Developer focus for Fedora workstation

[Jiri Eischmann]

Adam Batkin píše v Pá 15. 08. 2014 v 08:19 -0400:
> > GNOME works really well with a keyboard only. You can start and switch
> > apps very easily with the keyboard
> > "super + typepartofname + enter" ...
> 
> Isn't that for launching a new instance of an app?
> 
> I often have 2 or 3 windows that I'm actively working with. That's a 
> small enough number that my brain is able to remember where they are in 
> the stacking order so Alt+Tab works nicely for switching. Actually 
> Alt+Tab works pretty well with the alternate-tab extension. Except that 
> closing windows, launching of new windows and switching virtual desktops 
> seems to throw everything off.

I use Alt+Tab only for frequent switching between two apps. For
everything else, especially for such a small number of windows as 3 I
use "Super" key to get to the Activities overview and then I use arrow
keys to navigate between windows. No mouse needed and it's pretty quick.
Closing window: Ctrl+Q
Launching a new window of e.g. Nautilus: "Super"-> typing "nau" -> Ctrl
+Enter

There are also tons of extensions that provide different ways to launch
and switch between apps such as binding shortcuts to certains apps, but
IMHO it's for niche use cases, not really something we need to include
in default installation.

> But no, having to type part of the name of a window takes significantly 
> more time and requires significantly more hand movement (my left hand 
> usually lives right over the Alt and Tab keys, which also happens to be 
> near Alt+F4 and Ctrl+D which takes care of closing most windows). And 
> also requires a lot more brain power, since if I have an editor, a 
> terminal and a web browser open, I already subconsciously know how many 
> times I need to hit the Tab key before I will end up on the window that 
> I want, but thinking of the name of the program is a lot more work.
> 
> > And no you do *not* need a touchscreen for anything. Repeating that
> > does not make it true.
> 
> My comments about touchscreens were more about the large amounts of 
> empty space in some places (makes it easier to poke things with a 
> finger) and the drag-to-remove-screen-blanker (which is ONLY helpful if 
> you have a touchscreen).
> 
> >> But there are a bunch of other "polish" things that I think also need to be
> >> fixed. For example:
> >> * There are at least half a dozen Gnome Bugzillas that I've come across
> >> around focus and window stacking issues - and I think I've encountered every
> >> one of them. This is maddening. For someone who uses the keyboard as much as
> >> possible, this makes the system almost unusable
> >
> > What are those focus and stacking issues? You have to name them
> > otherwise we can't discuss / solve them.
> 
> I'll start a new thread.
> 
> >> * The default theme makes it difficult to easily distinguish the Focused
> >> window from all other windows - again, maddening when you have lots of
> >> windows spread across multiple very high resolution monitors. Especially
> >> with all the window focus/stacking issues
> >
> > Really? At least for gtk3 apps the whole unfocsued window dims
> > ("backdrop") which makes it very cleary shown as unfocsued.
> > Again no idea what your "focus / stacking issues are"
> 
> I'm not saying there is no distinction, I'm saying that it's not a very 
> big distinction (i.e. there needs to be more contrast) so it can be hard 
> to pick out the difference when you have a lot of screen real estate in 
> front of you (i.e. multiple large high resolution monitors) and many 
> windows spread around. If I remember correctly, both KDE's default theme 
> and Windows Aero suffer from the same problems. But I'm trying to use 
> the out-of-the-box defaults since I know they will be better supported 
> (i.e. cross-toolkit theming, support for new widgets, less buggy, 
> etc...) whereas in KDE (which is already non-default) I would have 
> changed the theme and in Windows I would have disabled Aero (active 
> windows have a blue titlebar, inactive get gray, which is fantastic).
> 
> -Adam Batkin