Additional Features for Overview

[deadbody13]

This is a great feature and I use it all the time. While using it I thought about a couple of quality-of-life features that I think would work pretty well.
Additional features for overview:

• click-to-close: Assign mouse button or mod key combo to close windows from overview mode. Intuitively I would assume middle-clicking.
  • There is a huge convenience in doing this when you want to clean up your work area. Just putting everything into overview and clicking all the windows that I want closed is an effective way of cleaning up the workspace. I think Windows does something similar.
• Workspace/Window labels
  • This is honestly kind of just eye candy and I like having things labeled so that I can identify which workspace I'm on and what windows I have on that workspace. Nice for when I'm dragging organizing.

[YaLTeR]

Hey,

For middle click to close my main concern is how easy it is to misclick and close something unintended. And something like a close button is waiting on bigger design experiments I guess.

For labels it would help to have some sufficiently nice looking mock-up for how they could look.

[YaLTeR]

Yeah, I would argue very frequently you'll have the rightmost window focused with more windows to the left, which would obscure this.

Actually I was thinking, if this kind of label (or workspace index for unnamed) was in a small overlay box, then we could use that as a click target for entire-workspace DnD without having to hold Mod or w/e (this does not exist at the moment). On the other hand, it would obscure the windows themselves a little.

[deadbody13]

Something like this?

Maybe aligned center though instead of the horizontal offset...

[bbb651]

I would imagine something more like this, where the x position is fixed and would overlay windows to the left if there were any (with a half transparent background):

For partially visible workspaces they would have to be shifted into view like in this example, which makes DnD a bit awkward: Should only the label be dragged at first until it's y position reaches the center of the workspace and only then the workspace will start getting dragged along with it? Should the workspace started being dragged immediately and the label stays offset from the workspace entire time? Otherwise the cursor would be holding on to nothing, although it might not be that bad.

[deadbody13]

I see, I like that idea but yeah, leaves a lot to whether the user wants to put up with something partially obstructing the workspace while in overview.

[SproedKartoffelChip]

I personally use "middle click" (three finger click) on macOS' Overview equivalent, Mission Control, all the time through a third-party app. To me its a really convenient feature, in fact KDE Plasma has it natively. Also in niri's case in particular it would allow for cross-workspace window closing without shifting the view vertically and I find that any time the view moves I have to take a moment to readjust and recognize the position of the windows I was looking at again.

For middle click to close my main concern is how easy it is to misclick and close something unintended. And something like a close button is waiting on bigger design experiments I guess.

If this is a (forced) default then yeah I wouldn't be for it. Best case would be to make it an option so you're opting into that risk.
This is also moving into the territory of a separate discussion, but I don't imagine it would be impossible to "pretend close" an application and delay the actual termination for a configurable number of seconds. That way if you ever do accidentally misclick (which does happen to me every now and then even when using the regular method in niri) you can have an undo bind for cancelling the termination and restoring the window.

[rwx7]

How about overview behavior like Alt+Tab? That is while I navigate with Super+{h,j,k,l} the overview instantly opens and lets you select the next window/workspace . When the timeout expires, return to regular view with the newly focused window or workspace.

[YaLTeR]

We should hopefully have proper alt-tab in #1704, it shouldn't bring up the overview because it's a different kind of UX.

[oisanjaya]

How about this? Only shows current focused workspace label in between workspaces, when drag-and-drop operations, this label still overlayed with new workspace indicator.
While we're at it, how about adding close button in overview mode instead of, or, in addition of key combo (also see #2842)

[deadbody13]

A close button would be pretty cool. I would also like the middle click option or a hotkey to close from overview but the close button is probably safest.

[defcon79]

I'd like to suggest a few features -

• search box to quickly filter and find a window, search can work by title, class name etc
• the search could be further enhanced by showing matching window rules. this could be very useful in allowing people to see what kind of rules affect a window
• some kind of title/process name overlay on the window