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Draft: taskpanel: Prototype task switcher design

Devin Lin requested to merge work/task-switcher-experiment into master

I've done some thinking on how the task switcher could work, in a way that best allows for convergence for larger displays, while allowing for easy usage with one hand.

I ended being inspired by the BB10 task switcher gesture and style, which is a grid view (similar to Windows Phone and Sailfish) that is accessed from a bottom swipe up gesture, which is already used right now.

View it here:

https://youtu.be/zSgbqCvKQ84?t=70

image

Ideas:

  • Preserve the top panel and taskpanel in the task switcher (not covered by view) so that they can be accessed in the task switcher view
  • Use 2 column gridview on vertical orientations, and 3 columns for horizontal orientations. I find that any more than 3 would be looking quite cluttered, so 3 would be optimal for tablet scenarios
  • Set the taskpanel (bottom panel) to have different actions when in the task switcher (perhaps "grid/list toggle", "homescreen", "settings")
  • Keep swipe left/right to close application gesture
  • Swipe up gesture would shrink the current active window into a thumbnail that is moved with the finger, letting go would snap it to the gridview
  • We can add a setting to hide the task panel normally, so it's only shown in the task switcher
  • Remove the swipe up/down the gridview to dismiss gesture, as it can cause accidental closing of the task switcher (the plasma button on the taskpanel should be sufficient)
  • Initial swipe up, and then swipe left/right could switch between recently opened apps

Current prototype implementation:

  • Task switcher has a wallpaper background, by minimizing all apps (might be problematic) and setting the opacity of the homescreen to 0
  • Reworked the task delegates to have labels and x button on the bottom for easier one handed reach
  • Removed task delegate curved edges so that thumbnails can fit up to the edge
  • Added margins to the top and bottom for the taskpanel and top panel (still haven't figured out how to allow clicks behind the window)

T

Edited by Devin Lin

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