Plank

Left click support for multiple windows per application

Bug #1251625 reported by Dionysius
16
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Plank
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

This is a feature request. Its not that important for me, but would be a huge usability improvement for all users. All applications which support/needs multiple windows are affected.

Example:
If you have two fullscreen firefox windows open, you cannot deside which window should be presented - and normally its always the wrong one. This can be also reproduced when you've gimp with multiple images open and so on.

Current behavior:
Left click on the icon in dock opens the last visible window. No matter how many times you left click is.

Current workarounds (not complete):
- Current implementation let you choose between windows when you right click the icon, but you see only text and not a 'preview' of that window.
- Using Alt-Tab to switch windows, but with many windows this is not efficient.

Feature Request and Idea:
I've setup in elementaryOS a hot corner which shows me all windows, but scaled. I'd like to have this kind of view, when I long click that application icon, but only for windows of this application. This way, you have only the interested windows to choose from, you have a preview of that window, it will look just nice and will be just intuitive for new linux users. (I believe the same or kind of functionality already exists in Unity and MacOS)

Related branches

lp:~shippo/plank/fix-1251625
Peter Feichtinger: Approve
Diff: 523 lines (+177/-62)
15 files modified
data/net.launchpad.plank.gschema.xml.in.in (+5/-0)
data/ui/preferences.ui (+24/-0)
docklets/Clippy/ClippyDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
docklets/Clock/ClockDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
docklets/Trash/TrashDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
lib/DockPreferences.vala (+3/-0)
lib/Items/ApplicationDockItem.vala (+77/-44)
lib/Items/DockElement.vala (+3/-6)
lib/Items/DockItem.vala (+12/-0)
lib/Items/FileDockItem.vala (+10/-3)
lib/Items/PlankDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
lib/Services/WindowControl.vala (+20/-0)
lib/Widgets/DockWindow.vala (+3/-3)
lib/Widgets/PreferencesWindow.vala (+13/-0)
lib/libplank.symbols (+3/-2)
Ready for review for merging into lp:plank
Peter Feichtinger (community): Needs Resubmitting
Rico Tzschichholz: Needs Information
Diff: 523 lines (+177/-62)
15 files modified
data/net.launchpad.plank.gschema.xml.in.in (+5/-0)
data/ui/preferences.ui (+24/-0)
docklets/Clippy/ClippyDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
docklets/Clock/ClockDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
docklets/Trash/TrashDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
lib/DockPreferences.vala (+3/-0)
lib/Items/ApplicationDockItem.vala (+77/-44)
lib/Items/DockElement.vala (+3/-6)
lib/Items/DockItem.vala (+12/-0)
lib/Items/FileDockItem.vala (+10/-3)
lib/Items/PlankDockItem.vala (+1/-1)
lib/Services/WindowControl.vala (+20/-0)
lib/Widgets/DockWindow.vala (+3/-3)
lib/Widgets/PreferencesWindow.vala (+13/-0)
lib/libplank.symbols (+3/-2)
Revision history for this message
Robert Dyer (psybers) wrote :

We implement similar behavior with the mouse wheel. Scroll the mouse wheel over the application icon and it will focus each window.

Changed in plank:
status: New → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
Dionysius (dionysius) wrote :

Nice to see that there already exists an implementation. But IMO its not intuitive, see it like I didn't find out myself. Other querstion, what about mousepad users without mice?

Revision history for this message
Robert Dyer (psybers) wrote :

Every modern trackpad also had scroll wheel functionality.

Revision history for this message
Peter Feichtinger (shippo) wrote :

I was just going to report this bug as well, and I would like to reopen since I've got an implementation that I would like to contribute.

My implementation adds a new setting which, when enabled, causes application items to show their menu when left clicked and more than one window is open. When the setting is disabled, the default behavior is not changed.

However, since Rico mentioned ABI compatibility, I wanted to ask about that before submitting a patch; what do I need to look out for?

Revision history for this message
Rico Tzschichholz (ricotz) wrote :

While libplank itself doesnt guarantee any API/ABI stability as mentioned in the source. Although while some parts are actively used by 3rd party app it should be avoided to break those. This can be discussed as needed.

Revision history for this message
Peter Feichtinger (shippo) wrote :

I just proposed my changes for merging, I hope I did get everything right (never worked with bzr or Launchpad before).

Revision history for this message
ALinuxUser (buntulongername-new) wrote :

'Every modern trackpad also had scroll wheel functionality.'

I'd forgotten that my (decade old) laptop touchpad could do that; and, like the original poster, I hadn't realised that Plank had this functionality.

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