Bug 346684

Summary:	New Activity Switcher that works like the Pager
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Tim Climis <tim.climis>
Component:	Activity Switcher sidebar	Assignee:	Ivan Čukić <ivan.cukic>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	chgonzalezg, chrfedora, dm.vl.ivanov, kde, plasma-bugs-null
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	5.2.2
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Gentoo Packages
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	screenshot of compact activity switcher

Description Tim Climis 2015-04-26 04:12:40 UTC

This is an off shoot of Bug 343246 - a request to bring back the ability to have different widgets on each virtual desktop, which is a wontfix.

Accepting that all virtual desktops have to be identical to each other, they seem to have lost all purpose. If they can't be different, it seems to me that they might as well not exist.

And to build on that in a constructive way, let's imagine for a moment that they don't. That leaves us with the ability to have a limitless number of one-desktop activities, each with a different widget layout, it's own session history, and recent documents. So far, this sounds awesome. Add to that, that panels aren't just the same across desktops, but also across activities, and what we have is a reproduced version of kde4, with some slight improvements.

(If we could have "activity groups," then we have a direct map of kde desktops to plasma 5 activities and plasma 5 activity groups to kde4 activities, and all of a sudden there's no regression, but I digress.)

The problem with the above work flow is really just that the widgets for switching between activities suck. There are two of them: the activity bar and the activity manager. The bar sucks because it only works horizontally (try it in a vertical panel some time - it's totally useless), and it's big, because it uses the activity names. The manager is much better, but it's a manager - it's overkill for just wanting to switch between activities. The workflow would be much better if there were an activity switcher that worked like the pager does: lay out the activities in a grid, identifiable via the activity icon, and click to switch between them.

I'm getting this on file so it isn't a lost idea - I'm actually on paternity leave right now, so I might try coding this myself in the next couple of weeks.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 David Edmundson 2015-04-26 12:20:43 UTC

Seems kinda sensible, I'll discuss it next meeting.

Comment 2 Ivan Čukić 2015-04-26 20:27:32 UTC

Hi,

There was a really simple switcher for old Plasma that might serve as inspiration:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Activity+Manager+Plasmoid?content=136278

The problem (IMO) with a grid-based layout is that activities should not be a spatial concept.

Comment 3 Tim Climis 2015-04-26 22:28:20 UTC

I don't disagree that activities are not a spatial concept.  But I do disagree that arranging things in a grid necessarily indicates a spatial relationship.  It's often just a good way to cram a lot of information in a small space (the system tray would be a good existing example of this).

And if the intent is to take my 3 activities, each with 5 virtual desktops, and replace them with 15 activities instead, then I want to display those 15 activities in the most compact way I can, and a 3x5 or 2x8 grid seems like the best way to go.  It certainly beats a single line of 15 items.

Comment 4 Ivan Čukić 2015-04-27 08:07:18 UTC

I agree.

Somehow, when you said 'pager' I got caught up in the let's show activities as screens even if you did not say that. Sorry. :)

Comment 5 schwarzwelle 2015-08-27 03:59:46 UTC

I have a suggestion. Could we have some sort of "tree view" in the activity switcher, with "activity folders"? That way, after making an activity, I'd stuff it in say, the folders "work" and "play", and when using the activity switcher, I'd simply sift through these 2 folders and unfurl the one that was needed. It would make it much easier to sift through many activities (10+), as was my case when I transformed my 2 activities of 5 different virtual desktops each into 10 activities.

Maybe later, one could code some keyboard shortcuts for the folders, which open the activity bar already unfurled in the folder associated with the shortcut.

Comment 6 schwarzwelle 2015-08-27 04:01:29 UTC

(In reply to schwarzwelle from comment #5)
When I say "activity switcher" I mean the activity bar. Sorry for the confusion.

Comment 7 Tim Climis 2015-08-30 04:33:32 UTC

Created attachment 94283 [details]
screenshot of compact activity switcher

Comment 8 Tim Climis 2015-08-30 04:34:47 UTC

Okay, so I've coded this thing - it works like the system tray, displaying running activities and highlighting the current one.  Clicking on a running activity switches to it, and right-clicking on a running activity stops it.  You can click an arrow to see the stopped activities, and clicking on a stopped activity starts it.

I've attached a screenshot.  How would I go about submitting the code?

Also, I noticed that since I filed this bug, the Activity Bar plasmoid has become a lot more usable, so kudos to whoever did that.

Comment 9 David Edmundson 2015-08-30 20:30:33 UTC

just email plasma-devel@kde.org

Comment 10 David Edmundson 2015-11-09 23:16:41 UTC

This is in 5.5