Window previews in xfwm4

[Liviu Andronic]

Hi

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> The size of the preview is configurable via the gtk theme. The more
> windows the smaller the view will be, up to the point where it reaches
> the icon view size (which, incidentally, is also configurable via the
> gtk theme).
>
Perhaps a slightly different arrangement would work more nicely. In
Opera 12, when cycling tabs via ctrl+tab brought a view not unlike
alt+tab in Xfce (especially similar to the list mode), the was an
optional preview window next to the list. The preview window was big
enough to be useful (see attached).

Xfwm4 may adopt a similar alt+tab layout, pretty much identical in
list mode, and with a preview on top of the horizontal icon list
otherwise. This would ensure that the previews are usable, although
you would only get one preview at a time when the window is selected
via <tab> or by hovering the mouse.

Regards,
Liviu


> You can;t have previews in the cycle list, it's not enabled, so
> Andrzej you're probably testing a much older version (which was also
> slower as using gdk pixbuf scaling).
>
> I understand the preview can slow things down (but tbh, I tested on a
> n270 Atom processor and it's working just fine, so if your computer is
> slower than the first generation of Atom processors, you may want to
> consider some new hardware... Just sayin' ...)
>
> Anyway, this is why it's optional, if that's too slow for some
> hardware, just disable it (and btw, it's disabled by default).
>
> Cheers,
> Olivier
>
>
> On 17 February 2015 at 10:08, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 2:15 AM, Andrzej <ndrwrdck at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 26/01/15 08:09, Olivier Fourdan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I'm using it now, seems great, but when there is 6+ windows open it falls
>>>>> back to icons only switcher.
>>>>> Do you have any idea how to handle lots of windows?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, this is on purpose and depends on your screen size. Reducing the
>>>> windows' pictures is expensive and I reckon once you've reached the
>>>> size of the screen, better switch back to regular icons (and no, it
>>>> won't be an option).
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't see this limit here - I'm always getting window miniatures. It
>>> really is rather slow - over 1s response time to Alt+Tab with about 15
>>> windows.
>>>
>>> Is there an option to force the <6 window limit or completely disable
>>> previews?
>>>
>>>> And to be honest. window contents makes sense only if the size of the
>>>> preview is large enough, otherwise it's useless.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, the miniatures are quite small, especially in the "Cycle through
>>> windows in a list" mode. IMHO larger preview sizes would be far more usable.
>>>
>> I've tried the previews in the 4.11.3, and I agree with Andrzej: the
>> previews are currently too small to be usable.
>>
>> Perhaps using the previews, a tad more transparent, as part of "draw
>> frames on cycle" would be more friendly and useful user-wise. I think
>> this would also be not unlike what Win7 is doing...
>>
>> Regards,
>> Liviu
>>
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Andrzej
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
>>> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Do you think you know what math is?
>> http://www.ideasroadshow.com/issues/ian-stewart-2013-08-02
>> Or what it means to be intelligent?
>> http://www.ideasroadshow.com/issues/john-duncan-2013-08-30
>> Think again:
>> http://www.ideasroadshow.com/library
>> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Do you think you know what math is?
http://www.ideasroadshow.com/issues/ian-stewart-2013-08-02
Or what it means to be intelligent?
http://www.ideasroadshow.com/issues/john-duncan-2013-08-30
Think again:
http://www.ideasroadshow.com/library
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