deskbar 's list of running programs

[khallebal]

right now left clicking or right clicking on a running program in the list has the same effect, that is a menu pops up with "close all,show all or hide all. my suggestion is to change the left click to just max or min the windows as it is the most common thing we do,it's quite annoying to have to click twice to just to do that,and we can keep the left click as it is.this feature has been around for years in MS WINDOWS(i'm no fan of windows) i just think it's the right way.i'm an old beos user and this is one of the things that i think it should be improved.

[jscipione]

I second this remark. A left mouse click should not under any circumstances open a contextual menu, that is the sole providence of the right mouse button. The logical action for the left mouse button is to perform the same action that a double left click does now, namely, to bring the clicked application window(s) forward.

[axeld]

Since it's basically a menu like a menu bar is one, the contextual menu argument doesn't really stand.

The decision what makes more sense actually depends on the application. If it's a single window application (like most Windows apps), the behaviour as suggested by khallebal definitely makes sense. However, on Haiku, most applications are using multiple windows, and there, the current behaviour is actually what you would want to have in most cases, as bringing the application to foreground isn't really helping.

Therefore, I think the current approach with the double click is a good compromise.

[jscipione]

If Haiku had a B_SINGLE_WINDOW flag kind of like how Cocoa on Mac OS X does then I would agree that the contextual menus could be eliminated for those apps. I still think that a left click should bring up the current apps windows though. The right click menu would still be there and it would save a click.

[anevilyak]

Replying to jscipione:

I still think that a left click should bring up the current apps windows though. The right click menu would still be there and it would save a click.

The problem is that in Haiku's case that can't consistently be done in a meaningful way. For instance, if an app's windows are spread across multiple workspaces, what do you do? Bringing them all to the current workspace is annoying since you most likely had them spread out intentionally (i.e. I tend to spread Pe windows across multiple workspaces grouped by project), and anything else is pretty much guessing as to the user's intention.

[jscipione]

The problem is that in Haiku's case that can't consistently be done in a meaningful way. For instance, if an app's windows are spread across multiple workspaces, what do you do? Bringing them all to the current workspace is annoying since you most likely had them spread out intentionally (i.e. I tend to spread Pe windows across multiple workspaces grouped by project), and anything else is pretty much guessing as to the user's intention.

Just do what Mac OS X does, alternate between the windows in the various workspaces each time you click the app icon.

[khallebal]

it could be possible to give haiku the ability to assign some kind of temporary "id" to every window it draws reagardless of the app,to make it "independent" from other windows of the same app that's for example in another workspace,i don't know how difficult that is to implement in the appserver or tracker(i don't know wich one is able to do that).

[axeld]

Replying to jscipione:

Just do what Mac OS X does, alternate between the windows in the various workspaces each time you click the app icon.

That's a good solution to the problem IMO, and should be implemented for the current double click behaviour.

Other than that, I would find it a bit inconsistent to make it behave differently from a menu with regards to its right/left click behaviour - but it being a menu might not be that obvious for that to be a problem, so it's probably just my opinion. Any other voices on that particular problem?

[bonefish]

Replying to axeld:

Other than that, I would find it a bit inconsistent to make it behave differently from a menu with regards to its right/left click behaviour - but it being a menu might not be that obvious for that to be a problem, so it's probably just my opinion. Any other voices on that particular problem?

Well, the thing certainly doesn't look like a menu, but surely anyone clicking on it gets the drift real quick. So I don't think that is relevant to the discussion. The question is only what the most convenient behavior is. Since I never use the Deskbar to just activate an application, I definitely prefer the status quo over repurposing the left click.

[jscipione]

Well, the thing certainly doesn't look like a menu, but surely anyone clicking
on it gets the drift real quick.

The deskbar is not a menu it is just implemented using a BMenu. But to the user it is its own thing and not a menu bar like in other apps. Therefore the deskbar's behavior is open to interpretation. My opinion and the original parents opinion is that the left click should bring the application windows forward. Others think it should open a contextual menu allowing the user to select the window they want. I cannot see how this debate can be solved since both are equally valid behaviors. To me it is just "wrong" to open a contextual menu on left click. I have tried to get used to the behavior but I just can't seem to. It is especially baffling to me for single window applications such as Deskcalc where there is really only choice, show the window or hide it. So at least for those apps the contextual menu should go away. Perhaps the contextual menu should only appear on a left click if there is more than one window open for the app. Right click always brings up the menu. That sounds like a fair comprimise to me.

[axeld]

Replying to jscipione:

To me it is just "wrong" to open a contextual menu on left click.

If anything, it's much closer to a popup menu than a "contextual menu", and I guess there is no arguing that the expected result of a left click on a popup menu brings up that menu.

Perhaps the contextual menu should only appear on a left click if there is more than one window open for the app. Right click always brings up the menu. That sounds like a fair comprimise to me.

Sounds fair, but is not a good solution either, as the action triggered by the left click is then not foreseeable at all. Things like that should be avoided if possible.

I think a possible alternative to the current double click behaviour is to make the middle click behave the same or something like this. I wouldn't like to see the current left click behaviour changed for the reasons mentioned above.

[stippi]

The DeskBar is indeed a menu and behaves like one. The same is true for the Windows task bar and start button. I think window management has improved in Windows 7, but the single click feature to bring windows to front if an app has only one window has certainly irritated me. The problem is that I expected it to work for example on Firefox with only one browser window open, but it stops working if the Downloads window happens to be open as well. I guess I prefer consistent behavior, but I can at least understand how it works in Windows 7, since it would be a little silly to require two clicks for bringing the sole window of an application to the front. Just saying such inconsistent bheavior *is* still irritating, at least at first.

In another ticket, I have described an idea for a real context menu for Deskbar entries. It would contain options like "Pin this application to the Deskbar" and "Launch this application at system start" and so on. The menu that opens on application entries right now is not and should not be regarded as context menu. It is just how the Deskbar has always worked and is consistent with for example the browsing of the Be menu. It is also functionally equivalent to the Windows 7 task bar entries.

[pulkomandy]

This needs more discussion and design (and possibly a more involved DeskBar rewrite), so moving out of R1 milestone.

[humdinger]

(In #12040) Right you are. And as that and other Deskbar related tickets show, things become quickly much more difficult when it comes to all the details... Closing as duplicate.

[danboid]

When you have just one instance of a program open and/or the program in question only has one window open, you should not be presented with a menu when you click on a running program in the Deskbar. In this situation, the program being clicked on should be brought to the foreground and unminimized without having to select it from the sub-menu because the other options (Hide All, Show All and Close All) don't apply. The sub-menu should only appear when multiple instances of an app are running or if an app has multiple windows open and maybe only via right-click.

In addition, I have another good reason to alter the Deskbar's current design. In my first week of returning to Haiku (last week) I accidentally closed programs at least 4/5 times in my first week but I didn't know that at the time. I thought the programs were crashing. What was actually happening was I was double-cicking on the deskbar icon to switch to its window but my pointer got moved everso slightly to the side which means the second click selects 'Close all' from that misplaced context menu and so it was closing my programs by mistake. It seems many Haiku apps don't prompt you to make sure thats what you want to do when you close them this way.

To help minimize this nasty, I'd suggest that 'Close All' switch places in the deskbar menu with the much less destructive 'Show All' or whatever so long as 'Close All' is kept away from the base of the menu and the program icon.

[stippi]

IMHO, the behavior of clicking a Deskbar entry should not be different depending on the number of windows of that application. Instead, a single left click should always bring the window to front which was last active in that application. The current sub-menu should be triggered by a dedicated area on each item (like a small menu symbol) and via right-clicking. See my comment:11 from four years ago. Unfortunately, nobody felt like working on Deskbar in the meantime.

[pulkomandy]

I have switched to "expander" mode in Deskbar for some time now, and I'm quite happy with that. In this mode windows can be reached with a single click and the menu is still available (if you click the app entry and not an individual window). I think this mode is a lot better than the default one.

Should we make it the default? Is there a reason to not enable it? There is a separate "expand by default" setting which we could leave disabled, if people want the deskbar to stay compact.

[stippi]

Yeah, perhaps it should be the default. Bring it up on the developer mailing list?