support this "bug"

[miasmablk]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/706458

[haqking]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/706458

not a bug.

[miasmablk]

not a bug.

Obviously, that's why I put it in quotation marks as to emphasize that fact. However, many people support this Opinion so throw in you 2 cents if you do to :D

[haqking]

Obviously, that's why I put it in quotation marks as to emphasize that fact. However, many people support this Opinion so throw in you 2 cents if you do to :D

My 2 cents is, if i wanted to use windows i would use windows ;-)

[samigina]

Mark is becoming more and more dictatorial... "I think you should do that in THIS way, if you don't like it... bad for you"

If Mark has said the "bug" is invalid, well, there's nothing to do... may be wait for someone to tweak the option...

[miasmablk]

My 2 cents is, if i wanted to use windows i would use windows ;-)

OK :confused: don't know what it has to do with windows maverick meerkat has this function?
so you're fine with being able to maximize from the launcher but not minimize?

[haqking]

OK :confused: don't know what it has to do with windows maverick meerkat has this function?
so you're fine with being able to maximize from the launcher but not minimize?

To be honest i rarely care about the GUI design, they are all pretty much the same across the board.

I dont lose sleep over how to minimise windows.

I am not belittling your issue, it is just that i am very happy go lucky and things like that dont bother me, i rarely notice them.

I spend alot of time in the terminal ;-)

Plus, with new things you expect new features and changes, change is the only constant ;-)

As my Platoon sergeant used to say, adapt and overcome !

[miasmablk]

To be honest i rarely care about the GUI design, they are all pretty much the same across the board.

I dont lose sleep over how to minimise windows.

I am not belittling your issue, it is just that i am very happy go lucky and things like that dont bother me, i rarely notice them.

I spend alot of time in the terminal ;-)

Plus, with new things you expect new features and changes, change is the only constant ;-)

As my Platoon sergeant used to say, adapt and overcome !

yeah, i get what your saying :)

[forrestcupp]

I don't think supporting that "bug" will help. The moment Mark Shuttleworth said it was invalid was probably the last moment he will ever look at that bug thread.

[Copper Bezel]

I hate that feature to death. I was very happy to be able to disable it in DockBarX (and replace it with scroll down if I feel inclined to minimize from the window list.) There's nothing more irritating than accidentally minimizing the window you meant to bring forward, and it's a behavior that makes no sense with grouping, anyway.

[Merk42]

What should the behavior be if multiple windows of the same application are open?

[JDShu]

The only reason to minimize that I can think of is to access your desktop, and the desktop is not a good place to organize files anyway. I agree with Shuttleworth here, no need to make an icon do multiple things.

[Copper Bezel]

I like stowing windows for later use, but the minimize button is quite sufficient for that. For everything else, yeah, that's why you have a Launcher in the first place.

[ninjaaron]

I am not belittling your issue...

I am belittling this issue. It's stupid. I'm about one post away from belittling the OP, so he better not push his luck.
:p

[jwbrase]

The problem is that you're attacking the wrong problem. A dock can't really behave in the way you want because one dock icon can be associated with multiple windows. And that's one of the primary reasons that *docks are bad*. The "bug" (or rather misfeature) is not that the dock doesn't behave like a taskbar, the misfeature is that the dock exists at all.

[Simian Man]

What should the behavior be if multiple windows of the same application are open?

In KDE, with smooth tasks, if any of them have focus, it minimizes all of them. If not, it brings them all to the front with the most recent one in front of all. I love this feature because I can quickly minimize all of my terminals if I want to take a break from work. Then pull them all back when I'm done slacking :).

I'm surprised any of you are arguing against this. It makes perfect sense to me.

[NCLI]

Mark is becoming more and more dictatorial... "I think you should do that in THIS way, if you don't like it... bad for you"

If Mark has said the "bug" is invalid, well, there's nothing to do... may be wait for someone to tweak the option...

Well, someone has to decide how the user interface functions. Mark and the design team definitely have a specific set of interactions and paradigms in mind with Unity, and minimizing by clicking the button on the launcher isn't part of it. If you don't like that, install some other dock.

[Copper Bezel]

The problem is that you're attacking the wrong problem. A dock can't really behave in the way you want because one dock icon can be associated with multiple windows. And that's one of the primary reasons that *docks are bad*. The "bug" (or rather misfeature) is not that the dock doesn't behave like a taskbar, the misfeature is that the dock exists at all.
Well, lucky for you there's still lxpanel, then.


In KDE, with smooth tasks, if any of them have focus, it minimizes all of them. If not, it brings them all to the front with the most recent one in front of all. I love this feature because I can quickly minimize all of my terminals if I want to take a break from work. Then pull them all back when I'm done slacking :).
I'm glad it works for you, but Unity doesn't use a window list - just the group icon - so that's not remotely feasible in Unity. There would be no way to select an individual window out a group, period.

As I mentioned, I'm using DockBarX, and I do minimize groups from the dock, but that action is set to scroll down. It's a convenient thing to have, and I would miss it, but clicking the dock icon to make a thing go away just doesn't make any intuitive sense, and the feature is out of a completely different paradigm than Unity's.

Even using DockBarX, which has a vaguely Windows 7-style window list, I take for granted that if I click a group icon, it's going to spread the associated windows. If there's only one window in that group, there's no need, so nothing happens. It's really that simple....

[Legendary_Bibo]

I have to agree, this is how it behaves in Cairo Dock (and AWN I believe), and if there are multiple sessions of one application running then it has a sub dock.

[Copper Bezel]

Which behavior? Cairo Dock does minimize with a single window (but only with a single window, of course, spreading if there are multiple windows) while AWN's taskbar, because it sucks, does nothing but present the window list and glare at you if there are multiple windows and minimizes if there is only one window.

Neither of these is self-consistent. Smooth Tasks and Unity are both self-consistent in opposite ways.

The goal is that the user doesn't have to think about what a window is doing to get at his or her stuff. It should happen automatically. The user is not planning ahead to minimize the number of times he or she has to click the mouse or move the cursor. One method that works reasonably well is often better than two alternate ones that require extra thought. The Unity method takes this into account, and I think it's a particularly salient issue in this case. If I have to look over at where my windows are laid out and which one is focused to predict what the dock's behavior will be when I click an item, then that dock has failed to provide me with appropriate visual cues to its own behavior. Either it needs to provide that information or the behavior needs to be simplified accordingly.

And as I'd already noted, Unity does not use a window list or subdock, so it can't just depend on the user making use of that as the other docks do (to varying extents.)

There's no sense in arguing that the fact that Unity isn't Cairo Dock is a bug. I happen to feel that not being DockBarX is a bug and wonder why people bother with these other things, but whatever dock a user happens to be used to, he or she is going to be habituated to that way of getting around. Unity users are not going to "miss" this feature, and arguing otherwise is imposing expectations out of context.

Edit a fifteenth time: No, really, why don't I make that argument? After all, in Unity, I don't have a close button for windows in the dock. I find that one of the most convenient things about DockBarX is that I scarcely ever have to use that fiddly little close button on my windows, and I know all the Unity users will love that, too. Clearly this is a bug.

[Thewhistlingwind]

When Mark says no, the force of your campaign to change his mind would have to be large enough to destroy the Ubuntu project itself for him to reconsider.

[forrestcupp]

Chuck Norris could make Mark change his mind.

[hakermania]

To be honest i rarely care about the GUI design, they are all pretty much the same across the board.

I dont lose sleep over how to minimise windows.

I am not belittling your issue, it is just that i am very happy go lucky and things like that dont bother me, i rarely notice them.

I spend alot of time in the terminal ;-)

Plus, with new things you expect new features and changes, change is the only constant ;-)

As my Platoon sergeant used to say, adapt and overcome !
A little tip: Do not over-support the system, it's not a good thing to do.
This makes you blind

[Grenage]

I think that Marco Biscaro's suggested patch was a good idea. I don't use (or like) the Unity interface, but the option suggested would be one less detail for me to gripe over.

The interface has become very simplistic, and I am curious to see whether that simplicity will be toned down.

[mcduck]

I can't really see how minimizing windows by clicking them in the launcher could possibly work, considering that the launcher groups all windows of the same program into one icon.

Of course it could be made to move to window's desktop if it's not on the current desktop, and minimize a window if it's on the current desktop, but even that would result in problems if you have multiple windows open, especially if they are located on different desktops... Besides adding too much functionality to same mouse button on the same launcher icon wold easily make things rather confusing.

So the only way I can see how to do that would be replacing all the current functionality with a single function of closing window(s) that's already on another place on the desktop (the window title bar/top panel). I can't really see that as an improvement of any kind...

[3rdalbum]

Just because this particular function has existed in Windows for a long time, does not make it a good enough idea to reimplement.

The taskbar, or in this case the Launcher, is designed for showing windows. You click on an icon there, a window opens.

It's confusing and inconsistent for clicking on an icon to sometimes hide the window. It was a bad feature of Windows 95 and we really don't need it here.

If you need the window minimised, use the minimise control. Or, probably more appropriately, change to a fresh workspace/desktop.

I understand that people have grown up with this taskbar behaviour since Windows 95, and it's hard to break some habits. But honestly, if you're capable of moving to Ubuntu with all the desktop layout changes, you should be able to get away from one more illogical action to a mouseclick.

[aaaantoine]

I think the greater task-management issue is when you have multiple instances of an application open that all look nearly identical when zoomed out. The lack of names or any descriptive text on the expose-style switcher makes finding a window more difficult.

As an example: multiple no-frills spreadsheets.

[Grenage]

The thing is, it's not just Windows*; gnome does the same thing, and I'm sure they aren't alone. If a Window has focus and I click on the icon, I expect it to minimise - a lot of people do the same thing.

Fine, you can say 'This interface doesn't do that, we think this is a better way', but that doesn't mean it's an improvement. The minimise button is small and in the corner of a window, and the icon is large and against a boundary; it's just quicker for me to hit the icon. The proposed patch made the functionality optional, not the default.

Ultimately it is just a GUI, and for most people the right way is just the way they've always done things. I'm the first to admit that abundant improvements can be made.

*Crap, I mentioned Windows; please don't lock the whole thread.

[Phoenixie]

I can't really see how minimizing windows by clicking them in the launcher could possibly work, considering that the launcher groups all windows of the same program into one icon.

Here is how the Marco's patch proposal does it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVi9cRwhyU

[haqking]

A little tip: Do not over-support the system, it's not a good thing to do.
This makes you blind

What are you talking about ? I am not supporting anything.

I dont care what the GUI looks like or does in any operating system. And my vision is great, i have used and use multiple systems for over 20 years, and never complained about what they look like or do and how they do it.

[mcduck]

Here is how the Mirco's patch proposal does it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVi9cRwhyU

But all the windows are on the same desktop. What would happen if you wanted to minimize a program's window on one desktop but not on others? Wouldn't it be just more confusing if you had to minimize your windows from different places depending on how many windows you have open, where they are located, and if you wish to minimize one, multiple, or all windows?

edit: Ok, so that patch only supports minimizing all windows of a program. Rather special case, I'd say. But I suppose that depends on how you like to manage your windows (I rarely minimize any window at all, there's no real reason to do that when I have multiple desktops available... ;))

[miasmablk]

I am belittling this issue. It's stupid. I'm about one post away from belittling the OP, so he better not push his luck.
:p

OK bud, why not simmer down a bit, i was just voicing my opinion, no reason to act childish [-(

[miasmablk]

I don't understand how having the option available proves problematic for anyone i mean most likely you would simply be able to disable this feature in ccsm if you didn't want to use it :-k

[Larkspur]

I don't understand how having the option available proves problematic for anyone i mean most likely you would simply be able to disable this feature in ccsm if you didn't want to use it :-k

But why introduce new code when there is are easy solutions already there (use the minimise button on the window itself or move to a new workspace?):-k

@aaaantoine: For your spreadsheet issue, switch on Scale Add-ons and you get window titles in Scale