Functional Programming in C++

The future of activity switching

Published by Ivan Čukić in the KDE development: Activities section, on 7 June 2014

I have returned to the colourful world of UI (still refusing to say UX :) ) development.

The new pretty thing that is taking away my time is the activity switcher which got a rather big revamp for the next release of Plasma.

{% youtube nVUTww3oMhA %}

Apart from the new UI, it got a few usability improvements, namely full keyboard navigation. You are able to filter, navigate and switch activities without touching your mouse.

Meta+Tab activity switching

Unfortunately, not all is great - the Meta+Tab shortcuts for switching activities are not going to be enabled for the first release, they will have to wait for the one after.

What will that look like?

As you can see in the screen-cast, the Meta+Tab will (unlike old Plasma) have a visual feedback - it will show the switcher until you release the Meta key. Similarly to how Alt+Tab for window switching works.

Per activity global shortcuts

The second thing that will need to wait is the port of the global shortcuts plugin by Makis Marimpis. I expect it to be present in the same release as Meta+Tab.

pescobar
thank you very much Ivan !
I will follow up your developments :)
Ivan Čukić
@pescobar
Will think about it. Not a bad idea. :)
pescobar
Hi Ivan,
that activities switcher looks awesome. I really want to give it a try :)
Do you think that the workflow described in this post could be added? http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=121612&p=313185#p313167
Ivan Čukić
@dekonvoluted
First of all, thanks!
I had to say that in front, so not to sound overly negative, which is not my intention, since the ideas are good.
This is something that I'll ask for the visual design group to discuss when it becomes more mature.
I agree that the current way of highlighting is not sufficient. It uses the standard plasma theme elements for list views which are not meant to be used along with a custom background like here.
The concept needs to evolve a bit more so that I can say which types of highlight we need. At the moment, there are two different ones - the current activity, and the keyboard-selected (in focus) activity that can become current by pressing the "enter" key.
1. > HIG that equates grayed out elements with unavailable elements You are spot on here. While the activities can not be disabled (just stopped, and then they go to the list below), this could be a mixed signal.
2. I don't think we will be adding stars like we had in Plasma Active. They didn't really work all that well. I was overreaching a bit there, but that is another story.
Presenting the open windows in the activity thumbnail (in whichever way I go for in the end) will be needed in all activities. The point of the feature is that people sometimes misplace their windows (myself included) and this should tell that user which activities actually have something in them.
3. and 4. sound like reasonable solutions. I'll make sure VDG team considers them.
Thanks, and don't be shy to comment on any planetkde post that you encounter. We can sometimes get short-sighted and miss on potential usability problems we create.
KDE Plama Next activity switcher revamp and future roadmap - The Mukt
[…] Ivan Čukić updated in his blog that a total revamp of activity switching is planned for the incoming releases of […]
Heller
Hello Ivan,
This looks great :)
Is the button in the upper left corner the new "cashew" (or is this just a not-finalized-thing that is not worth discuting :) )
dekonvoluted
I notice that the activity being selected in the left pane is only marked by a somewhat thicker blue boundary and is a bit hard to differentiate from the others. This will be worse if the unselected activity has a brightly colored wall paper and the selected one is more muted.
So, I think it would be better to differentiate the selected activity more strongly from the other ones.
Examples of how this could be done:
1. Gray out the activities not being selected.
Only the selected activity appears in color.
However, this may go against some HIG that equates grayed out elements with unavailable elements...
2. Include metadata only for selected activity
Metadata like the five stars for rating, maybe icons for applications and files associated with it, etc. should only be shown for the selected activity.
This can get tricky if none of the activities have any metadata that differentiates them from the others.
3. Scaling the selected activity
The unselected activities are smaller, but the activity being selected grows. This could behave like moving a magnifier along the left pane.
4. Use a smaller icon and a bigger highlight
This approach will see smaller icons for the activities and the selection will be indicated by a larger bounding box, like how file selection is shown in Dolphin, or wall paper selection.
Hope that's helpful feedback!
Ivan Čukić
@IA Meta is usually the key that looks like kde's pager for virtual desktop switching (some people call it windows key, no idea why :) ).
The shortcut is configurable. Alt+Tab will not be overridden.
IA
All the computers I've been on use Alt as the 'Meta' key. In fact, that key never really existed outside lisp machines!
And yet you differentiate between the two in this article. What key do you use for Meta?
Louis94
Animations when switching activities ! At last ! Just can't wait for it. Can anyone lend me a time machine ?
Ivan Čukić
@Heller Yes, the cashew (icon) is gone, long live the hamburger (icon) :)
@Louis94 :)
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[…] The future of activity switching […]
Thomas Pfeiffer
Yay for showing the list of activities when pressing the shortcut, consistency and feedback ++! One question: Is it possible to enter text into the filter box if the dialog is shown because the shortcut is pressed? If not, it could confuse users who think they can enter text in that situation.
And btw: You are absolutely right in using UI instead of UX here: A UX cannot be developed. People who use UX merely as a hipper replacement for UI have not understood the concept at all. One cannot develop a user experience. It only exists for the user. One can only develop a user interface which aims to create a certain user experience. So please keep using the correct term, even if the world around you doesn't :)
Sudhir Khanger
Do a lot of general folks use Activities? I have never used it because it wasn't straight forward to get started. It never made sense on an intuitive level.
Ivan Čukić
@Thomas The search field, and the stopped activities will most probably be hidden since those can not be activated when meta+tabbing.
> You are absolutely right in using UI instead of UX :)
@Sudhir Enough users do :)
Thomas Pfeiffer
@Ivan: Okay, nothing to complain about for me, then ;)
@Sudhir: I agree that Activities have not lived up to their potential so far. One reaction could be to abandon them. The other would be to do the contrary: Give them the prominence and power they deserve! If you check out Plasma Active, for example, you will notice that they play a much more central role there. And when we demoed Plasma Active to people, they grasped their usefulness much more quickly then in Plasma Desktop, so there is definitely still a lot of potential.