Ivan Čukić

dr Ivan Čukić

Author of "Functional Programming in C++", KDE developer and Free/Libre software enthusiast

For inquiries about KDE projects (requesting features, submitting bugs, asking general questions etc.), you can use:

KDE Community Forum
Bug reporting site
#plasma IRC channel

You need to contact me directly?

KDE related:
ivan.cukic [at] kde.org

Non KDE related things:
ivan [at] this domain

IRC Network: libera.chat
Nick: ivan|home
Channel: #plasma

Projects

Blog categories

Functional Programming in C++

If you like C++, you might be interested in my book. It contains quite a few gems of modern C++ programming.

It is available for purchase at:

Patronage

Activity switching questionnaire

Published by Ivan Čukić in the KDE development: Activities section, on 5 November 2013

I have a few questions that I’d like to hear an answer to from a wider user (and developer) community. Those revolve around the activity switching UI and the things it could have in plasma 2.

Currently, the switcher shows the name and the icon of an activity, and allows you to:

switch activities (duh)
create / delete activities
start / stop activities
change the name and icon

This is rather rudimentary. We have more information for the activities that somebody could find useful. We know:

which windows are currently open in an activity
which documents are open in an activity (for applications that support that kind of thing)
which documents have been opened in an activity in the past, along with which were most popular (kept open the longest, accessed multiple times etc.)
what is the wallpaper in the current activity, for running activities maybe even the screenshots of the windows

These are some of the things we could have:

marking activity as private in the sense of the private mode web browsing which would stop the usage tracking, etc. (not to be confused with encrypted activities we planned for Plasma Active which proved to be infeasible)
instead of creating blank or templated activities, we could optionally create activities containing the work from the last hour or so. This would move the windows and documents you are currently working on to the new activity (and move all the related recent usage statistics along with them)
some kind of search (for what?)

All comments on above, ideas for new things and even mock-ups are welcome!

Comments:

pablo
@Ivan I see that there may be some people that like it that way, but I think it would be good to give more actions to that widget, instead of having to have that one and the one with the three dots to stop or start them.
Actually I am one of those that think that activities are very cool, but I can not find a proper workflow that makes my life easier with them. What I would like (just dreaming):
1. I log in and I start with the Starter activity and it always opens empty, no matter what I had opened in the last session. All the other activities are closed, they open on demand.
2. I open the browser and do bla bla bla.
3. I open the Activity control center with a nice effect; something like Mac's mission control maybe, integrated with the show desktops effect which I trigger from the right up corner of my screen.
4. I switch to the Movies activity and it starts Dolphin in the same directory i was and mplayer/bangarang playing the file from the same point I left, with the same subtitles, etc. These applications are opened the first time I enter an activity, no need to differentiate from start and switch. I want to switch to an activity, if it is not started just start it. It also connects automatically my bluetooth speakers, sets volume to maximum, disables screen lock and brightness control and pours me some sweet sweet pacharán on a glass with ice. Maybe roll me a cigarette too.
5. Then I switch to and start the Working activity with that nice effect and it opens a session that I saved manually. I really would not use that "saved session" option, but I guess some people might find it usefull. It disconnects bluetooth speakers, activates screen lock and whatever. It connects by ssh on the terminal to that server and... well, basically everything is like yesterday when you shut down your computer.
6. Since Working activity takes a lot of resources I start again from the corner of my screen the Activities cool control center and stop the Movies activity.
5. From there I create a new activity and I get asked things like: + Clone from other or start from scratch? + Start empty or remember last session?
Martin Steigerwald
Wow, I didn´t know about Meta-TAB – Thanks, mank319! I would like it to preview each activity like Alt-Tab does tough. Or well: I heavily use upper left corner for window switching. And due to my layout lower left corner is free for another function as well: Activity switching with preview? I think I´d absolutely love that! Just composite in all activities and let me click on one to activate it. That goes a bit along the line of what has been there initially but never didn´t work that nice: The full screen activity overview in earlier KDE 4 versions. Make a simpler one just for switching first – always possible to carefully add things later – and one that is actually fast and snappy. The full screen activity configuration in earlier KDE 4 versions has been quite slow for me – but then back then it was a ThinkPad T42 with slow Radeon gfx and now it is a ThinkPad T520 or some previous Intel i3 Quadcore workstation which are both more than fast enough for desktop effects.
I like to switch activities keyboard based via KRunner. I just type activity name and it shows it to me as one of the first results.
Great to read about Workflow applet – Thanks, Christian! I just rebuilt it for Debian Sid. Seems to work, but I did not yet get how to add it so that it operates in fullscreen mode, i.e. I would it to slide out of a panel with bigger size than very small. I managed to make the hidden panel higher and now it fits in there, but it is not wide enough to replace simple activity switcher.
Ivan, thanks for "activity ACTIVITYNAME" in krunner, "activity" is too long and error prone to write tough.
Martin Steigerwald
Another one. I really like the plasma applet activity manager.
Its compact and provides a lot of what I need. It can slide out of a panel easily.
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Activity+Manager+Plasmoid?content=136278
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Activity+Manager+Plasmoid+Wheeled?content=148508

Heck, I may want to applets:
1) One *easy* activity switcher with decent layout than can be stuffed into a hidden panel
2) One activity management applet like the one mentioned above. One that is more compact than the current default one, that I rarely use. The default one wastes quite some space. (A problem I think that also the plasma network management applet has). But instead of two applets – the default one and the one I mentioned above – maybe one that has some layouting options? Works nicely vertically and horizontally, has a compact and a wider view (for those who prefer it)? Thanks, Martin
Patrick
@Martin Steigerwald I suggest using the Workflow applet in the dashboard, this way you can operate it in fullscreen mode.
Therefore, you have to use different widgets on the Dashboard compared to the desktops (systemsettings → Workspace Behaviour → Workspace → Dashboard → Show an Independent Widget Set) unlock the plasmoids/widgets and open the dashboard. There you can add the Workspace plasmoid and set the size as you wish.
To open the Dashboard: • There is a widget for opening the Dashboard, so you can effectively click to open the workflow plasmoid, if you put it as an icon in a task list. • Alternatively, you can define a hotkey to open it (systemsettings → Shortcuts and Gestures → Global Keyboard Shortcuts → Plasma Desktop Environment → Show Dashboard). • Additionally, I found a free (exotic) mouse button which I configured to open the Dashboard using "imwheel". • Another option would be to open the Dashboard using a screen edge (systemsettings → Workspace Behaviour → Screen Edges).
@Martin,Ivan: Autosaving of activities would be great. It's hard to find something more frustrating than having to reconfigure the activities you have created since or used for days (using suspend/hibernate in between) only because the power button jams and thus switching the PC on from suspend in reality switches it off. The activities are then gone with the wind …
Martin Steigerwald
Hi Ivan! I´d really like to see sane activity switching in desktop form factor.
I currently use the activity list in a hidden panel on the top together with a shown panel to create some distance between windows and screen border as to not accidentally unhide the hidden panel.
This somehow works, but I think the standard activity applet in KDE is quite unflexible.
Using KDE SC 4.11.2 (on the way to 4.11.3 which incoming debian package) I still think activities need more polish on the desktop.
What I would like is:
1) Some sane hotkey like alt-tab to cycle between activities, or even an overview compositing with activities, their virtual desktops and the window insides of it. (Actually I do not care that much about virtual desktops, since I only use one per activity.)
2) Some way to tell kwin / activity manager that certain windows shall always be on all activities. Even if app is closed and restarted.
3) A way to save current state of activity without stopping it or even some autosave, so that in case of a crash or so its still there.
4) Some better activity switcher applet. Should allow to be used horizontally and vertically. Should be able to be put inside a panel as icon and slide out on click. And heck maybe even some fancy desktop effects in it. I did not see how its done in Plasma Active, but maybe its possible to adapt some ideas from there.
Well thats it for now. Thanks, Martin
Ivan Čukić
@dmatt
Ok, nice one :)
Ivan Čukić
@Patrick
So, that is settled ;)
Patrick
<div class='comment-good'>Starting and stopping of activities is really useful for me.
The ressource usage is important, but it's not the main point. I write this although my activities are using just a bit more than 6 GiB RAM at the moment (the second line of the "free" programm, i.e. without file cache and buffers) and I have only one third of my activities started.
The main point is usability. If I cycle through activities, I do not want to cycle through activities I do not care at all at the moment. I guess everyone agrees that it is stupid to open one instance of all installed programms on the computer just because starting and stopping programms is not needed. Of course, that would be a waste of ressources, but even more, it would be a usability nightmare to have so many programms in the task list or to toggle through using +. I think the same goes for activities. Starting and stopping activities is as important as starting and stopping programs.</div>
Thiago Jung Bauermann
Regarding start and stop of activities:
I think it's a useful feature, and I used it in the past to save memory. My computer had "just" 2 GB of RAM, and by stopping activities I wasn't using allowed me to save memory by stopping applications that weren't needed at the time, but I knew would want to run a couple of days later. It's a great way of saving system resources while being able to instantaneously bring up a session configured just the way you left it last time you used it.
Now I have 6 GB of RAM and I don't need that anymore.
Eric Mesa
@Pete & @Rsh:
Here are two posts I've wrote back in 2011 that explored how I use activities. I now can't imagine computing without them and lament the fact that I can't use it at work (We use Windows)
http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/2011/02/20/when-kde-4s-activities-finally-made-sense/
which has a great link to an example workflow.
And then there's:
http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/2011/04/20/testing-out-kdes-activities/
in which I actually started using them. And it's come a long way in the past 2 years.
Hope that helps!
mary
Hi, how about a menu drop-down (or up) for each activity, as seen from the activities dashboard. Selecting an open application will let you go directly to that open app for the activity you have selected. That way when you switch, you go directly to that window.
Thank you very much for your KDE work!!!
akreuzkamp
+1 for the vision pablo, especially the pacharán feature :D
Joke aside, apart from the "only one activity running a time" thingy, what pablo described, is exactly what I wanted to propose myself.
I'm the rather chaotic kind of guy. I start my computer, do this and that and without finishing the first thing, I start the second one and the third one and if I would not shutdown my computer in the evening and start with an empty session each morning, I would not be able to work with the computer after 3 days... So each morning I start my computer and manually start all the applications I need (they are not always the same, but it's always one of maybe 3 different sets of applications). And that is where activities would be super-handy. So what I would need is what pablo described:
1. After boot I get an empty activity. On this activity I can do whatever I want, quickly check my mails, lookup a recipe for dinner or whatever doesn't require saving. After a reboot the activity is empty again.
2. I open the activity switcher and start my "XYZ-development" activity, I want it to open a manually saved session, which is kdevelop with "XYZ" session and a webbrowser with some documentation. The 26 tabs I opened yesterday during development can be found in the history, but are not opened again.
3. I open the activity switcher and start my "Day job" activity. Here I'm working a bit more straightforward so I configured it to open exactly what I left yesterday. The spreadsheet I'm currently working on and the 11 tabs I opened in the webbrowser are just restored.
At the evening I just shutdown my computer without caring about switching and stopping activities in order to have my session saved, I just shutdown the computer and the next morning I start it and get my empty default-session, where I can decide if I want to work on XYZ, do my day job or just want to listen to some fancy music. :)
akreuzkamp
To also comment on the actual topic, which is the activity switcher, I have made a mockup, how I figure the activity switcher to myself: https://akreuzkamp.de/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=4b03450e29dea6b4d3090bbdc1956888
As I made the mockup in QML and it's actually working (using dummy data and not actually changing anything), here's the code as well: https://akreuzkamp.de/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=cdd8b83b3014a7a5661481959c848d98 it's a plasmoid, I placed into a panel on the right with a width of 500.
PS: Moving windows between activities could be realized by enabling windows to be dragged from the taskbar to an activity item in the activity switcher.
Oliv
Hi ! I come late but here is the feature I miss the most for switching activities : Show activities by pointing a screen edge, just like we can already show all applications running (systemsettings → Workspace Behaviour → Screen Edges)
zodmaner
Lots of good idea here. I'll just add my 2 cents.
It would be nice if we could have the ability to specify what applications should be launched once one starts an activity. I know that this functionality is already provided by the start & stop activities buttons to a certain extend, but it still would be nice to be able to directly specify applications that must always be launched when an activity starts.
pablo
I forgot to say that switching activities should stop whatever the previous activity was doing (playing music, a movie, etc.) unless it was in the starter activity, which is kind of a shared activity, a mother activity that the others inherit from or something like that.
I see that this could throw some problems with downloads and things like that, I have not thought about every detail, but I think it would be the killer desktop.
Ivan Čukić
@pablo
Maybe we misunderstood each other. I do not intend to remove the stopped activities from the switcher - otherwise, it would not be possible to reach them again if you don't use a custom switcher.
The idea is that meta+tab should cycle through the running ones first.
The 'one activity running at a time' concept would not work for too many people, so I do not see that happening. Downloads, compilation, music, mail checking, etc. are some thing that all users expect to continue in the background.
pablo
@Ivan but that is actually the concept for Workspaces, isn't it? I don't know, could you point me to some article where it explains how to use activities along with workspaces productively without too much overhead?
smls
My two main gripes with activities:
1) NO CONTROL OVER ORDER
What annoys me most, is that activities appear in a seemingly random order (e.g. in the switcher, when cycling [META]+[TAB], etc).
Probably it's a result of when each activity was last stopped+restarted, but that's not something I keep in mind and so it seems effectively random.
I'd like to be able to drag & drop activities to a specific order in the activity manager, and then rely on them *always* appearing in that order relative to each other, wherever two or more activities appear in a list. (For example the "Default" activity should always be the left-most one, etc.)
2) INCOMPLETE/UNINTUITIVE INTEGRATION WITH APPLICATIONS
Firefox is the worst example, by not even being able to restore windows to the correct activity after reboots, but that's not something the KDE devs have much control over.
However, even KDE apps leave a lot to be desired.
For example:
I have set up Kate as my default editor. Whenever I click on a text file in Dolphin, in opens the file in Kate - using an existing Kate window if one already exists. So far so good.
The problem is that when multiple Kate windows (i.e. "Kate sessions") are already open, it uses the one that was opened first - no matter on which activity that is.
If there's already a Kate window in the current activity, *that's* where I would intuitively expect the file to be opened - when instead it switches to a completely different activity, it always catches me by surprise and is very disruptive to my workflow.
STiAT
Password protection for activities. Not sure if many have this usecase, but I do:
I'm working on something, or doing some stuff on the computer which isn't finished yet (e.g. development, or preparing the birthday present for my girl).
I need to prepare dinner, and want to leave for a while, and my girl / kid wants to use the computer for that time. To protect my work from their eyes, I'd like to "lock" the activity.
Thiago Jung Bauermann
About using Firefox with activities:
I have one Firefox profile for each activity in which I want a separate Firefox session, and I created a launcher in the desktop that will start Firefox using that profile, by running the command:
firefox -no-remote -P profile-name %u
It's cumbersome to set up but since I tend to always work with the same activities and create new ones very rarely, this works for me.
Firefox still won't behave as expected when stopping and starting an activity (it won't launch with the profile it was running when the activity was stopped). I don't mind because Firefox is too slow to save its session on its own so I have to quit it manually anyway, but there's this program which should fix that:
http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/08/associating-firefox-profiles-with-kde-activities/
Avihay
Hi. I like the concept of activities, I really do. I have 14 activities set up over time, I guess most of them are blank (due to reason 4), and I don't use any of them. Reasons why, ordered by severity: 0) The activity manager popup is slow (meta tab for the rescue) (1 sec compared to less then 0.5 sec for Kickoff, and that's without swapping involved), and you need mouse + keyboard to search and switch activity 1) I tend to want some programs on all activities, which limit the benefit of activities.
examples: BasKet notepad which contains cross activity info, chat clients since I chat with people regardless of what activity I'm in (I guess I should try a separate activity for that)

2) Documents tend not to open in the right activity, if there are two instances of the program (/me stares harshly at Kate)
3) Lack of proper browser support for XSMP (at the time, I tried plasma active's browser which left a lot to be desired, and I tried to compile reKonq with activity support (was too crashy at the time to be useful) (oddly enough, I didn't try Konqurer, though a look at html5test.com with it makes me prefer trying moonfang's activityFox)
4) Every time I set up activities properly, and get to the point where it makes sense, and is actually fun to use them, something crashes (kwin, I guess?), and then restarts automatically, and suddenly, the windows from ALL my active activities appear in my current activity, and then it's either 15 minuets of sorting windows using the alt+F3 menu, or giving up. duplicate windows are also known to happen.
If 0-3 are all minor annoyances that can be ignored and bypassed (I use firefox with tabgroupmanager to have "activities" inside ff), 4 is what makes me stop using activities for any length of time.
I've been itching to try activities again, this time with activity fox and that sub-activity manager. I even considered abusing the clone activity feature as a save/restore feature (can't, doesn't "clone" windows). even a single slot save restore, and a couple of buttons in the UI that work only for current activity would be welcomed.
Rsh
Tried to use activities once but they were unfriendly and confusing.
Ivan Čukić
@mank319
+100 for keyboard only switching. Currently, you can type 'activity Name' in krunner and press enter, but that is far from optimal. There are some users who create a separate keyboard shortcut which opens activity-searching-only-krunner - that one is closer to what you desire, but is far from obvious.
@Johan Ouwerkerk
1. Unfortunately, that is for the applications to implement. I'll look into it after dealing with the workspace stuff.
2. This should be more usable in the next iteration. The idea is to allow the users to link anything to activities so that you have different places / favourite applications / etc. per activity. It works much nicer in Plasma Active...
@Eric Mesa
As for wallpaper and stuff - it is technically *very* difficult (if possible at all) but I would like to try to do that. The issue is in the wallpaper plugins, different wallpaper for different VD option etc. That is the reason it was never done in Plasma 1.
@Carl
Yes, obviously, "period of time" - I wrote "an hour" just as an example.
@Blizzz
Main features work without nepomuk. I hope we will get some brave soul to write a firefox addon to integrate with activities.
@Patrick
"I haven’t seen a useful way to interact with the remaining desktop and the switcher at the same time"
My sentiment exactly. That is one of the reasons I decided to think of redesigning it.
@Mark
+1
@Pete
I understand where you're coming from. The problem with activities is that they are rather abstract. You can use them for project organization, as a scrapyard for your windows, for separating different types of windows etc. The problem is that it is difficult to make a new and abstract concept intuitive. :)
And that is why I'm asking for help :)
@konqoro
People to use start and stop. I don't so I can not say for what purpose :)
@Thiago Jung Bauermann
The list is not used anywhere at the moment. I was hoping that somebody would write an ui for the backend stuff that I'm working on. But, that did not happen - so I'm starting to go back to the ui world.
@Richard
+1
@dmatt
That is something we thought about a few times, but it was always decided that launching the last used activity was a better choice. Can you explain the reason you have for this behaviour?
@Björn Balazs
1. Yes, moving windows across activities sucks. We need alternatives to the window menu. But what?
2. Unfortunately, this is not something we can do without support from somebody who can write plugins for the aforementioned.
3. That is one of the reasons behind the idea to create an activity from the recent work.
4. Deleting the activities (from my pov) is not something a user should do quite that often (I know you do) to merit a keyboard shortcut.
The reason the keyboard shortcuts are all configured in a different place is that you managed to create quite a nice workflow from totally unrelated components in the system, because we do not have one central component to do that.
Essentially, the activity switcher should handle all the things you use krunner and others for.
5. Information about what is running in which activity is needed because users (myself included) tend to misplace their windows - and with the current setup, you need to cycle through all virtual desktops on all activities in order to find them.
6. Virtual desktops are (vanilla installations) disabled - that is, you have only one. The blame for that one is on the distros which change this default value.
Removing them from the code-base is not an option - it would bring a huge uproar. (even I would roar in that case - I use VDs and activities in parallel)
7. As for sub-activities - if the users tend not to understand the concept now, just imagine if we showed a tree browser for activities and sub-activities. :)
@Rsh
Any ideas to change that? Otherwise, I do not really see a point of your comment when I'm asking for help regarding usability of activities.
mank319
I'm missing one rather basic feature for the activity switcher: Switching to an activity via keyboard actions. Of course there is META+TAB for fast switching, but I really like the interface of the Activity switcher.
My typical usage is as follows: 1) activating the switcher (META+Q) 2) entering the activity's name in the search box 3) use the Cursor to click on the activity, which sort of interrupts my "keyboard based" workflow
I would love to select the highlighted activity with just a single button press. If such an action already exists, it may be not too intuitive: I have tried Return, Tab, Space + all those combined with CTRL & ALT...
Activating the highlighted activity via "Return" is what most users would expect, I guess.
Moreover it would be nice to move the selection from one activity to another using the TAB key, for those who neither use the search field, nor the mouse.
Apart from that, I really like the activity switcher and the whole concept behind activities in KDE.
Johan Ouwerkerk
To add to the above comment by mank319, it would be nice if focus were to be on the activity search box when you try to switch with Meta+Q. Right now, if I don't remember to click on the search box before I start typing the activity name ends up in the krunner window for some reason...
Also, there are two other ease-of-use things: 1) If I have a target application open in multiple activities (typically Kate) and open a new file via, say, Dolphin that file is opened in some other activity depending on whether or not the target application instance in the current activity is the "last" one or something. Anyway, you wind up switching closing the file in the other activity, switching back to the desired one, and then manually opening the file in the right application (launching it if necessary). To me it would be nicer if opening a file were prohibited from crossing activity "boundaries" unless the file were explicitly tagged (through the Dolphin system) as being part of an activity. In any case the system should favour launching things in the current activity over switching activities. 2) Which brings me to the tagging system. I may be looking for things that do not exist (yet) or looking in the wrong places, but associating a file with an activity through Dolphin doesn't seem to "do" anything meaningful...
Eric Mesa
I use tons of KDE Activities as you can see in the top section of http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/desktop-screenshots/ (Actually, I'm not sure if that's a lot of a few compared to most people)
I'd have to say that I NEVER use the switcher other than to create or destroy Activities. If I need to switch I either use meta-tab or the activities widget (which I think you can see in some of those screenshots). So I guess the switcher thing I'd most likely use from your scenario would be the one to move all the apps from the current activity to a new one. Say I find myself constantly opening the same programs over and over. Perhaps I realize I want to associate them with a new activity - that would be pretty neat.
It'd also be neat to surface that information you know about the activities in different ways. For example, although I almost never use the K-menu (I start programs either by alt-F2 or the quick launchers), it'd be interesting for the "favorites" to be populated by whatever's my favorite program in THAT activity. Or same thing for the recently opened documents. I almost never use that, but if I knew that when I was in my school activity that it would be populated by school stuff, then I might use it more.
As for an independent suggestion - perhaps since you know the wallpaper and screenshots, perhaps making the activities able to have a thumbnail would be useful. So I'm imagining that I open up the switcher. If an activity is stopped then it shows the icon I've selected for it - just as is the case today. But if it's running, it shows a thumbnail of the currently active virtual desktop in that activity and the programs running.
Whatever you end up doing, continue the great work on KDE. No lie, you guys make it a JOY for me to use my computer. While I'm at work all day, I just long to be at home on my KDE desktop.
Carl
I'm a low volume Activity user. The way it works now is fine. That said, I can imagine times when each of the functions suggested would be helpful.
Creating an Activity based on the work of the last ___period of time___ would have been useful just yesterday. The project was about 6 hours in total, so creating an Activity based on one hour would have worked. In addition, I'll return to work on that stuff several times in the future...having an Activity already established would be nice.
Thinking more about that, it wasn't 6 hours continuously on one subject. Not even the first hour was entirely dedicated to that topic. Not sure how to sort that out.
Suggestion: Keep things simple with the ability to add or tweak.
Blizzz
Although I praised activities for a long time, now I found myself to not use them at all. First, they are too much in my way. Too many manual actions are required, it is distracting. Second, it is not fun if you heavily rely on a web browser (firefox). Third, it is also not easy enough to create ad-hoc activities. Now i also wonder whether it would even work, because I deactivated Akonadi and Nepomuk, because they are unreliable and drain the battery.
Ken Vermette
Aside from the main switcher, I think some TLC needs to be given to the context menu and the activity bar plasmoid which are pretty neglected. I don't think features need to be added, but I do think existing switching methods could be more refined.
The context menu just opens the activity switcher which I think breaks some HIG somewhere (as you're technically opening a thing you didn't click on), I think an improvment would be to add a sub-menu which just lists the activities and lets a user quickly switch. Not fancy, but it gets the job done and it keeps it in the context menu which is more expected behavior. The 'git-er-done' method.
In the 'activity bar' we currently have, it would be good to see it enhanced to take advantage of the assets you mentioned. For example, the activity bar could have icons, offer window lists, etc. Right now it's just text on a slider, which is not space efficent or 'pretty'. Config options would be nice.
In the drawer menu my $0.02 cents would be to add window and desktop thumbnails that pop up (a la the task manager) to quickly switch into a specific window in a separate activity.
Otherwise, I think the UI just needs to be streamlined: Get rid of the 'play' button (it does nothing anyway) and maybe ditch the inline buttons in favor of a context menu. Right-click > change image. Right-click > rename. This should free up space if you do want to add things like window thumbnails and desktop backgrounds.
If at all possible, completly ditching the start/stop aspect would be the biggest improvment; if you have the list of active windows and documents, why not integrate some basic logic to automatically close unused activities? One show-stopper for me is the fact that I need to do work for this feature, instead of having it do work for me.
Overall, I think streamlining is the name of the game, with focus should just be on practical application. Make the context menus and pagers more useful, and have the drawer serve as a way to tunnel more deeply into a running activity. Simplify managment and have activities turn themselves off if unused.
Great work on KF5 and PW2; the progress has everyone salivating!
Christian
I also vote for better keyboard control. Mainly in the switcher itself (Text box needs initial focus, enter should choose the filtered / selected activity if only one. Have a look at the amarok playlist filter for an example)
Plus it would be nice to have a couple more keyboard shortcuts available, e.g. I asked for "move window to next/previous activity" (Unrelated to the switcher, I know)
In general: if you want more people to use it, make it as efficient and not-in-the-way as possible. If people are not disturbed in their workflow (but rather supported) they will use it :)
Thanks in advance, and thanks for your work
Patrick
<div class='comment-good'>I never use the activity switcher. Instead I use the workflow plasmoid (http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=147428) on the dashboard (exclusive) for all the activity settings (starting an activity, moving windows around, getting an overview of my current activities). My mouse has an extra middle button (http://www.golem.de/0503/36841-logitech_mx518.jpg), where I can activate the dashboard (and thus the workflow plasmoid).
Switching the activity is done using Meta(+Shift)+Tab or using my mouse's thumb buttons. Closing an activity is done with Meta+F4.
I do not understand why the normal activity switcher is only at the bottom of the screen, when I haven't seen a useful way to interact with the remaining desktop and the switcher at the same time. For me, the full-screen setup with the above setup is much more logical (but I may be overlooking something). The window list is also very useful to me, as it makes moving windows around so fast (altough it would be great if you could select multiple windows as it is done in Dolphin, for example). If you only use few virtual desktops per activity as I do, the linear activity lists of both the activity switcher and the workflow plasmoid do not make much sense, as you always have to scroll or reduce the zoom level, respectively. A two-dimensional layout (grid?) would make more sense.
On a related note. I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to get rid of virtual desktops at all and instead allow activity groups, i.e. an activity which has several sub-activities. This would allow many interesting things (e.g. giving names to sub-activities (former virtual desktops of an activity), sharing the same sub-activity between multiple activities, implement some sort of dependencies between activities (Also start (sub-)activity B if activity A gets started)).</div>
Mark
What I would like to see is context based activity switching. Possible triggering contexts could be time, network, wireless, bluetooth connection or gps position.
Pete
On a more general topic: I've never used the activities at all and think many normal users of KDE too.
My reasoning: What is the concept behind it? How can I use them? What is the advantage of activities for daily tasks?
I know I might find answers when I read up some docs, but that shouldn't ever be the intention of such a feature. Please, make activities more user friendly and integrate them better into the desktop, advertise them more. It should be fun the work with them.
Ask yourself: Why should I care for activities as a user?
PS: This post is not meant to criticize you for your work. Thank you for that. Instead, this post is meant to make you think again as a normal user, not as the developer of the feature who knows it in every detail. I hope it helps :)
dmatt
Why login into specific activity? I agree it is not high priority feature. However, with my working notebook I would sometimes prefer to boot into activity, which does not show my default screen with my family on wallpaper and various monitoring widgets all over desktop. Especially if I boot connected to beamer on customer premises :). So the user scenario is mobile business user working/presenting on trip.
konqoro
I would like the start/ stop fuctionality be eliminated since it serves no purpose for the user. Also a nicer acivity switching ui would be nice (something like mac os x' s desktops spaces), which pushes the workspace aside, displays a screenshot of the running activities, and also sports a nice animation..
Thiago Jung Bauermann
This isn't about the activity switcher so pardon me for the off topic comment. The list of popular documents in an activity is a great thing to have, but it doesn't seem to be used for anything (as far as I could notice, and I use activities a lot), so here are some ideas for using it:
It would be great if there was a kio to display and access the most popular documents in the current activity, so that one could have such files in a folder view plasmoid or a place bookmark in dolphin.
Only the kio wouldn't be enough of course, it should be easily discoverable by a non-geek user.
Also a krunner to search these popular documents would be great.
Ivan Čukić
@pablo
I don't get your comment.
Every activity is in running state by default. If you stop it, it is your decision to do so because you do not need that activity anymore. You can switch to it again if you want, but if you press meta+tab, it is more likely that you desire a running one.
Does alt+tab switch through the apps that are not running?
Marco Martin
mank319. "I’m missing one rather basic feature for the activity switcher: Switching to an activity via keyboard actions.
Of course there is META+TAB for fast switching, but I really like the interface of the Activity switcher."

Hmm, actually making the activity switcher behaving like alt+tab might be a good idea.
quick meta-tab: just switch the activity meta+tab without releasing the keys: the activity switcher appears
Richard
Hope this isn't OT here... but I basically use two activities: "private" and "work" (I'm not a PC worker). And I would like to see both of these activities as separate. I.e. when I'm in my private activity, I do not want to see stuff (ie documents,bookmarks,etc.) from my work and vice versa. Ofc this doesn't mean they should be hidden in the file system, but when I open recent documents in launcher/calligra/.., bookmarks etc.
Thanks
dmatt
It would be nice to be able to login into specific activity.
pablo
Why would I want an activity switcher widget that I can not use until I have switched by other method to that activity?
Activity switcher widget really should show all activities not just those running. Maybe give it some play and stop buttons if you like.
Ivan Čukić
@Ken Vermette, @Marco Martin, @mary
Sorry for the late response, your comments went into spam folder 0..o.
@Ken Vermette
The automatic stopping is something we have been considering. But I do not think (from other comments) that we can get rid of the play/stop buttons.
The main thing I'm thinking about is that running activities need to be separated from the inactive ones. But, I have yet to find the right ui for it.
@Marco Martin
Yup, meta+tab needs to go a level up.
@mary
I'd like to have an option for that. But, as with the rest of the features, I need to think of a slick ui that will not look overly complicated.
Björn Balazs
Just dumping some more or less related thoughts...
I am a heavy activities user (currently 12 activities). I use the keyboard for:
- starting an activity: via modified krunner on Meta+Space (only displaying activities - btw. thanks for fixing the issue in 4.11.2)
- stopping it: via Meta+<
- Switching: Meta+Tab
All of this works fine and efficient. Now to the big BUT. What really is a pain in the ass:
- Moving windows from one activity to the other (clicking these checkboxes in the window decoration sucks)
- Working with Firefox, LibreOffice and the like - they simply do not restore properly, which in turn removes lots of the actual activities benefits.
- Creating a new activity. Here the problem is, that the logic is upside-down. I rarely go to my computer and say: hey let's create a new activity, but I usually start working on something and then I get interrupted and think "ah. let's save this for working on it later". This workflow is close to be unsupported, even though I think it most common, esp. if you do not see activities just as "work" or "leisure". The idea of sub-activities from Patrick goes into that direction.
- Removing an activity should be possible without the heavy interface just by using a keyboard shortcut, which is currently missing (BTW: the different keyboard shortcuts affecting activities are all over different places in the KCM (e.g. within Activities, KRunner, Plasma - you really have look around to be able to configure that...). And perhaps we would need some way of restoring accidentaly deleted activities...
Some more thoughts:
I do not think I need too much information about what is in an activity to start or choose it - so, I do not need documents or the like - I need that information when I am already working in the activity - but for choosing it, I guess the name (that I have chosen for it) would be sufficient. What could be helpful though is the last time I had this activity open.
I think we should remove virtual desktops as they make it hard to understand the superior concept of activities.
So sorry, (almost) nothing to the actual activities switcher :)
Keep up the good work!

Write a new comment...