[Cuis] Fixing the Taskbar

[Casey Ransberger]

This is something I've meant to address for a couple of years. Unfortunately my life has not been conducive to much volunteer work. 

I have a project on my disk with a rather noble aim: to make the Taskbar not suck anymore without adding a single new class to the system. I think it's doable but I haven't had time to tack the work. 

I have some ideas about how to do this, but there are some interesting questions... 

If we want to throw out most of the idea of "application modality," and still keep a system that's both usable in essence and familiar to newcomers, what might that look like?

To my mind, the most obvious thing to do is to emulate the Windows taskbar. Windows could be grouped by morph class into a single taskbar button (so all the Inspectors would group together and one would pick one from a menu upon clicking the button.) I'd put a clock on the right, and a button with a Cuis icon on the left, and maybe call it the "Open" menu, both in order to dodge branding laws and in order to emphasize the ethos of open source software, at the same time as literally saying "click here to open stuff." I'd imagine this "Open" menu would provide fast access to "applications" or what the VPRI folks are calling "moods."

But that's just the most obvious thing to do from the guy who wrote the current (crappy!) taskbar. Maybe the Windows metaphor isn't as recognizable as it was a few years ago, and further effort in that direction is not a good plan. Maybe it should be more like OS X's dock or the iOS task list when one hits the home button twice. Or maybe it's not any of these old and limited ideas...

Maybe it's something completely new. With Morphic 3 approaching, and the promise of a truly zoomable user interface, maybe the taskbar/dock idea is obsolete. If this is the case, I'd leave it as it is, focus on getting Morphic 3 pushed out into the world, and then jettison the taskbar thing. 

I've spent some time doing demos of Cuis for people. I know for sure that the taskbar as is a) doesn't look like a taskbar, and b) doesn't behave as one expects a taskbar to behave. Both are an artifact of that I was trying to do the simplest thing which would make the minimize button not throw a debugger window while also not adding a bunch of unwanted complexity to the system. 

It occurs to me, now that we have a vocal group of users, I should just ask: how should minimizing and restoring SystemWindows work? Should we be able to minimize/restore morphs which are not also SystemWindows? Is the current half-solution painful in your experience?

Any comments, ideas, insight, references to usability research, or downright flame mail is requested: seriously, don't spare my feelings, because I know this aspect is wanting. 

Casey