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Re: [wmx] feature suggestion:

Owen Cameron - Fri Aug 06 02:35:19 1999

On Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 12:13:21PM +0000, cannam did utter:
> 
> Owen Cameron <nemo@nethouse.goldweb.com.au> writes:
> > 
> > define a corner on the screen as the "dock" corner (configurable
> > in Config.h) and when you move a window such that the corner of
> > the window meets the dock corner, the apps is docked.
> > 
> > The new docking point is then the corner of the docked-app and
> > the screen border.
> 
> I actually rather like that.  I can imagine horrible problems with
> accidentally docking things, so it must at least be quite easy to
> undock them (and of course it must be possible to configure docking
> out altogether... but you knew that).

Thinking about this last night, and came up with a few ideas to make the
concept a bit nicer...

The dock-corner should have an indicator - much like the resize indicator?
The window-decoration on a docked app should be a new colour. That way when
you're moving windows around, the window frame changes to teh docked colour
so that you know that in that position, it will be docked.
Alternatively, when in that position, you could have it such that it /still/
isn't docked, but the hide button will now dock the app rather than hide it.
(again, you would know the button would activate a dock rather than a hide
by the colour of hte border, at the least.

> If you wanted to be nauseously video-game, you could even make it
> flash up DOCK in the top-right of the screen (in the same style as
> the channel numbers) when you move a window to the docking corner,
> to warn you of what will happen if you release the mouse button.
> Or maybe not.

I think the frame colour idea above gives the same UI result (letting you 
know when an app is about to be docked) without being so video-gamish.

> > I think the ability to dock /anything/ would be the best part of
> > a system like this. eg, dock the GIMP tool window 
> 
> Probably true, but I guess you wouldn't really want the tool window
> to be un-raisable?  Would you?

True, but if I was doing that to give myself access to the tool window
across images in multiple channels, it probably wouldn't be too hard to
organise myself such that nothing covers it. 

It woulnd't be perfect for such a situation anyways - no keyboard method to
get to the dockapps (well, I guess you could... ctrl-alt-tab to cycle you
through docked(and hidden?) apps, rather than alt-tab just cycling through
visible windows in the current channel?

/Nemo
-- 
 .---------[ Owen Cameron, Wombat, Paddington, nemo, earth native ]---------.
 |   http://www.goldweb.com.au/~nemo/  <nemo@net.house.cx>     UIN:#5408336 |
 `--------------------------------------------------------------------------'
   |  "I know what I am now!!  I am a single parent, childless family!"   |
   |  /-[Owen Cameron, 1996]-/                                            |
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