[FFE][UIFE] Window management - We should be able to close windows in spread mode

[Simon]

== Proposed Change ==

Add a small titlebar to each window in spread mode with just a close button. Allows users to close windows in the spread

== Test ==

None as of yet.

This code is mostly all UI/Rendering code and wasn't exactly testable. It might be worthwhile looking into writing AP tests for the close functionality. The two revisions in question are:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-team/unity/trunk/revision/2650
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-team/unity/trunk/revision/2662

I can vouch as the reviewer that the code was written correctly and functions like the other compiz draw-on-windows code.

== Contingency? ==

We should just be able to revert those revisions. As nothing else is planned to change on those code sections, reverting them should be trivial.

1.Open 3 windows of nautilus or any application.
2. Click on the application's icon in the launcher to activate spread mode.
3. If you want to close one of the windows, you have to click on its preview, than close it when it has focus. However, we should be able to close it directly in spread mode (like in gnome shell) by clicking on a close button in the upper left corner of each preview.

I attached a picture of how its done in gnome shell.

-------------------------
Note from design:

This feature will be added as part of 'The Spread', for more details see:

- http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/task-switching-in-ubuntu-and-a-introduction-to-the-spread/

- http://design.canonical.com/the-toolkit/unity-task-switching/

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

me too :-)

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Thanks for your bug report, we are aware of this issue and looking at possible solutions.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That got some design work, you can read about it there:
http://design.canonical.com/2012/03/task-switching-in-ubuntu-and-a-introduction-to-the-spread/

the blog mentions that

"Moving the pointer over any of the previews will display the window name in a window title bar, and a close button is included so that any window can be dismissed directly from this view."

[Petko Ditchev (pditchev)]

I suggest the option in CCSM->Scale addons->close_button - just set middle click as a default . It's a universal nowadays principle - middle click opens in a new tab or closes tabs . I even think that was a default option some time ago .

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

Also note that you can close windows in spread/scale mode by using Alt+F4

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

Difficulty: Medium
Method:
1) Make unity depend on the scale plugin
2) Make unity::UnityWindow inherit from ScaleWindow
3) Make UnityWindow overload scalePaintDecoration
4) Load a small texture asset with an X button (or appropriate equavilent) and paint it at the correct location when appropriate
Test: The main thing for testing here is the code to position the texture in the right place over the window. I believe ScalePaintDecoration gives you a ScaleSlot, which you can use to determine the geometry of the scaled window, from there we just need to test that our code puts the button in the right place for that geometry

[Loris Zinsou (nepenthes)]

I have a notice on this bug :
- if the window was already decorated when scale is triggered, the title bar in scale mode can be clicked to select the window. This is obviously a correct behaviour.
- if the window was undecorated (ie : maximized) when scale is triggered, the title bar cannot be clicked to select the window. It seems wrong to me.

Shall I open a new bug ? (I'm running Unity Staging from the PPA)

[Loris Zinsou (nepenthes)]

There is also a small graphical glitch : I can see white dots on in the corner of the scale mode window decorations.

[Loris Zinsou (nepenthes)]

Last thing : if the fix is based on the panel code, shouldn't there be a "fade" effect on the window title if it overflows the right border of scale decoration ?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Update: Unity 6.4 is revision 2632, so this is actually fix committed for Unity 6.6.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

For the benefit of those not running Unity trunk, could you attach a screenshot?

+1 from the Docs Team. Adding a docs task so that we can try to add a sentence about this new feature.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Have the issues highlighted by Loris Zinsou been fixed?

I'm also a bit confused on exactly what packages are affected by this change, the bug seems to affect both unity and compiz but only a unity branch has been attached.

Besides these two points I'd like to see clarified, the actual change seems alright and has been approved by the doc team.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Sorry, no specific change in compiz is needed for this.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Thanks for dropping the compiz task and for the screenshot. I'm marking this bug as incomplete until we get some kind of feeback on Loris' notes above.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Screenshot showing unity without this feature (for before vs Johns after image)

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@the-lz-himself; this change is faking everything (not using the panel code) so there will be some graphical differences.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@the-lz-himself;

re. your comment:

"I have a notice on this bug :
- if the window was already decorated when scale is triggered, the title bar in scale mode can be clicked to select the window. This is obviously a correct behaviour.
- if the window was undecorated (ie : maximized) when scale is triggered, the title bar cannot be clicked to select the window. It seems wrong to me."

Yes, please open a bug with the second issue and ping me the bug number.

This does need to be fixed, but should not block this change from landing.

thanks,
John

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

As I mentioned on IRC when poked about this bug, I don't agree with John's last comment to just file a new bug and accept the new feature.

I'd expect any feature landing through the FeatureFreezeException process to be "perfect" in the sense that it has no known issue, what you're saying above is that this is a known bug and might be fixed in the future, so goes against that principle.

So I'm not going to grant the FFe until the known issues with this feature are all fixed, someone else from -release is obviously welcome to disagree with me and accept the exception.

[Kate Stewart (kate.stewart)]

From the comments above, it doesn't feel that the design is complete and fully tested at this point. This should be retargetted to land in the R series.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

I would request the release team to reconsider this as I believe the issue that was raised above does not exist in the latest code, plus I have been testing this feature for a few days and it seems to work fine for me.

I have attached a video to show that the bug does not exist in latest code.

[Petko Ditchev (pditchev)]

 If the new feature is still buggy or cannot pass the feature freeze , I strongly suggest at least setting the close-on-middle-click as a default . I think it should be there even if the close button gets implemented , because it's a far easier and faster way to manage the windows (not to mention intuitive since all tabs get handled that way now) .

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I don't believe I've ever used middle-click to close tabs before you mentioned it, so I wouldn't call it intuitive. It's not near as documented as Ctrl+W is (which self-documents in traditional menus). And it doesn't work for all tabbed interfaces: it fails in gedit, gnome-terminal, nautilus, and epiphany-browser.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

What Omer says it's true... These comments are based on an old version of this feature: the one that initially landed in trunk; I also noticed some issues on it and so I immediately requested some fixes to Renato that he promptly did in lp:~renatofilho/unity/unity-lp876017-fixes. I also integrated his fixes with some improvements in lp:~3v1n0/unity/spread-title-improved, lp:~3v1n0/unity/use-scale-getSelectedWindow and lp:~3v1n0/unity/use-scale-getSelectedWindow.

So, as Omer pointed out, I think that the main problems you've noticed on this feature are actually not present in the current code.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

@Loris:

> Last thing : if the fix is based on the panel code, shouldn't there be a "fade"
> effect on the window title if it overflows the right border of scale decoration ?

That was my request too, and it was added... Since we now we use the same code (even if it is not shared yet) to draw both.

> - if the window was undecorated (ie : maximized) when scale is triggered, the title bar
> cannot be clicked to select the window. It seems wrong to me.

Fixed as well on trunk.

[Perseid (perseid)]

I'd like to urge you to have this feature released in Quantal. Gnome 3 has had this feature from the very beginning and I've been waiting for it to appear in Unity for one and a half year already. It's really a usability bummer.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Based on Marco's comment, FFe accepted.
This is conditional on the change landing before the 20th of September at 21:00 UTC.
Please also be prepared to revert this change should any bug/regression be reported after this lands.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

On 18/09/12 21:49, Petko Ditchev wrote:
> If the new feature is still buggy or cannot pass the feature freeze , I
> strongly suggest at least setting the close-on-middle-click as a default
> . I think it should be there even if the close button gets implemented ,
> because it's a far easier and faster way to manage the windows (not to
> mention intuitive since all tabs get handled that way now) .
>
I strongly back up to close with a middle-click as a default. All web
browsers implement this. It is not our problem that other applications
are lagging behind. Not to mention that in Nautilus, with a
middle-click, you can open a new tab, but you can't close it with the
same click!!! in contrast with all web browsers.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

You can already close scaled windows with a middle click if you want. Just load the compiz plugin: scaleaddon

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@amribrahim1987, @vanvugt; I have reported this request as a separate bug, see bug #1052821

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

@vanvugt: scaleaddons doesn't seem to play nicely with this :o

However, I think it would be better to handle both in unity itself at this point.

[David Planella (dpm)]

Al 10/09/12 10:03, En/na Sam Spilsbury ha escrit:
> Hi All
>
> We have a change that has gone into trunk which makes the titlebars of
> windows have only a clickable "close" button during spread mode.
>
> The only thing that needs to be changed are screenshots of the spread
> mode, which a note that clicking on the close button closes the window.
>
> (LP: #876017)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sam
>

Does not affect translatable strings, no objections from the
translations team.

Cheers,
David.

--
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 6.6.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (6.6.0-0ubuntu1) quantal-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - Fixes non-escaped character sequences in dash previews (LP: #1039020)
    - Updated background layer for preview cover-art and details panels
      to be 10% low-light
    - Expand a PlacesGroup if it is the only category that contains results
      (LP: #950710)
    - Update unity autopilot tests to match autopilot API
    - Updated the convert files to fix some typos in the key names
    - Add gmodule dependency
    - Activate proper result if the categories aren't displayed in-order
      (LP: #1040101)
    - Refactor device launcher icons (LP: #713423)
    - LauncherController: make the controller enable the launcher struts,
      based on hide-mode option (LP: #1044005)
    - Launcher: make always possible to drag an icon to the bottom or top
      of its sub list (LP: #1043968)
    - Don't desat bfb/hud icon in DNDReset (LP: #1043963)
    - Progressively adjust the speed of the minimize animation. First
      time it is used is slower, then speeds up the more it is used.
      (LP: #1017510)
    - Implement new ordering of categories for home lens. (LP: #1043915)
    - UnityWindow now implements ScaleWindowInterface (LP: #876017)
    - Launcher: restore an icon position after that the dragging has been
      cancelled (LP: #955561)
    - LauncherDragWindow: cancel drag on window mapped/unmapped
      (LP: #1044723)
    - Now there is a check of an override color in RefreshColor (which is
      called when a PropertyNotify event happens). Also added a check in
      FullySaturateColor to a void division by zero. (LP: #975350)
    - Queue redraw after cover-art texture is updated from a url/file source.
      (LP: #1043947)
    - Fixed ability to delete glib::Source wrapper during its callback
      (LP: #1044823)
    - Close preview when dash is hidden. (LP: #1045298)
    - LauncherModel: rewrite the Reordering functions to keep the icon
      priority deltas (LP: #761155)
    - Make sure we can pass extra hints when activating preview actions.
      (LP: #1046352)
    - UnityWindow: scale window code improved (LP: #1033935)
    - The mouse will now cause the HUD buttons to change selection
      (LP: #1042692)
    - "Alt+Space" shortcut to reveal the window menu is not hardcoded, but a
       Compiz key option. " (Hold)" should also be translated. Made all
       Compiz plug-in names and all Compiz plug-in option names in
       unityshell.cpp static constants.
    - remove unity --reset, it's not anymore really needed now that we are
      in stable days of unity and we moved to gsettings
    - Removed the variables 'oldPrev' and 'oldNext' which got assigned the
      value NULL, but then were never used
    - Fixed the size of the previews to 770x380 pixels. (LP: #1045243)
    - UnityWindow: use smart pointers, use static close_icon (with dynamic
      state) and PanelStyle context (LP: #1033935) (LP: #1045127)
      (LP: #1046124) (LP: #1046126)
    - Remove everything in the #ifndef USE_MODERN_COMPIZ_GL ifdefs and remove
      the ifdefs alltogether. unity now requires compiz...

[martini (mr-owner-gmail)]

I need this feature in Ubuntu 12.04 very much. Can somebody tell how to get it? Some updates, or backports?

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

On 08/10/12 11:19, martini wrote:
> I need this feature in Ubuntu 12.04 very much. Can somebody tell how to
> get it? Some updates, or backports?
>
Totally agree with you.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

One way to get this functionality (not like in Q, but with similar behavior), is enabling the plugin "Scale Addons" in CCSM and enable the option to close windows on middle-click.

[Matthew (mh00h)]

This feature showcases a bug: if 2 windows are spread, the unity bar covers the X on the left window making it impossible to close.

[Matthew (mh00h)]

Note that this is for Unity 6.12.0

[thijs van severen (thijsvanseveren)]

will this fix be backported to 12.04 ?

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

No, sorry... It's not possible to backport features like this.

However you can still enable the scale-addons plugin in CCSM and enable the option to close a window by middle-clicking on it.

[John Kim (kotux)]

Lately, has there been any work on the documentation for this feature?

[Chris Perry (clissold345)]

@Gunnar. I want to check with you what documentation changes are needed here. A close button was added to windows in spread mode. So I need to mention closing windows in spread mode using the mouse (of course a user can also close windows in spread mode using the keyboard - but I don't need to mention that?)?

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Chris: Is windows handling at this level of detail at all mentioned in the desktop guide? I can't recall it is, and if it isn't, I'd say that the ubuntu-docs task of this bug is invalid.

[Chris Perry (clissold345)]

I found two mentions of Super+W (see below). (I revised the second page two or three months ago.) But they both relate (mainly) to use of the keyboard. I could mention in shell-windows-switching.html "From the keyboard (method 2)" that the user can close a window using the mouse or the keyboard (and say of course how they do it)? I think that would be OK. Then we can mark the bug "Fix Committed"?

shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html
shell-windows-switching.html

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

That section is about *switching* between windows, and I don't see how this feature fits there. It would merely clutter the page IMO.

Let's just close the task. If there is a close button the users know that it can be used to close the window.