[londonperl] Re: Dashboard

[muppet]

On Aug 30, 2006, at 4:16 AM, Daryl Field wrote:

> I believe Alt-Comma switches between windows of the same application.

That's Cmd-~ on my US layout, which is conveniently located right  
next to Cmd-Tab for easy finger memory.  In fact, my finger memory  
has left thumb on cmd, middle finger on ~, ring finger on Tab, and  
pinky on Shift (since Shift reverses the order of traversal).

(Yes, i had to switch windows a few times and stop to see what my  
hands were doing.)


> Peter Corlett wrote:
>> On 29 Aug 2006, at 18:32, David Alban wrote:
>>> For those wondering about exposé, it's delightful.  I wish my linux
>>> boxes had it.  See also:
>> Exposé is useful enough, but I'd rather have had virtual desktops.  
>> VirtueDesktops is the best desktop manager I've found so far,  
>> although there are still some annoying misfeatures. Supposedly the  
>> next OSX release has native virtual desktops, and they might  
>> finally work properly.

The feature i use most of Exposé is the "show desktop" feature, which  
temporarily knocks all windows out of the way.  I have this activated  
by a hot corner, so i can do things like

- start dragging an attachment in Mail.
- while dragging, hit the hot corner... all windows fly to the edges.
- hover over the hard drive icon... after a moment, Finder will pop  
open a window.
- navigate to the proper place by hovering over icons in that Finder  
window.
- drop in the desired place.
- hit the hot corner again.

or

- hit the hot corner to show desktop,
- drag a file from the desktop,
- while dragging, hit the other hot corner to show all windows
- hover over the Mail compose window; it a moment, it selects itself  
and becomes the front window
- drop the object into the compose window to attach the file.


So, in the end, it's the way that Exposé works with dragging and  
other operations that makes it so useful.  There are similar features  
on other systems, but none seem to be so useful.

The WWDC demo of virtual desktops was, indeed, a bit dull for  
longtime unix virtual desktop user like me.  The crowd cheered when  
he dragged a window from one desktop to another in giant Exposé  
thumbnails, but i've been doing that daily in Gnome for the last  
several years (albeit without the eye candy).


--
"it's hard to be eventful when you have this much style."
    - me, rationalizing yet another night of sitting at home.