Unity should have an *obvious* way to open multiple instances of applications

Bug #734170 reported by Eviatar
130
This bug affects 26 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ayatana Design
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Unity
Incomplete
Undecided
Unassigned
unity-2d
Incomplete
Undecided
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Undecided
Unassigned
unity-2d (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Currently, there is no obvious way to open multiple instances of applications in Unity. It is possible from the Dash, but not convenient. It's also possible to use middle-click, but this is not discoverable.

Tags: needs-design
Revision history for this message
Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote : Re: [Bug 734170] [NEW] Unity should have a way to open multiple instances of applications

Eviatar, this is possible with middle-click on the launcher icon.

 status invalid

Changed in unity:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote : Re: Unity should have a way to open multiple instances of applications

@Mark: I think that the bug report is partially valid. Its description says "there is no obvious way to open multiple instance of applications in Unity". Middle click a icon is a possible solution, but is far away from be obvious.

Revision history for this message
Eviatar (eviatarbach) wrote :

Thanks Mark.

But, as Marco says, it is not obvious. I have been using Unity for a few weeks and never knew that.

Revision history for this message
Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote :

Same here. I was trying to report a bug about this just now.

Was the decision to map this functionality on middle-click based on a user survey?

FWW I tried:
- right click (searching for "Open another window")
- {Alt|Ctrl|Shift}* + click
- double click (but hoping this was not the choice you've made)

I really does not seem obvious to me, au contraire.

summary: - Unity should have a way to open multiple instances of applications
+ Unity should have an *obvious* way to open multiple instances of
+ applications
description: updated
Changed in unity:
status: Invalid → Incomplete
tags: added: needs-design
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Justyn Butler (justyn) wrote :

Crikey, I spent a long time trying to work out how to do this, and just could not figure it out. I thought it might be a missing feature with the alphas, but after just trying the beta I still couldn't do it. Very frustrating!

So having found this bug report, I now know. Except, what do I do if I am on a laptop with no middle click and with a crazy touchpad that doesn't allow you to press both left+right buttons together? And what about the many people (surely most users?) who don't know that hitting pressing left and right together emulates middle click?

Revision history for this message
Mikael Ohlson (mikael-ohlson) wrote :

How about adding "open new" or something similar to the right click menu, or whatever the proper name for a context menu on the launcher is, as suggested or implied above by Lucian?

Another option would of course be to make "open new instance" the default behaviour and not be so very Mac OS X inspired. (I expect that might be an inflammatory opinion, so I'll be quiet now.)

Changed in unity-2d:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Olivier R-D (olivier-roulet) wrote :

In addition, as noted in Bug 656517, many laptops have no middle button.

Revision history for this message
pazuzuthewise (pazuzuthewise) wrote :

In my opinion, the most obvious choice seems to be the

right-click menu > open new [application name],

since this was what I tried first. I did arrive eventually at finding out that the middle-click opens a new instance, but it wasn't at all obvious.

Revision history for this message
Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote : Re: [Bug 734170] Re: Unity should have an *obvious* way to open multiple instances of applications

> right-click menu > open new [application name],

That's also what the GNOME3 guys did for their dash.

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-introduction.html.en

"To pick a window in a running application, or to open a new window,
right-click on the application icon. You can also drag the icon to the
overview, or onto any workspace thumbnail on the right."

Revision history for this message
Arnie (swapnil-bhartiya) wrote :

Clicking on Terminal in Launcher doesn't open a new instance of Terminal, must open a new window of the app.

Revision history for this message
Patrick Scott (patrickscott52) wrote :

https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04955.html

Per the above message, it seems the dev's will be adding "Open new Window" individually to the quicklist of each application that supports multiple windows instead of adding it for every application. So it is already available in firefox now, I assume it will be coming soon to nautilus and GNOME terminal but the option won't be there for applications like Vuze or games etc since that would confuse users..

Revision history for this message
Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote :

In fact, middle-click is already implemented. This will not be obvious
enough for some, but it's as obvious as we want to make this
non-standard behaviour. In addition, if it's a particularly important
behaviour for any individual app, they could put it in their quicklist.
But we will not add it as a standard feature of every quicklist.

Mark

Revision history for this message
Dimitris Papageorgiou (papageorgioud) wrote :

Right clicking and choosing app name from menu should always open new window, if you wanted the window already running you can just left click after all.

Revision history for this message
Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote :

Dimitris, I find your solution less intuitive than what's currently available and it would mess up with apps like Empathy that want just one instance.

Revision history for this message
Dimitris Papageorgiou (papageorgioud) wrote :

Empathy behaves ok on middle click - if the buddy list is not focused or even closed (in the indicator) it just comes up. I don't see why it would be a problem with right click -> Empathy. As for intuitiveness, middle click can't score too high on that.

Revision history for this message
Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote :

If "Right-click->$APPNAME" should open a new window, it should always do this.
If for Empathy "Right-click->Empathy" opens the same window you have inconsistent (=> confusing) behavior.

Revision history for this message
Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote :

You may wish to have your say regarding an "Open new window" menu entry here:
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/785271
   regular applications should have a "Open New Window" menu entry by default

Changed in unity-2d (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Syraxes (syraxes) wrote :

The logical way is right-click on the icon, and display a menu that contains "Start New ..." .

Middle-click is definitely not discoverable .
I am have just found out about this possibility now when I found this already existing bug !

Unfortunately this is too late for me. I have already removed all unity-related deb packages from my system , because of frustration : i haven't been able to discover how to start more terminals and concluded that the Application-centricity design is not for me.

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