Xfwm4 Switcher Mouse integration and thumbnails

[Ivan Hernandez]

Hi all,

I have been using XFCE from version 3.8 and have used many other systems
(E16, E17, OS X, WMaker, Gnome2.x, Kde 3.5, Unity) and used linux since
1998. In all that time I have found that xfwm4 is one of the best windows
managers all around. It has an impressive feature set, without being
bloted. It has a very low memory footprint, is fast, predictable, has lots
of tweaks and has composite extensions which bring composite effects even
to non accelerated hardware (VirtualBox) without a noticeable penalty in
performance.
That said, it's clear that I love it, but I think it has basically been the
same since xfce 4.2 and can be improved a little bit to make it shine.

In my daily use yhe only weak point that I find in xfwm4 is it's windows
switcher dialog. It could do more, and be more pretty without sacrificing a
lot. There are three features that I think could make a difference:

1) Mouse integration.
2) Thumbnails.
3) Rounded corners + transparency + shadows when in composite mode.

Point number 1 is completely bound to usability issues. Actually when you
press alt+tab and the switcher pops up mouse actions are completely
ignored. That could be changed. OS X and WindowMaker let you use the mouse
in a way that when the mouse hover an application icon it  behaves like the
"draw frame" option in Window Manager Tweaks Cycling tab. Even more, should
do that only if that option is selected. Also you could be able to click an
app icon to bring that app. That way users could choose apps by pressing
alt-tab and repeating tab/shift-tab or by pressing alt-tab and selecting
the window they want. When you have more than 10 windows, or are using 3 or
4 apps in a develope/build/test sequence it becomes a really handy tool.

Point 2 is all about eyecandy, but since people is using the window
switcher all the time, all day, every day, every little thing that makes
the experience better counts. Some switchers like the ones used by Windows
7 and Compiz use thumbnails of the running apps. As little as I know that
could be implemented without using 3D acceleration using the xdamage
extension to keep an up to date thumbnail in memory, but looks like a waste
of resources. Maybe it's better idea to use the old E16 strategy of taking
a snapshot of an application when the user leaves it's focus (either moving
to other app, calling the window switcher or minimizing it). Thumbnails
would not be live thumbnails but would still be very useful to know what
each app was doing last time we where using it and would be much more
efficient in performance.

Point 3 is completely trivial but would complete my wishlist for a "perfect
xfwm4". Rounded corners and a little bit of transparency in the background
would give the switcher a complete revamped look, even without thumbnails
and of course would be only enable when the user chose to enable the
compositing extensions.

As example of points 2 and 3 I put a link to a compiz and windows 7
switcher screenshot found using google images for illustration purposes.

http://blog.smartcube.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/screenie-preview-fixed.png
http://media.askvg.com/articles/images/Alt_Tab_in_Windows_7.png

It seems to me that the two files to edit are cycle.c and tabwin.c but have
to admit that I'm way out of X11 coding practice and can't be of any help.

Best regards and have a nice weekend.
Ivan
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