[bt-devel] Desktops/Sessions

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Thanks to Jaak for being the secretary.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2010, Jaak Ristioja wrote:
> * DESKTOPS.
>   + "Sessions" -> "Desktops"
>   + Quick desktop switching toolbar button
>   + Desktops save themselves when changed
>   + MDI area will not change size when switching desktops

I thought about this a bit more. My original idea was to add top-level
tabs which would work like sessions, but it was disagreed and we decided
not to implement it. Instead, we talked about enhancing the current
session system.

I'm not sure if we should rename it to Desktops. Session is an
established name for this kind of functionality and Desktop is used in
very different meaning (the system desktop).

The reason I thought about session tabs was that the current session
implementation - and the idea of sessions in any application - has too
difficult UI. But someone came up with an idea of a session toolbar
button. That would actually make it more usable and easier to use as
long as it's simple enough.

I think the button should have a dropdown menu which has the list of
Sessions and probably the New or Save As item, but nothing else. Other
actions belong to the main menu.

One thing to make it easier is autosaving the sessions (probably when
switching between sessions and when quitting). But is it actually good
for our use cases? Which one is more common - to open a fixed session,
change it, close it, and open it again in its original state? Or open an
autosaving session, change it, close it and open it in its latest state?
Do we have any idea how users use or would like to use this, if they use
it at all? I don't remember getting any comments or reports about the
Session feature. I certainly haven't used it myself.

Kate has Sessions and Konqueror has View Profiles. They don't do
autosaving. Konqueror saves also sidebars etc. Kate does that too, and
the Session state includes even size and placement of the window. The
usability of this depends on your needs. If you switch between, say, two
different projects, but don't do it often, this may be good. But if you
want to switch between two sets of opened files regularly this may be
tedious. Suddenly the whole interface changes and even goes to another
place. And it's slow. If you want to switch between Sessions back and
forth you definitely want it to be fast and have the same UI elements in
the same places and only the text windows changing. So, as I said, it
all depends on which workflow or use cases we want to support, and at
the moment we don't have hard data to back up our decisions. If anyone
has any idea, please speak up.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)