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Yes, Unity was a huge step down. The fact that it combines windows of the same binary into one icon drives me insane! Because that means I now need two clicks t

by Kenji 10y ago

Yes, Unity was a huge step down. The fact that it combines windows of the same binary into one icon drives me insane! Because that means I now need two clicks to navigate to those windows, costing me multiple seconds with every context switch. Someone asked a question on UX stackexchange on how to turn off this behaviour and the answer was along the lines of "it's impossible and you don't need that because you don't know what you want". Frustrating. EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot. The fact that the little 'x' close button of maximized windows cannot be clicked if a smaller window is active and in the foreground. That drives me nuts.

johnchristopher 10y ago
> EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot. The fact that the little 'x' close button of maximized windows cannot be clicked if a smaller window is active and in the foreground. That drives me nuts. I don't understand: That's default GTK/win behaviour when the smaller window is part of the background window (like LO prompting for closing/saving/cancelling the document you are editing when you click the close button of LO). It's a pop up.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Yes, it makes sense when you close your word processor and you have unsaved work, that the popup asking you to save your work has priority and prevents the close button from being clicked. However, it does not make sense that if I have a small console window in the foreground and my word processor in the back, that I cannot close my word processor with one click - but I can't. That's default behaviour in Unity.
  - type0 10y ago
    > However, it does not make sense that if I have a small console window in the foreground and my word processor in the back, that I cannot close my word processor with one click - but I can't. That's default behaviour in Unity. These small but idiosyncratic behaviors in Unity that probably drive so many people away. It is long time sine I used Unity last, but there was enough of these quirks that made it unpleasant to use.
  - johnchristopher 10y ago
    Thanks for your detailed answer. I didn't know things had gotten to that point :/ (I am an awesome-wm user on top of debian with xfce install who kinda like gnome3).
zzzcpan 10y ago
Mouse button clicks are generally for lazy, laid back behavior and not for fast and productive. You are supposed to use keyboard for that. Although there are definitely some cases where their UI fails and multiple windows of the same app is usually among them, like alt+tab is absolutely useless in this scenario on unity, it's way faster to use mouse to switch between them if you have to work with more than two of them on a single workspace.
- pkd 10y ago
  You can use alt + ~ to switch between open windows of the same application. Long pressing the super(windows) key shows more shortcuts.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    Thanks, didn't notice it.
- Shorel 10y ago
  Pftt. You can be fast with both. Any Starcraft player knows that. The fact that you are slow with the mouse is not something that can be generalized to all the population. Yes, I know I always get down-votes whenever I mention this.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    Per Fitts's law [1], your screen is a lot bigger than the keyboard and your pointer is a lot farther from most targets, than your fingers on the keyboard that you keep on those "asdf" "jkl;" keys. So you can't be faster with mouse on most shortcuts most of the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law
    - Shorel 10y ago
      Using a good mouse and disabling mouse acceleration I can certainly be quite fast, only a fraction of a second slower than using a keyboard shortcut. With mouse acceleration, or with a trackpad, I think I agree with you. It also depends on the task. I can select and move a piece of text from one place to another faster with the mouse than with any way of keyboard shortcuts. For example, using vim shortcuts I have to count the number of lines I need to move the cursor before typing the order and it is always faster for me to just move the mouse cursor than to count the lines.

by Kenji 10y ago

johnchristopher 10y ago

> EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot. The fact that the little 'x' close button of maximized windows cannot be clicked if a smaller window is active and in the foreground. That drives me nuts. I don't understand: That's default GTK/win behaviour when the smaller window is part of the background window (like LO prompting for closing/saving/cancelling the document you are editing when you click the close button of LO). It's a pop up.

Kenji 10y ago
Yes, it makes sense when you close your word processor and you have unsaved work, that the popup asking you to save your work has priority and prevents the close button from being clicked. However, it does not make sense that if I have a small console window in the foreground and my word processor in the back, that I cannot close my word processor with one click - but I can't. That's default behaviour in Unity.
- type0 10y ago
  > However, it does not make sense that if I have a small console window in the foreground and my word processor in the back, that I cannot close my word processor with one click - but I can't. That's default behaviour in Unity. These small but idiosyncratic behaviors in Unity that probably drive so many people away. It is long time sine I used Unity last, but there was enough of these quirks that made it unpleasant to use.
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  Thanks for your detailed answer. I didn't know things had gotten to that point :/ (I am an awesome-wm user on top of debian with xfce install who kinda like gnome3).

zzzcpan 10y ago

Mouse button clicks are generally for lazy, laid back behavior and not for fast and productive. You are supposed to use keyboard for that. Although there are definitely some cases where their UI fails and multiple windows of the same app is usually among them, like alt+tab is absolutely useless in this scenario on unity, it's way faster to use mouse to switch between them if you have to work with more than two of them on a single workspace.

pkd 10y ago
You can use alt + ~ to switch between open windows of the same application. Long pressing the super(windows) key shows more shortcuts.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Thanks, didn't notice it.
Shorel 10y ago
Pftt. You can be fast with both. Any Starcraft player knows that. The fact that you are slow with the mouse is not something that can be generalized to all the population. Yes, I know I always get down-votes whenever I mention this.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Per Fitts's law [1], your screen is a lot bigger than the keyboard and your pointer is a lot farther from most targets, than your fingers on the keyboard that you keep on those "asdf" "jkl;" keys. So you can't be faster with mouse on most shortcuts most of the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law
  - Shorel 10y ago
    Using a good mouse and disabling mouse acceleration I can certainly be quite fast, only a fraction of a second slower than using a keyboard shortcut. With mouse acceleration, or with a trackpad, I think I agree with you. It also depends on the task. I can select and move a piece of text from one place to another faster with the mouse than with any way of keyboard shortcuts. For example, using vim shortcuts I have to count the number of lines I need to move the cursor before typing the order and it is always faster for me to just move the mouse cursor than to count the lines.