Comment 12 for bug 890699

Fantastic idea!

I also make use of these shortcuts all the time, and it was the best thing about Windows 7 as far as I'm concerned :) (Win +1 +2 etc works nearly identical).

It's worth noting that a *half implementation* of this is to launch / focus an application window. A full implementation, is to allow these shortcuts to work as a toggle, which is much better. Here, it's interesting to note that Ubuntu had the first half for a while, and only later they finally added the ability to also minimize an application with the same Unity shortcut.

As for a use case, well, when you have lots of windows opens it becomes less tedious to just focus the app directly. Both for work and leisure, I have associated 1 with my main browser, 2 with a text editor, 4 is Explorer in Windows, and Nautilus /etc in Linux, 6 is a music player, etc.

Note that the way it works in the Windows taskbar and on Ubuntu, is that it is not tired to the application. it is tied to the Nth icon on the launcher bar. So I can temporarily swap the 5th app with something else occasionally for easier task switching (because Win + 6 to 9 is more difficult to reach with left hand).

I wish I was rich and could add to the bounty =) Sadly I am not =(

This is a killer feature for me though.

And as an aside I recommend removing the Workspace switching shortcuts by default or move them to something less obvious because Workspaces IMHO is an advanced user feature. Also by dfault to avoid confusing new users I would also remove those workspaces. Let power users enable them. Otherwise new users can mistakenly activate them and wonder all of a sudden where their apps or windows are gone.