[GatoVolador]

...I am still not convinced. I use many applications at the same time and often have many windows open in each application. So I end up hiding applications just to get their windows out of the way. Expos�'s way of showing you everything you got is a step in the right direction, but here is my idea.

Basically I see three things going on:
1. the need to organize, manage, and store files. this is the job of the Finder.

2. the need to jump from one application to another, and have quick access to aliases and shortcuts to files and folders. this is what the Dock is good at, specially by placing volumes and folders in it. access to certain application commands via contextual menus in the dock also makes it handy.

but something is lacking. window management...a navigation tool for jumping around from window to window, not just from application to application, and which does it functionally and quickly. having 30, 40, 50 items in the dock renders it a joke, and hiding applications just to reduce the number of visible windows, and thereby increasing the dock usability, is a gimick, not a system.

Expos� tries to fix that. it lets you see all your open windows quickly. it might grow on us, as did the dock at the begining, but i still see it, as i did the dock when we were first introduced to it, as tools for the novices, for the switchers. i am sure most creative proffessionals out there hide your docks because it awkwardly takes up screen real estate, and even more use 3rd party utilities that 1-up the dock's offerings in functionality.

Therefore, i propose a system, and we'll call it the Bay. The Bay is like a window that sits on top of the desktop, but underneath any open window. It can be always visible, or only when a certain key como or 3rd/4rth/5th mouse button is clicked. Again, this would be for pro users, which is most of us here at the MacNN forums, with endlessly customized jaguar systems and now many pre-release panther systems. it would also put windows xp to shame.

The idea is this, the Bay has 2 colums. on the left is a list of the open applications that have at least 1 window open, and on the right would be rows of the open windows pertaining to each application. essentially these windows would be miminized-in-place icons, and with one-click would maximize. the idea is that most of us usually work within one window at a time, so each time we minimized a window, we would have clean, powerful and fast access to anything we were working on or any open window, by seeing it there in the bay. No need to browse through miniature dock items, or guess, everything would be labeled.




The dock would still be used to "bring an app to the front", so for any apps with no windows open, you could still switch to them by command-tab or the dock. this would also keep the Bay not as cluttered as is, inevitably, always the case with the dock when many apps are running.

The Bay would have 2 modes, light and heavy loads, give them whatever names you like, but its to get the point across. In light mode, the Bay would operate as described above, with each application having a row of open-window minimized window icons to the right of it. When one application passes a certain number of open windows, then the Bay switches to "heavy load" mode. Now, the whole right colum area of the Bay is dedicated to showing the contents of only one application, and it would list them vertically, so a full window name could be shown, untruncated. by clicking on different apps listed in the left hand side, you would be chosing to show its open windows in the right hand side of the bay. Also, you would be able to command click and chose any number of windows to maximize, or command click the applicatoin listed on the left to open all the windows of one certain application. The handy thing would be to have options to list the windows alphabetically, or by most recently maximized.





The vision i have of this "bay" would make things soo organized, so simple and straightforward, that i can't see how the pro mac users wouldn't comfortably succumb to it, because it just makes sense. it would be something that you could turn off altogether, and just use the dock as before, or use Expos� which kinda, but kinda doesn't compete with the Bay.

For the Bay to be a fully functional and powerful window management system, I suggest two other things accompany it. First is an icon in the top right, to the right of the date even, in the Apple menu bar. Click on this icon would give you 1 or two options (Show/Hide Bay, and Customize Bay) and then it would list all open Apps that have at least 1 window open. Light and heavy modes would exist as well for the menu. Under light mode, you would see both the list of open apps and also under each app, the open windows for that app, so you could quickly access any open window from the apple menu bar. under heavy load mode, it would simply list the apps and next to each app name it would show a number in parentheses, which would be the number of open windows that app had. the sub menu for each app listed in the menu would be of the open windows in that app. simple.

the second companion to the Bay would be a revamp to dock contextual menus. it already shows a list of open windows when you access a dock app's contextual menu, but i say why not give it a good sized icon much like, or maybe smaller, the minimized-window icons, so you could more easily visualize the open window insteat of just by name. also, some clue as to which windows in the contetual menu list are maximized and which are minimized. some other nice items to have in contextual menus for dock apps would be "close and save all open documents" or just "quit app without saving".

The two pictures i put together are to help illustrate the concept. the dock is hidden in both. something important about the placement of the Bay is that it would never overlap the dock, and could be placed so that when working in an application with many toolbars, the bay would be sized so that it would be unobstructed by toolbars. this way, in heavy load mode, you could switch beetween windows quickly by minimizing a window which then reaveals the bay, then seeing the list of your open windows, with full filenames, switch to another one in one click.

to me the idea of the Bay does not clash with the Dock, because again, i see the Dock as a handy tool for accessing aliases and shortcuts, and for switching between open applications quickly. but the Bay is focused on providing a quick, intuitive, easy, powerful system for managing windows.

please discuss. it woul be great if people would ellaborate and add ideas by also making different illustrations, since it helps to see it sometimes to understand an idea.

[ShotgunEd]

some nice ideas but i like the way expose uses Quartz to shrink your windows and they are real time, your idea of smaller MIP-like windows isnt as good when it comes to see what happenning in the window. I reckon expos� just needs to have a feature that meant that all windows were always hidden unless you were in an app or you had all the windows reduced in size. Basically you switch from no windows to seeing all of them and selecting which you want. At the moment if you want to take advantage of having multiple windows your screen still has to be cluttered.

[decursive]

complexity is thy enemy.

[awaspaas]

Too complicated to be built-in, but a great idea for a 3rd-party developer, in my opinion.

[t_hah]

I agree with the previous poster...simplicity is key! If you make it more complex it might slow things down to a point where we would be back to...crap, this is slow as s$^&*%!

I think Expose is great, and is executed well. I am sure that Apple will improve on it with time...this is (not even) an initial release.


t

[cpac]

nicely thought out, but I don't see a real need.

Couple of thoughts:

Expose works not just with *every* window, but also with individual applications windows (dimming out other applications' windows)

Beyond that, we've got the ability to click & hold on an application in the dock for a list of its open windows, and the ability to command-` though all the currently open windows in that app.

Command-tab has all the app switching goodness I need (and the new Panther pop-up for it a-la sound/brightness makes it easier to track how many times to hit tab than the current dock-only implementation).

Nice idea, but nothing that's really needed....

[GatoVolador]

maybe as a 3rd party tool then. having 3 windows open in photoshop, 2 in safari, 10 in golive, 4 in flash, 3 in explorer, and 3 finder windows open. as in while working on some big project, i think it would just be easier than having a bunch of small systems (command-tab or command-`, dock contextual menus, expos�) looped together.

i'm curious. for those using panther. with 8 very similar looking windows open in a single app, like photoshop or the finder, just how useful is the F10 in expos�? does it label the windows or display a window name when tabbing between each one?

[lookmark]

Originally posted by GatoVolador:
i'm curious. for those using panther. with 8 very similar looking windows open in a single app, like photoshop or the finder, just how useful is the F10 in expos�? does it label the windows or display a window name when tabbing between each one?

It does indeed label the windows when tabbing between them.

Nice mockups, btw, but there's something a bit Microsoftian in the design. The beauty of Expos� is its simplicity. I do hope it will be made to work with hidden windows though...

[Bi@tch]

Isn't this the simplest solution?

[ameat]

i like it. pal up with a shareware developer...

[Bi@tch]

i like it. pal up with a shareware developer...

I don't know if that comment was directed at me but my mockup would be impossible to realize except with perhaps APE? Then again I'm not sure since the dock probably doesn't even make calls to cocoa or carbon.

[ShotgunEd]

to restate my point in simpler terms, i think expos� with a single window mode like ASM or ClearDock or whatever gave you would be �ber.

[mitchell_pgh]

I wouldn't mind seeing something like this being implemented as the F12 (F9 is for all windows being shown, F10 is for showing all of the active application windows and F11 is for hiding all windows and showing the desktop)

GREAT IDEA, but I think Mac users are more visual as in "I just want to see all of the windows"...

Again, great idea and nice visuals...

[keston]

I like this idea. But the dock needs a settable delay on that pop-up list. I hate the 2 second wait thats it set to right now. Thats the main reason why i dont use the dock for window navigation. You icon/thumnail list suggestion and a shorter delay would make it alot more useful.

Originally posted by Bi@tch:
Isn't this the simplest solution?

[Bi@tch]

I like this idea. But the dock needs a settable delay on that pop-up list. I hate the 2 second wait thats it set to right now. Thats the main reason why i dont use the dock for window navigation. You icon/thumnail list suggestion and a shorter delay would make it alot more useful.

did you ever try control-clicking?

[gralem]

Just wait till you use it. You'll wonder how you ever got along without it. I run production on Jaguar, and several times a day, I move to the corner to run expos�. Then I remember I'm in Jag not Panther. It is a good feature. And don't use it if you don't want it.

---gralem

[Alex Duffield]

OK, here is an idea I just had.

If I use Expose to show windows of only the front app as it does now, but then I use Apple - Tab to tab between running apps, and it automatically switches to an Expose of all open windows for the new app...

I haven't tried this, as I am not running Panther, but it might even do this now...

And if not, it is a perfect solution for people with lots of windows in multiple apps...

Some one want to test this???

[kerrazyjoe]

Originally posted by Alex Duffield:
If I use Expose to show windows of only the front app as it does now, but then I use Apple - Tab to tab between running apps, and it automatically switches to an Expose of all open windows for the new app...

ooo la la - i like that ! "There's some bay functionality"

[KidRed]

All that just to show all open apps and their windows? Why? WAY too complicated.

[eduo]

It's funny. I'd like some different window management options but what I'd like is totally opposite to tacking more things onto the current one, but to actually revamp it and take it to draconian DOS/DesqView days..

What I'd like:

1.-A full-screen, multi-paned, tabbed interface. No separate windows, no moving around of elements.

2.-Tabs to separate application windows (or "modes", if we lose this "application" concept), with the option of tiling the panes (they wouldn't be windows anymore, obviously) or just overlapping (again, full-screen)

3.-Dock-type strip for open applications, smaller and along an edge of the screen. Hover over an app and a strip slides with the open windows, ordered either alphabetically or by last-used with previews of the windows.

4.-Current menu strip at the top, above all like MacOSX now (unlike Windows or most unix implementations)

5.-Utilities bar along a strip in another side of the screen (we've used three now) where things like the current menu-apps (sound, IM status, clock, music control, etc.) would reside, as well as future utilities (similar to windows taskbar widgets, but not as ugly or messy and controlled by a central repository, so as to be updated automatically and be validated by a recognized source)

6.-Alternative to Copy/paste and Drag/Drop: A section of the the utilities bar would hold a "well" and you'd be able to "pick-up" any item in any app that would normally be copy-able or drag-able and "deposit" it there. The contents of this would appear in a sub-item under the contextual menu. You'd be able to "pick-up" several things (for example, three graphics from a webpage, or two URLs from a single e-mail message) and then somewhere else "deposit" or "drop" them in the order you wanted them to be.

7.-Some applications (or "modes)" could have multiple windows visible as long as none of them overlap given the characteristics of the application itself (for example, graphic programs for comparing multiple images or terminal apps with fixed-size windows containers)

8.-I would rename "windows" in such an environment as "containers", actually, to avoid confusion and false expectations.

9.-Such a system could be simple enough for newbies (less ways to complicate their lives) and give enough power to power users to be usable. The reason we shun when proposed these systems is just because they're TOO different from what we're used to, not because they are useless.

10.-Just to complete ten items (and because I know posting this here is futile, as I'll receive lots of attacks and no serious criticism): The system would looks very similar to what people think computers should look like. In most movies computers use full-screen applications and seem to switch modes but almost never show windows (except for the always-useful "progress bar window" used for when someone needs to be "hinted" that something is being done -usually downloading the whole internet, or cracking a login/password dialog after pushing the "override" button displayed after "login" and "cancel"- or when movement needs to be shown, as opening and closing of windows really quickly and all over the screen is, as we all know, a sure sign of people working feverishly).

Eduo

[DamnDJ]

Personally, I love the mockup that the original poster of this message provided. I think that would be a very cool feature/program to have. I like the layout and the function that it could provide.

On the other side of the coin, I really like what Expose does for me. In the short amount of time that I used Panther, I can already see that Expose is going to be something I use regularly, not just one of those features that's cool to have but never gets used.

[eduo]

Originally posted by eduo:
1.-A full-screen, multi-paned, tabbed interface. No separate windows, no moving around of elements.

Incidentally. Those that have played UpLink will figure out this is the same interface (in the sense that in Uplink only warning popups are set as windows, whereas everything else is a multi-paned, tabbed, multi-modal full-screen interface.

This is obvious, as uplink is fashioned after the typical interface found in movies about hackers and computers without an actual computer background and, thus, mimicks it (in a functional, if ugly, way).

Incidentally, just to mimick swordfish, this interface could have interlocking cubes connected through wires to denote "work.-in-progress", as the interface shown for "hacking" in that movie is.

Eduo

[natan]

If I use Expose to show windows of only the front app as it does now, but then I use Apple - Tab to tab between running apps, and it automatically switches to an Expose of all open windows for the new app...

This is a feature in Panther Preview now!

Hit F9 to see all apps and their windows. Then, while Expose is still activated, hit the tab key (no command) and it will cycle through the windows of all open apps, resizing them to fit the window. Open a fwe windows in a bunch of apps, and you'll see how cool it is to quickly cycle through them

[nforcer]

I'm not sure how much time Expose will save for those of us that already know how to hide apps by using the option key properly (I step around window clutter completely with a nice mouse setup), but I do like the idea of an "Organized Expose". I think the seemingly random organization of windows that Expose does is going to make it somewhat less useful in the long run.

[ShotgunEd]

Originally posted by natan:
This is a feature in Panther Preview now!

Hit F9 to see all apps and their windows. Then, while Expose is still activated, hit the tab key (no command) and it will cycle through the windows of all open apps, resizing them to fit the window. Open a fwe windows in a bunch of apps, and you'll see how cool it is to quickly cycle through them

And Shift-Tab goes backwards

[zoe77]

Originally posted by ShotgunEd:
And Shift-Tab goes backwards

it works with Command-Tilde too

[kerrazyjoe]

Originally posted by natan:
This is a feature in Panther Preview now!
Hit F9 to see all apps and their windows. Then, while Expose is still activated, hit the tab key (no command) and it will cycle through the windows of all open apps, resizing them to fit the window. Open a fwe windows in a bunch of apps, and you'll see how cool it is to quickly cycle through them

TAB key to cycle through the windows of all open apps? I cannot verify - i do not have Panther . I want three apps - say Photoshop w/3 windows, TextEdit w/2 windows, and Finder w/3 windows. run Expose for one app (TextEdit) here i see the 2 windows - Now I want to see the windows for Photoshop while in Expose? - not all apps just the next one - can it do this???
While in expose for "an app" can I switch the app being Expose'd?
Do not leave expose to Switch the expose app!
Could someone verify? Pleeeease.

[ShotgunEd]

No, Expos� does not so this currently.

[natan]

TAB key to cycle through the windows of all open apps? I cannot verify - i do not have Panther . I want three apps - say Photoshop w/3 windows, TextEdit w/2 windows, and Finder w/3 windows. run Expose for one app (TextEdit) here i see the 2 windows - Now I want to see the windows for Photoshop while in Expose? - not all apps just the next one - can it do this???
While in expose for "an app" can I switch the app being Expose'd?
Do not leave expose to Switch the expose app!
Could someone verify? Pleeeease.

Yep, you can. Verified with the Panther Preview release.

However, it seems that when you do a lot of this and some cmd-tab switching, Expose will begin to malfunction. Regardless, the feature is there and works great. There's even a little zoom animation while switching between Expose-d apps.