
I turned gnome-shell into a tiling window manager - gfxmonk
http://gfxmonk.net/shellshape/
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dpetrov
I think more people should write similar extensions or even new window
managers. In my opinion, “traditional” window management is quirky, even if
we've all grown used to it. Resizing and moving windows, for example, are
painful given how you need to click on small specific areas to carry them out.
Most window managers on Linux have overcome with a combination of a key press
and mouse click allowing you to move/resize by clicking anywhere in the
window. With a tiling window manager you usually have some keyboard shortcut
to do it.

Still, none of those approaches solve the problem in all situations. Managing
windows can be “uncomfortable”. Sure you can make use of workspaces, or tags
(à la dwm, I think the tag paradigm is beautiful) or whatnot, but you don't
want to think about the act of switching windows. Have you ever found yourself
alt-tabbing through a pile of windows and be annoyed by not getting to the
right window easily enough (“Oh, drat, I pressed Tab one too many times”).
Whenever I have to use OS X, I press the Exposé shortcut for almost every
context switch.

So yeah, this is kind of extension is more than welcome and others should
continue to innovate. If nothing else good comes out of Gnome 3, at least it
would have pushed people to think about their interaction with the interface.

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jessedhillon
What tool was used to make that screencast? I'd love to know about a tool for
Linux that overlays keypresses on the video like that.

~~~
gfxmonk
<https://launchpad.net/screenkey/>

Had to hack it up a bit to show the shift key, and only the most recent
keypress.

And gnome-shell-list has built in screen recording.

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desireco42
Looks good. There seems to be a lot of experimentation with tiling wm-s, even
win8 seems to be going in that direction if I saw those videos right. Change
is good.

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nodata
I think what we need is a window manager (or a window layout behaviour) _per
workspace or screen_ rather than a single window manager to rule them all.

I tried to use the tiling window manager xmonad and found it _excellent_ for
terminal stuff. The problem was everything else.

Firefox/thunderbird/etc. don't work in a tiling window manager, particularly
Firefox and particularly popups.

~~~
dpetrov
A sensible tiling window manager doesn't tile popup windows (and I believe
xmonad is sensible). If it doesn't float popups, then you just haven't
configured it to do so. Can't blame you, though. Writing Haskell to configure
a window manager isn't exactly a one-step process. I think parts of the
following resource will prove useful if you ever decide to give xmonad another
try:
[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/General_xmonad.hs_...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/General_xmonad.hs_config_tips#Making_window_float_by_default.2C_or_send_it_to_specific_workspace)

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Inufu
Is this any different from xmonad? That's what I'm currently using with Gnome.
Way better than this Gnome 3 rubbish.

~~~
zmanian
Sometimes i wish xmonad had 3d transitions between layouts. That's probably
the only appeal of a gnome shell extension

~~~
yason
Why is that, by the way? I've tried various transitions over the years and for
any serious work I've soon settled for the plain old immediate "transition",
i.e. nothing at all. Anything else has turned out just annoying, for me.

~~~
Periodic
At a largely Windows-based shop I installed Linux on my system and had Gnome
set up with some fancy 3d-box transitions. I got some startled wows from my
coworkers when they were helping me with something over my shoulder and I
switched desktops.

However, I always found myself reducing the transition time bit by bit, until
I eventually got rid of the transition. When I'm in the zone and coding I
might be checking docs or some output on one workspace, and I want to switch
workspaces and begin typing without the feedback delay. I already have the
next 20 keystrokes planned out, and I'd rather be rate limited by my fingers
than my WM.

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pandrew
Well done, looks really nice. Tiling wm is very useful.

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Kwpolska
It's still a piece of crap, though.

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d0m
You might want to add a little more information on your page explaining what
it is. I.e. What is the difference with Bluetile? With tmux?

Also, if I start gnome-terminal, run tmux, and put it full-screen.. isn't it a
"gnome tiling manager" ?

~~~
Periodic
I was a bit confused at first. When he said tiling windows with the gnome
terminal I thought, "is this just a GNU screen tutorial with a buzz-words
title?" When I saw the browser windows in there I started to wonder how you
embedded a browser into a gnome-terminal tab.

It took watching the video to see that it was more integrated than I first
expected.

~~~
kleiba
He's talking about gnome-shell, not a gnome terminal.

