Expose Metacity With Expocity

ubiquitin writes "expocity is a project to patch metacity and lets you switch between applications in the metacity window manager. After pressing a keystroke, your window manager will present you an overview of all open windows and you can select the window, you want to switch to, visually. For an idea on how this works, check out this screenshot."

Comments

Re:a Better headline would be

[jdifool]

Hi,

at first sight, I'd say here

But maybe some people believe that innovation is what you can only see.

Regards,
jdif

Use the virtual desktop with OpenGL 3D switching

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yup, virtual desktops are cool, but 3D virtual desktop selection is even cooler, and surpisingly fast if you have a decent video card: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

Window metaphor considered harmful

[heironymouscoward]

This is a troll, I warn you in advance. That is, I am going to deliberate provoke you to think.

Looking at the incredible screenshot of Expocity for Metacity, I think to myself: how can anyone work with such a confusion of information in front of them?

My hero, Dijkstra (anyone who could live with 5 successive constanants in his name must be cool), once said "GOTOs considered harmful". We know where that led us to...

Anyhow, I believe the desktop Window metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It dates to the earliest metaphors of visual computing, but continues today only because it has become dogma. Let me list some of the ways it does not model a true desktop, such as you or I sit at every day and work on.

First, a true desktop has hundreds of objects on it, varying from piles of CDs, documents, bills to be paid, loudspeakers, mouldy cups of coffee... This is the real working environment of most creative people, a cluttered mess that makes perfect sense because it maps our projects. You've all had that sense of panic when someone "cleaned your desk?"

Second, in a real desktop, you add new stuff, it covers old stuff. This is normal and natural and necessary and the only way to filter the real work from the junk. If it ain't screaming at you, it's not serious.

Thirdly, the objects on a GUI windowed desktop do not match the actual objects we work on. I have to look through my email client to find important emails, I have my bookmarks in Konqueror, I have that hot dossier on a disk somewhere.

There has to be a better way.

What we need is a unified desktop that represents the real objects we work on, in a way that mirrors the manner in which we actually use them.

A desktop that hides information which needs to be hidden, and exposes the information which needs to be visible. A desktop that shows everything, from incoming emails to useful web bookmarks, to documents and toys, newsgroups, and devices.

I've specified this desktop in
journal entries.

Putting my money where my mouth is, we're working on a prototype that will be unleashed on the world sometime early next year.

Re:Window metaphor considered harmful

[Chops]

So my understanding of the state of the art, as understood by real UI people, is that windows should tile on the screen instead of overlapping. If your windows don't all fit on the screen, you need a new screen.

This is the way I do it: Have 9 virtual screens (natively in GNU/Linux or via Altdesk on Windows), with each screen bound to one of the keys in the 3x3 square defined by Q-E-C-Z (Ctrl-Shift-q for screen 1, C-S-e for screen 3, C-S-a for screen 4, etc.)

Rows are for machines: Q-W-E is the local machine, Z-X-C is shells and windows on my home machine, A-S-D is shells and windows on other machines. Columns are applications: Q-A-Z is random shells and small applications, W-S-X is full-screen apps (e.g. web browser & email client), E-D-C is programming (Studio or emacs + shells depending).

I've found that hitting C-S-whatever becomes pretty much automatic when I want to get to a particular app; there are a couple of overlaps (sometimes I'll have email and web both open at home, so I'll have to say C-S-x then click in the taskbar), but on the whole I can juggle quite a few programs without ever having to hunt through the taskbar.

Re:Classic example

[beady]

I think the real beauty of Expose above Virtual desktops is that your average joe user (who admittedly probably won't be using metacity at any point particularly soon, at home anway) doesn't have to think about arranging his desktops, doesn't have to think about keeping common tasks together, and Yes, of course this would be useful to him, and maybe in time he will learn that. But in the meanwhile, you tell him "Press f8 and then you can see all your windows, just click on the one you want to use" and he's away. No thinking "Did I put my browser on desktop 1, or is that my email/IM desktop?"

Re:Copyright or Patents?

[ocelotbob]

Ah, but is it truly innovative? Much of the functionality of expose has been around for years, albeit not in an all-in once package like expose. I remember back in the windows 3.1 days, there was an option to tile all open windows, and one of the XP powertoys gives a miniature snapshot of the window you're about to tab to upon hitting the task switching command. Yes, apple deserves kudos for putting the pieces together, but they weren't the inventor of those pieces. Everybody steals from everybody in the computer biz -- innovation is usually just a matter of extending someone else's ideas and adding a small twist to it.

Ratpoison

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, ratpoison has an Expose clone for almost a month now.And, in my opinion, it is much better.

try it, then knock it

[SuperBanana]

I neither understand why you'd need a screen of thumbnails to all your open apps

You probably also have a giagantic screen, yes? 1280x1020 or above? Doesn't sound like you have many windows open either.

Our CEO didn't 'get' Expose when I demo'd it on my 17" Powerbook. Then two days after he got his 12" Powerbook, he was asking a question about something and said in disgust, 'Arrg, all these frigging windows." "Hit F12". "Oh. Hmm. Okay. That IS cool." He now loves it. Can't stop using it. Once you start using it- you realize that you don't spend time hunting for windows by hiding others(and then un-hiding them because that's what you were working on), or repositioning them, or hiding and closing things. It's like having a desk where you can instantly tile the mess, grab what you want, and everything goes back to exactly where you left it.

I use virtual desktops on my linux workstation, and they're a constant pain- an inelegant solution. An opened terminal doesn't open where it should go, it opens where you currently are. You have to move them between VTs. You have to remember which one you're in, and which one you want to go to. They DO NOT solve the problem Expose is designed to solve- finding one out of many windows on the screen, very quickly.

I'd like to see you manage 40 open windows and find ONE quickly, please. Oh, what's the matter, your scheme doesn't work for more than 3-4 windows per virtual terminal?

Oh, and did I mention that I don't have any screen real estate wasted on a pager, or a window list...even my dock is auto-hide.

My 2 cents

[Bobulusman]

Not having much exposure to Mac, I just saw the expose effect the other day. A professor was doing a powerpoint lecture and needed to switch to a website to better get a point across.

He used the expose feature to select the browser from the 10+ he had open at the time. The audience all went "Ooooooh" and I'll admit that I thought it was a neat effect.

While I probably would just use virtual desktops most of the time, it would be useful in some cases, or to show someone (as pictures are worth a 1000 words and all that) some of the neat stuff Linux can do.

Re:Use the virtual desktop

[Bazman]

TWMs icon manager. Xerox 'Rooms'. Virtual Desktops. Expocity. Ratpoison. All designed to help you get around your X window clutter. Great.

But how many of them deserve slashdot headlines? Did Expocity get in just because its a clone of a Mac UI feature?

And its a patch to a window manager? Looking at the code I think the reason for this is because it is continuously updating its thumbnails as the window manager gets events, so I guess it can display them rapidly when the user asks. Will this slow everything down?

Could this be re-implemented as a standalone X program? Or would getting thumbnails of obscured windows be a problem?

Re:a Better headline would be

[jcw2112]

in the world of pro audio production, there's jack. it started in the open for gnu/linux and is being ported to os x. the idea is that you can route audio signals freely from one application to another. it's a great idea and is unique to the oss world.

hope that helps.

Re:a Better headline would be

[fliplap]

Just to play devil's advocate. Linux's original purpose was to be a copy/clone of Minix

I think you make the point exactly

[artemis67]

Oddly, everything you site as an example of original OSS development is actually derivative of something else.

Apple's Expose was a totally original concept that's now been copied by OSS developers.

It's one thing upgrade and revise existing ideas along what would appear to be a natural path of progression, and something else entirely to brainstorm new products and new interfaces, and mass market them.

Re:I think you make the point exactly

[revery]

Oddly, everything you site as an example of original OSS development is actually derivative of something else.

Apple's Expose was a totally original concept that's now been copied by OSS developers.

Totally original?
I doubt it. I think somone said, "you know how Windows will let you scroll through icons of open windows by hitting Alt-Tab, well what if that were more useful?"

It's a variation on a theme, it's like thumbnails crossed with alt-tabbing and made into a tremendously useful feature.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, expose, OSX, Linux, Open Source, apple pie, and... uhm... other stuff... that has has to do with computers, but there are very few, if any, things in the world that are totally original.

--

Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.

Re:I think you make the point exactly

[N1KO]

How about screen.
Or menus for your window manager being created on the fly using a script (I have a neat one that lists all the running processes, and lets me do things to each of those processes).
Or tabbed windows in the window manager.

Expose wasn't totally original by the way, nothing is.

Promising despite usability issues

[fforw]

Okay, I have to admit it. Not only I read the article, I took the time to patch the current metacity CVS and try it :

Pro

• good scaling, looks slick
• can better differentiate between similar windows

Contra

• There's a noticeable delay between Alt+Tab and display. confusing. The code looks as so the images are prescaled in advance. so I don't know where then delay comes from.
• It does not behave like you'd expect it to:
  I had to completely release Alt and Tab to activate it. Mouse needed to activate windows. Better: Initial Alt+Tab invokes Expose-Mode, Mode stays while I keep pressing Alt. Every further Tab press flips through the windows top-down/left-right (or in your cultural preferred directional order), releasing tab selects window
• It removes all windows from the desktop before showing the miniatures. wouldn't it be nicer to keep the windows like they are in the background? (would be more like the usual Alt+Tab behaviour, too)