UIFe: Alt-Tab: Update layout behavior to make previews larger and outline active preview

Screenshot of new setup

Deferring UIFE to documentation team approval.

Setting back to new, as this hasn't been approved yet. Also, do we really need to turn this upside down all over again? It looks like it would now show only two apps at a time instead of 5 to 8, so it's even harder to switch between many applications than it is today. Also, we need to fix those dozens of crashes etc. these days, not work on features..

I don't like the orange background. Why not use the white glow already showing the active app in the Alt-Tab switcher? The white glow is more "Light" and just looks better.

Making the previews bigger makes it more difficult to fix bug 825545 (which is a wishlist, asking to show titles for all windows in the Alt-Tab switcher). Design never decided whether showing titles for all windows was a good idea or not.

The screenshot looks a little weird because the app has two rather large open windows but the title is in the middle between them so the title is "centered" but is very "off-center" from the app it belongs to. This is also different than the normal alt-tab switcher where the title is centered below each icon.

It's unclear what the scope of this change is. Does this affect the size of icons in normal Alt-Tab mode of just in the extra mode? What happens in more extreme cases where a single app has lots of open windows? What does that look like and is the new behavior better or worse?

@Martin I have attached a screenshot showing how the switcher reacts with many windows present (the windows scale down in size). This change purely makes it easier to see the contents of the window by taking better advantage of available space.

@Jeremy (replying to each paragraph in your post)

The white glow is not what is in the design specification. The specifications very clearly call for an orange outline around the windows.

bug #825545 is not a consideration nor a good reason to reject this work. That bug is a feature request that likely wont happen if my understanding of the designs is correct.

The centering of the text is not specified in the design.

The scope of the change is limited to the extra detail mode. No change has been made to the non-spreaded mode of the switcher. The screenshot I have provided should answer the question about scaling. In general this work makes things scale MUCH better than the previous version.

"The specifications very clearly call for an orange outline around the windows." I guess this is another frustrating example of a private specification but a public implementation.

I presume you're right about bug 825545 being a wishlist item that wasn't part of Design's specification but the current Alt-tab switcher has several usability issues (not showing the window titles, disabling the mouse cursor (!), and the useless accordian effect). Really, the switcher needs to be a whole lot more like GNOME Shell's version which works.

Two things in particular are inconsistent between the normal alt-tab switcher and the proposed app view: the highlight (thick orange border or white glow) and the title centering.

The Alt-Tab switcher is not in any Desktop Guide screenshots and since I don't have a valid docs reason to reject them, I'm going to go ahead and give a +1 for the Docs Team and pass to the Release Team for a final decision.

Mouse cursor support is on my plate, though I doubt I can make it happen on such short notice. I have a design ticket about fixing that. Other than that, I just plain disagree about your other design points, but that is not really relevant to this bug.

Also worth noting, the switcher this switcher is replacing also does a mouse grab

My main objection here is still that this is landing so late, and further regresses the utility of the Alt+Tab switcher, without time for getting feedback and being able to fix things. This is way too optimized for only having two or three applications open at a time (the current switcher already is, due to showing all opened apps instead of just those on the current workspace).

I updated the title because the current switcher already outlines the currently selected window.

Seems I misunderstood this. The screenshot is not for the "normal Alt+Tab" switcher, but only for the preview mode that you get when you additionally press Cursor down. This is already quite similar, and outlining the current selection indeed makes sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 4.16.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (4.16.0-0ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in nux::GpuDevice::GetGpuInfo()
      (LP: #765375)
    - F10 doesn't start keyboard navigation to the panel (LP: #839628)
    - Change on the at-spi accessibility-toolkit can affect also Unity
      (LP: #844927)
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV when a lens is shutting down (LP: #848675)
    - [UIFe] Radiance panel icons are unreadable and ugly when panel goes
      transparent with Dash (LP: #828862)
    - window switcher stuck (not only, but can be triggered with Onboard)
      (LP: #832033)
    - Window titlebar is click through after raising a minimized window
      (LP: #840285)
    - Alt+Shift+` does not work in symmetry with Alt+` (LP: #843250)
    - UIFe: Alt-Tab: Update layout behavior to make previews larger and
      outline active preview (LP: #847944)
    - windows clipped on resize (LP: #848962)
    - Alt-tab - Add orange border to selected window in alt-tab window spread
      (LP: #838114)
    - Launcher - the direction the Launcher is scrolled with the mouse wheel
      is inverted (LP: #839703)
    - Launcher - the rendering of the BFB and Lens squircle does not match the
      design (LP: #838708)
    - Alt-Tab - In the app window spread, all windows should have the same
      height, only the width should vary (LP: #838110)
    - Launcher - the background of the Launcher should be tinted using the
      average colour of the wallpaper (LP: #850068)
    - Alt-tab - It is currently very difficult to see pips in the left of the
      app icon for the currently selected app (LP: #838134)
    - Launcher - Auto scroll missing from the top of the Launcher
      (LP: #838744)
    - Scope searches blocks the lens (LP: #850816)
    - Shortcuts SUPER+1...9 doesn’t work until opening a window (LP: #768076)
    - Dash closes prematurely when dragging apps into the launcher
      (LP: #773892)
    - Dash - As soon as a user starts dragging a .png file from the Dash, the
      file icon turns into a grey question mark (LP: #764447)
    - Dash shows an empty icon for some applications. (LP: #830887)
    - Windows are click through after restore from minimize (LP: #834034)
    - Dash - No keyboard shortcuts for switching lenses (LP: #842086)
    - Dash search for files states "two more results" but doesn't display them
      (LP: #840005)
    - <meta>+<shift>+<launcher #> to start a new instance of a program doesn't
      work anymore (LP: #842977)
    - Alt-tab - Cross interactions between Alt-tab and Dash are broken
      (LP: #844021)
    - UIFe: Dash - Shape and positioning of most of the elements in the Dash
      need adjustment (Part 2) (LP: #844889)
    - Alt-Tab - make pause to spread default alt-tab behaviour. Upgrade
      existing installs as well. (LP: #838075)
    - Do not install unity-preference (LP: #847599)
    - Update unity --distro to latest plugins installed (LP: #847799)
    - off by one error in count of additional results in a category
      (LP: #848218)
    - UIFe - Launcher - The background of the BFB, Workspace Switcher, Lens,
    ...