Hi, I have an idea for the way in which windows are handled (or maybe there is a way to configure what I will say and I do not know it):
Imagine you open two different windows of the tracker (one in folder A and the other one in folder B). If you minimize both of them and you later click on the “Tracker” icon of the deskbar (either left or right click), you will see “Folder A”, “Folder B”, “Hide all”, “Show all” and “Close all”. Ok, I think it is OK because the system cannot decide which window you want to see.
Now, imagine that you just opened a single folder in a window, and you minimized it. Why does the system show you the title of the only open window (e.g., “Folder A”) and the remaining options “Hide all”, “Show all” … I would expect the system to show me the window when there is only one, at least, with a left click, (maybe the right click could show the option list independently of the number of minimized windows).
In my humble opinion, when there is only a minimized window, it is better to show it after clicking (at least with the left click as I said). Even if you wanted to close it, it would be quite straightforward after displaying the window. Currently, is there any way to define this behavior that I do not know? If there is not, what do you think about this change?
It isn’t what BeOS did. But a more than a few people would probably agree with you, it is a place where the UI could be improved.
There are a few threads on the forum where we are discussing future improvements to Haiku’s UI. One of them is the Gonx thread where a few UI suggestions have been made. Gonx was one of the potential unreleased versions of BeOS. Note Gonx is very different from BeOS… and I think if any ideas are grabbed from it they will not take the more radical changes. But things like your suggestion are good for sure.
One of the things I was suggesting was increased modularity, so people that like the old UI could keep it while new UI elements could be swapped in as they were developed or at the users discretion. Haiku will of course only ship with a default that the all the developers consider good and that is likely to only change very slowly over time.
In Deskbar preferences you can enable the “show expander” and “expand new applications” menus. This works only if DeskBar is in vertical mode, however (not if you use it as a Windows-like taskbar). It allows direct access to all windows.
In the future, we plan to add more things to the menu that pops up when you click on the application entry. So it is not a great idea to hide that menu.
Thank you @cb88 and @PulkoMandy for your answers. I understand that it was not what BeOS used to do. Maybe for the future as @cb88 said. Besides, I also use the Deskbar as a Windows-like taskbar… so that seems to be the reason I cannot further configure this aspect.
I see your point, but that could be left for the right click maybe (I think that is the type of click generally used to show options). Currently, both left and right click do the same (at least in the horizontal deskbar mode I use). In any case, I just wanted to share my suggestion.
Thank you again for your answers and kind regards.
It depends what gets into that menu. If we are to add an application-global menu (kind of like the Apple menu on Macintosh), I would expect it to be available on left click.
Ah, Ok, now, I see your different point of view. I prefer the Windows style (and the XFCE desktop environment for Linux) over OSX by far. That must be the reason why you like the current behaviour. Well, fair enough, there are as many opinions as stars in the sky
It is totally possible to implement a Windows style taskbar for Haiku which does what you want (shows the last active window on left click), as well as a right click menu to show all the windows as well as application specific menu items (as pulkomandy mentioned.) In fact, I think there are some old discussions about a “Deskbar2” which worked in this way.
So, honestly, it is probably just a matter of someone doing it, and that person would not have to necessarily be a core Haiku developer to offer the new style of Deskbar.
It hasn’t been done yet by Haiku developers because strictly speaking Deskbar works exactly as it did in BeOS, since it is literally code from BeOS. Since the goal of Haiku R1 is to replicate BeOS, we are “done” for Deskbar, and there is plenty more to do in other areas.
I have some long term plans to do some refactoring of Deskbar to pull out what we call the “Twitcher”, aka the “Alt-Tab” (though by default it is Ctrl-Tab in Haiku) out of Deskbar so that someone could run a Deskbar replacement without losing the Twitcher. If I do this I may also make it possible to create a replacement Twitcher too. But this is now pretty low priority.
