot and the text becomes comically huge as it thinks I'm reading on a phone.
Me too. It's a terrible paradigm that I'd thought we'd left behind a long time ago. But I guess everything comes around again.
It's interesting they're considering implementing a way for apps to signal to the window manager the size it prefers for its windows. This has been a concept on OS X since 10.0, though it's only ever been used by the OS figuring out what size to zoom to/from when the user clicks the green zoom button. If this feature makes the cut it I'll be curious to see what other uses they find for it.
One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid virtual desktops. OS X 10.5/10.6 had what I'd consider the best implementation of the idea and I loved it. It leveraged spatial memory much better than the linear layouts popular these days, especially with short smooth animations to make movements between desktops more concrete mentally. 2D grid virtual desktops can still be found in more "old school" type DEs like XFCE but the level of polish isn't comparable.
after being given a macbook pro for work, i can't stop thinking that gnome developers/designers people are just people that didn't manage to get hired by Apple, and just keep copying mac os over and over again.
So if anything I’d say that GNOME is more like a desktop reimagining of iPadOS.
As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just normally and without useless decorations like a titlebar.
I love the new UI that started on Windows, where Edge doesn't lose a full line to a useless titlebar and close button: instead, there's a X at the top right.
You'll wonder, but what if I need to resize the window or move it? But as I run my windows in fullscreen mode, I don't need to do that: if I want to start a terminal, it's started on another "virtual desktop" where it'll also be run in fullscreen mode
Someone else said they thought "tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution" - I don't want a decent solution!
I'd rather have edge offer me vertical tabs with icons, wezterm offer horizontal tabs with ascii text and so on - more room for content! And no tabs when there's only 1 opened tab, and ideally, no space lost for the scrollbar either: unless I'm actively scrolling, I don't need to see it.
> One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid
It's too complicated: just give me a line, with numbers from say 1 to 9 like the numbers on my keyboard: if I press Win + 1, take me to that desktop. If I'm already there and the app I pinned to that desktop isn't there, start it.
> the level of polish isn't comparable
Try hyprland with Arch: before I did, I thought I hated Linux, turns out I just hated Gnome and Ubuntu.
macOS's full screen mode is like the experience of using hyprland. It is vastly inferior. Yes, it hides window decorations and that is good. But its lacking shortcuts to switch directly to a particular workspace (so it lacks the Win + 1 feature that you are talking about, you can only transition between workspaces with a keyboard in order with ctrl + left or right)
I found there was an "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" which I could switch off, which helped, but it still did it sometimes (I can't remember why now).
So now I just don't use that feature at all, which is a shame. It was just too jarring to be looking at the wrong thing 10% of the time, really broke the flow.
Plus when you use Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right you have to wait for the animation to end before typing, otherwise your key presses are lost, which isn't great when you want to Ctrl-Right twice to get to the terminal and then type a command. Have to always remember to wait 0.5 seconds or so before typing otherwise you've typed "s -l" rather than "ls -l" etc.
Do you have the same problems, and if so how did you solve them? I'd love to be able to use this feature but for me it was just too annoying.
I hate fullscreen mode, and I use an addon, Rightzoom, to disable it. I don't use gestures, and I sold my Magic Trackpad. I use a PC mouse on my Mac, with 5 buttons, including critically a middle button, which I use hundreds of times a day. And a mechanical clicky full-travel keyboard. I have 2 × 27" monitors and each is usually showing at least 2, maybe 3, windows. I only keep Spaces enabled for the independent menu bars; I never use the functionality.
I am not saying you're wrong. I just find it an amusing example of how different separate people's preferences can be.
1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.
2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway.
3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present. I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
I do like the idea they mention of a maximum sensible size for an app. That could be useful regardless of all the other stuff.
I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.
Strong disagree here. I use a 38" Ultrawide and I have 10 workspaces open at the moment. All of them dedicated to a single in-flight task.
If a workspace is a desktop multiple workspaces is a workshop.
A task should operate on one workspace and there should be keybindings to go directly to that task. Of course I am a pro power user and normies would be horrified at my workflow. Gnome devs try to consider everyone and sometimes miss the mark and make everyone unhappy. So I am going to volunteer to use their concept and provide feedback.
1) Always remember location and size hashed by monitor(s) arrangement.
2) Get rid of "Maximize" and go back to "Zoom" where I can switch between 2 positions/sizes: one is the smallest window that will fit and layout everything perfectly without scroll bars, and the other is point 1) remembered location/size.
3) Simple floating panels/palettes/icons. Nothing jarring. One menu bar:
Alternatively, I would love a window manager that is just a maximized Firefox patched to display all native apps inside browser tabs. :)
But really, if done correctly every application could be tabbed, and the application would not have to do anything.
Feel free to join https://matrix.to/#/#design:gnome.org
Tobias will be happy to discuss with you (and everybody else who has constructive insights)
> 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs.
I want to explicitly put them where I want (on which virtual desktop) and have it always be the same on reboot. If I want to change the default location, I want to change it explicitly.
Reason is because then I can have single shortcut that always leads me to the right VD with right app. <Super> + 4 is always IDR, <Super> + 2 is always Firefox etc. and I don't want that to change because yesterday for work I did I needed a bit different layout temporarily.
> 2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway.
I'd probably just had it split it in tiles. I never want to move a window and I never need to have space in-between them.
I want to put apps that I interact with constantly near eachother and references I use close, and preferable just have easy keyboard/mouse way move/swap them around
My current setup is just 2 fullscreen apps on 2 monitors. I'd sometimes want third (or big one split into tiles), but that's about it. I sometimes split one in 2, say 2 pieces of documentation, or chat + something else but many apps benefit from full wide on 24 inch screen.
> 3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present.
I don't get the point of launcher ever showing up uninvinted
I don't see the need of launcher ever sharing same space with apps, it's not like they interact. It's for launching.
alt+f2, type what I need to run, enter, that's entire interaction required. I guess I wouldn't mind if some extra widgets could live there like rss/mail/weather, as there is plenty of space, but it is for launching, so it should be overlay
So, what is someone's idea of perfect desktop might be hell for someone's else. It's basically no size fits all.
> I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded.
At this point I think GNOME guys are looking for reason they are still employed and change shit for no good reason.
Or you know, people are visual - it’s much easier to find that open document based on its outline than based on YourEditor - A… title and an icon that is shared by many windows.
As long as its easily disabled. I used to have to patch firefox so it would open where I opened it and not move itself to where it was closed.
Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed floating on top of another.
Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn't as nicely integrated.
What is everyone doing that needs something else?
* Full stack dev. One window for backend code (sub-tiled into two or three editor windows). One window for terminal (subtiled into two or three consoles). One window for Sublime with various notes and configs. One window for front-end code. And a bunch of minimized windows for docker desktop, file managers, Chrome, etc etc.
* 3D graphics. One window (sub-tiled into a couple of views) for 3D viewing and editing. One window for reference materials and textures. One window for render output.
* Scientific compute. A window with PDFs; window with Chrome with towardsdatascience / kaggle / stackoverflow; window subtiled into several ipynb (editor) views. Maybe some more diagrams / graphs / etc for a good measure.
<super>+1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 for left-side windows, <super>+F1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 for right side.
+ sometimes a floating terminal window. I3 allows to bind window to "scratchpad" which is basically overlay windows that can be shown/hidden with one key
You omitted to explain what you do for a living.
I write code for a living, and what you describe simply doesn't work for me given the many different things I need to look at and refer to in parallel (without having to perform a hard context switch such as moving to another workspace or un-maximizing a window) to be able to cobble together code that works.
I do like having more than one screen available. Having three is ideal but I mostly just have two. But I just maximise a window on each screen, or have two windows on one of the screens. No advanced window management needed!
Dead Comment
> As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the windows are automatically tiled.
I can see this part being really cool, when the user doesn't care about the layout, and really, really, annoying when the user does care.
Side note: the article should really have made a comparison between a tiling wm like i3 and this new mosaic concept, not between gnome tiling and mosaic...i3 is still way better and they'd do well to compare to the actual 'state of the art'.
Deleted Comment
Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating. I have an uncomfortable visceral reaction to even seeing a Gnome desktop.
But bad design isn't unique to Gnome. In the modern world we love data, but I think we are bad at collecting what matters. The number of times I say "fuck you" out loud to my iPhone in a day is non-zero. A good designer should care when that happens.
So, sure, move my windows around without asking. Continue with your misguided belief that you know better than me what I want. But give me a big red "fuck you" button to click when you get it wrong.
The changes they made to GNOME 10-15 years ago was enough to get me to abandon Linux and switch to macOS all those years ago. Every time I look at GNOME, I just keep seeing features they removed rather than the ones they added.
Yeah dude... that's one reason why the Minimize button exists on Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you know it's too important to...say...been removed (from default setting)?
Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important... It's so important that on SOME desktop environment that don't support such feature, one of it's most popular plugin is designed to restore the functionality so the users can actually enjoy the DE instead of fighting it.
Yet many people set it to autohide. At that point the difference between pressing super, a hot corner or autohide is quite minor.
> one reason why the Minimize button
One feature I like in gnome is the title bar clicks. Double-click or middle-click anywhere on the title bar feels much nicer than hitting the specific tiny maximize/minimize buttons. Unfortunately, as far as I remember that is also off by default (though easily turned on in tweaks). However, I would be perfectly on board, if gnome had that as the default instead of minimize buttons.
There are great benefits of having an (almost) always-visible taskbar, one is that it allows you to plan your actions before you move and click, and it also enables more efficient actions when you want to bring up/down more than just one window (simply due to the shorter distance the cursor/hand/finger has to move between).
Also, I'm not really talking about maximizing windows, that problem has already been solved IMO. But as far as I know, by default, there is no similar-acting alternative for minimizing window besides Super+H hotkey which for me is a bit awkward to press, plus I don't really have big hands :( also, I rest my left pinky on the left side of left Control, move it to Super sounded like a lot of effort (and then I've to also locate H???, you know what? I'll survive a few unminimized windows :)).
But seriously, I use GNOME because of what it is, not because of what it's not.
The Minimize button is still accessible on some windows if you right click the title bar and select "Hide". So the function is still there, just more annoying to access.
And the Dock/Dash problem is actually linked to the minimize feature. Because when user click Minimize, the window then needs a place to be "minimized to" (and an animation is also need to show how it happened). Maybe the lack of Taskbar could be one of the reasons why Minimize button was removed? Just me guessing.
I do respect your use case, but as a desktop environment, I don't think GNOME should implement it as default. But on the other hand, if GNOME is really committed to be a tiling-first desktop environment, then removing the Minimize button could be a reasonable plot on the roadmap.
One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy (https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/21720091...). Selecting windows would swap out the main window with the scaled version on the border. This would give you the ability to focus on one window that is always centered while seeing scaled versions of all the other window's output.
Maybe this has already been done?
There are some autotiling scripts for i3 that can emulate this behavior as well.