Thoughts about Unity and some ideas for improvement

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

I've been somewhat sceptical about Unity so I've delayed testing it. I
started testing it this week and after a very short time, it's grown
on me and now I really love it. However, there are some things I think
would make it far better.

1: Better use of the alt-key

When you press and hold super, then the launcher is displayed and you
see numbers you can press in order to launch or switch to an
application. This is really nice for your ten most used applications.
I think the first four are awesome, since I can switch between those
with one hand. (Thank you! I've longed for that feature for years) For
less frequently used applications, it becomes less useful, but that's
ok because you can easily launch them from the "applense" and then use
super-w to switch to them.

In the super-w "exposé window", you can still switch to those
applications using super-num. But for your less used applications, you
still have to use the mouse. I think it would be very user friendly if
a press and hold on the alt-key would display a number over each
window that you can press to switch, like the launcher does for super.
These numbers should not reflect the order from the launcher, but the
order in which the windows were created. If it was even possible to
reorganize windows there, by clicking and dragging (like in the
launcher), that would be very useful for long-lasting sessions.

The workspace switcher that is accessible using super-s is also nice.
but it would be very much easier and more consistent if pressing and
holding alt would display a number over each workspace, enabling you
to switch in the same way I propose for the super-w window.

2: workspaces as "contexts"

Workspaces doesn't currently seem very useful to me. It can be nice if
you have windows layed out in a certain way, but other than that, I
don't think I'll use them very much. I think they would be very much
more useful and user friendly if the super-w didn't display windows
from other workspaces, but was limited only to the current workspace
like alt+tab is. I always use workspaces as "contexts". That is, I
have a workspace where I do general stuff like surfing and chatting
with friends for no particular purpose. I also have one workspace that
I use when I play guitar and sing, etc, I have one for managing my
network of physical and virtual machines and one I use for
development. I work with different files and websites in these
contexts so I open new instances of Nautilus and Firefox. This is
probably the only time I open more than one instance of these
applications since both supports tabs very well.

For my workflow, it would be extremely useful if the launcher and
super-w was "context aware" so that pressing super-1 would open only
the Nautilus relevant to my current work and super-2 would switch to
my relevant Firefox. That is to say that if I'm in my general context
with Firefox and Nautilus open, then switch to a new context, pressing
super-1 and super-2 would open new instances of those applications,
and then later switch between those instances in this context only.
When switching between contexts, the default browser in the context
you switch to should be set as the one to open links. (This has been a
problem for me for ages). Opening a link from gnome-terminal in my
Guitar context should never result in the link being opened in my VM
Management context, for instance. This helps me stay focused on my
current tasks. One way to solve this, would be something like this:
when the workspace/context switches, if there is a browser instance,
remember which window is currently focused, focus the browser and then
focus to the window that oringinally had focus. I'm sure there are
better ways. If it was even possible to use different Firefox profiles
for each context, that would be absolutely wonderful! (And I don't use
that word often)

Perhaps lenses could be context aware too? That would be insanely
awesome! Or as Zaphod Beeblebrox would say: amazingly amazing!

Thanks for your time and attention. I'm looking forward to reading
your thoughts if you have them. :)

Kind regards,

Jo-Erlend Schinstad