Alt-Tab is window-centric

[alexs77]

The Alt-Tab switcher is window-centric. It should be app-centric.
For cycling between windows of an app, one can also use Alt+^ (key to the left of 1, or above tab). This works in Cinnamon and in Gnome and in Unity.
In Cinnamon, one also sees the full window list of all applications, when pressing Alt+Tab. That's cumbersome, if one has many windows (eg. terminals) open of one application.

[glebihan]

Alt-Tab is window-centric (just as Cinnamon as a whole is) on purpose.
It was one of the first things that was changed after forking gnome-shell.

[alexs77]

Okay. Terrible design decision. Is there at least a way to get rid of all the windows in Alt+Tab and thus improve usability again? The Cinnamon default makes it truly hard to use.

[vdcow]

@glebihan May be make application-centric behavior as option? I am also prefer gnome style for Alt-Tab.

[collinss]

@alexs77 I think it's a great design decision. Cinnamon is specifically designed to window centric. I personally prefer it that way, and I think a lot of others use Cinnamon for that very reason. If instead, you want something that is application centric, you could try just about any other DE, as it seems everyone is moving in that direction. IMO that is one of the biggest reasons that Cinnamon is among the last great DE's available.

That being said, it is probably possible to write an extension that would do this, but I don't see the devs ever including it by default. (Just as the window-list applet doesn't implement app-grouping despite there being at least one third-party applet that implements this feature.)

Sorry I copy-paste this comment from another post.Too lazy to type it out again.

"
I tried to look at what precisely the reason for this design decision is(rather then just saying this is classical/standard and the other is mobile/modern...).
I couldn´t find an answer on github, and I don´t feel like bothering the devs on IRC.

Suppose you have 4 terminal windows open, 3 file browsers, and 2 web browsers.

You hit Alt-Tab.Now you see 9 icons in front of you.If your reason for hitting alt-tab was to find that one terminal you need now, then you can look for it, but the other 5 non-terminal icons are now only visual noise.

In this case you also cannot simply use Alt+, because it would only work if one of the terminal windows happens to be in focus, and what if you had the web browser in focus?
(so to use alt-tab "noiselessly" you would need to use first alt-tab pick any terminal and then alt- to pick among them, which is clearly nonsense)

Having an "app-centric" alt-tab means I would be presented with 3 icons.When selecting one of them, it´s windows are presented.
So to me this is not about "app-centric" vs "window-centric", but rather about grouping too many windows for the sake of less noise.

So what now is exactly the reason for not grouping them?
"

[glebihan]

@zagortenay333 : the reason is precisely the one you mentioned : alt-tab must allow to switch directly from any window to any other.

[alexs77]

@glebihan : why? But anyway, in Gnome/Unity, one could easily also use Alt+Tab to switch between windows of an application, see http://i.imgur.com/DcMhIwH.png

And, no, it's not so, that Alt+Tab "must" allow to switch directly from any window to any other. Alt+Tab must allow to easily switch from application to application. Alt+§ (key to the left of 1) is for window switching.

Anyway, what made you say, that "alt-tab must allow to switch directly from any window to any other"? Why?

[glebihan]

@alexs77 : no Gnome and Unity do not allow to do it easily. You have to use several key combinations or both keyboard and mouse.

As for your last question : because that's the point of alt-tab in the first place.

Finally, as collinss mentioned, nothing prevents anyone from writing an alt-tab extension that would do app switching instead of window switching, just as some window list applets implement app grouping.

[alexs77]

@glebihan : yes, Gnome and Unity DO allow to do that easily. Cinnamon, on the other hand, does NOT allow to switch easily between applications.

But, again, why do you state "because that's the point of alt-tab in the first place"? What's the reason? In Cinnamon issue #4 , that's stated as a design decision. And what's the reason for that?

[glebihan]

@alexs77 : we have different definitions of easy then.

As for the reasons, I already stated them.

[clefebvre]

Hi,

This was considered a regression in Shell. In a multi-tasking environment there is no tie correlation between tasks and applications, the link between tasks and windows though is much more important.

When I'm looking for something, I'm usually looking for another window... most of the times that means another app, but not always. I switch between VMs, Nemo instances, terminal instances and Firefox instances a lot for instance, and when I do, I don't have to think of which app they're using, or which app I'm currently focused on, I just think of what I want to do.

Note that I'm trying to explain something that feels natural to everybody here since that's how alt-tab has been working for years. Whether it's Alt-tab or window grouping in the window list, we don't like the concept of an App-centric desktop, I personally see it as something that goes against proper multi-tasking.

[dalcde]

The idea is that in most cases windows of the same application have nothing to do with one another, so grouping makes no logical sense. And in the case of alt-tab, in makes windows switching slower as we have to wait for the sub-menus to load.

[clefebvre]

I'll give you a typical example. I'm usually performing 2 or 3 activities in parallel ... say I'm coding, building packages and doing fun stuff while stuff compiles:

• Activity 1, coding: I've got a terminal to search for code, a Firefox window to look for help and refs and APIs, a sublime window to code.
• Activity 2, building: Usually 2 or 3 terminals, one local to build, and two ssh.
• Activity 3, fun: Usually a Firefox window to watch youtube or browse some gaming news :)

And then there's usually nemo instances floating around all that as well.

At any given time I'm not interested in seeing all my Firefox windows, or all my terminals.. no, at any given time I'm either coding, building or messing around... and so I need particular sets of windows irrelevant of which applications they use.

Thanks for the concrete explanation.In that case if someone whishes to group all those windows in some way rather then having them float around he has the workspaces system to do so.Makes sense.