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The terminal icon behaviour is actually one of the things I really like about Unity. If you've got a dock, it's difficult to manage several windows of the same

by morsch 15y ago

The terminal icon behaviour is actually one of the things I really like about Unity. If you've got a dock, it's difficult to manage several windows of the same application: either each gets its own icon, but then you've got two identical icons in there with no way to see which is which; or you subsume them under one icon, but then what happens when you click it? You can open a sub-menu to access the various instances, you could open the most recently used one, or you could bring all of them to the front. Unity basically does the latter. I like docks, but I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me.

masklinn 15y ago
> I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me. Windows 7 does it very well: it just pops up small "previews" of all the windows. That's what OSX does by keeping the left-button pressed on the icon (it switches to app-exposé), but without the click and in a cleaner manner. OSX's (and apparently unity's) behavior of bringing a random window to the front when you click it is helpful when you only ever have a single window for your application. Otherwise it's not generally very useful.
- morsch 15y ago
  No, that's not what Unity does. I'm not 100% sure (work computer right now), but I think it might work like this when you click on the icon for app X: If the active window does not belong to X, make the most recently used window of X active. If the active window already belongs to X, bring all other windows to the front. In other words, if you're already working with an app, clicking the icon brings all other app windows to the front. If you're not working with the app, clicking once show the most likely useful window, clicking twice shows all others. It feels very natural for me. I specifically prefer it to the way Windows 7 does it with its window previews. Crucially, there is no dedicated interface for selecting which application window you want to use. By bringing all app windows to the front, I can just immediately use the window I was looking for (as long as I want to use the mouse).

by morsch 15y ago

masklinn 15y ago

> I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me. Windows 7 does it very well: it just pops up small "previews" of all the windows. That's what OSX does by keeping the left-button pressed on the icon (it switches to app-exposé), but without the click and in a cleaner manner. OSX's (and apparently unity's) behavior of bringing a random window to the front when you click it is helpful when you only ever have a single window for your application. Otherwise it's not generally very useful.

morsch 15y ago
No, that's not what Unity does. I'm not 100% sure (work computer right now), but I think it might work like this when you click on the icon for app X: If the active window does not belong to X, make the most recently used window of X active. If the active window already belongs to X, bring all other windows to the front. In other words, if you're already working with an app, clicking the icon brings all other app windows to the front. If you're not working with the app, clicking once show the most likely useful window, clicking twice shows all others. It feels very natural for me. I specifically prefer it to the way Windows 7 does it with its window previews. Crucially, there is no dedicated interface for selecting which application window you want to use. By bringing all app windows to the front, I can just immediately use the window I was looking for (as long as I want to use the mouse).