On 26/05/07, Joe Smith <jes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How do you folks manage your working windows? I find that working on a standard WIMP desktop is a distracting battle of locating and arranging in the needed windows. The current tools, specifically in the default Fedora Gnome desktop are not working well for me, but maybe I've missed something. Here's what I've tried: * Focus follows mouse I can't stand "click to focus", primarily because it's disruptive to move a window to the top for something simple and then to restore the z-order I had before. Using "focus follows mouse" solves that problem, but I'm left with the converse problem: I often have problems finding the window I need and bringing it to the top when necessary. Here's what I've tried for that: 1. Alt-tab to cyle through windows. This is the exact functionality I need, but having to access it through the keyboard, with a rather awkward key chord is not convenient enough. I want something that will work with the mouse.
It's not awkward at all if you let your thumb rest on the left ALT key and your fourth finger (has it a name?) rests on TAB. It becomes second nature real quick. Sometimes, I find myself thumb-fourthFingering a newspaper that I'm reading.
2. The window-selector panel menu. Better, but it's distracting to use the panel here: it's too far from my working windows and it's complicated to locate the correct button on the panel and select the right window given only their titles. 3. Application window menus: these would be ok, except they don't work with Nautilus under "focus follows mouse" (Mozilla Seamonkey and OpenOffice are the two big ones I use, that don't work). What might help: * a window menu built-in to the title bar * a method to "restore the previous order", or at least to send the top window down. Other suggestions? What obvious solution have I missed? <Joe
Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/ http://what-is-what.com/
