Observations of Workspace Switcher and Window Buttons

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Antediluvian
Posts: 304
Joined: Sun May 20, 2018 7:42 pm

Observations of Workspace Switcher and Window Buttons

#1 Post by Antediluvian »

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System:    Host: Dell7010 Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 tk: Gtk 2.24.31 Distro: MX-17.1_x64 Horizon March 14, 2018
I have Workspace Switcher and Window Buttons set up in my panel. Interestingly, the two Xfce panel items work a bit differently in MX and Peppermint.

I use Workspace Switcher to keep my "projects" separate. MX and Peppermint both disrupt that separation, although in different ways.

Suppose Firefox is my default browser and I have Firefox open in Workspace 1 and another app with hyperlinks (e.g., Thunderbird) open in WS 2. Also suppose that Firefox is not open in WS 2.

In MX if I click on a hyperlink while in WS 2 then the Firefox icon in Window Buttons of WS 1 moves to WS 2 and a new tab with the link opens in Firefox. The result is that I might have 10 tabs from one project moved to an unrelated WS and mixed with a new tab from another project.

By contrast, in Peppermint if I do the same hyperlink click in WS 2 then I am switched to WS 1 where Firefox is and a new tab with the link opens in Firefox. Again the projects are mixed and I am in a different WS.

The behaviors are not the same and not what I would expect/desire. I would like to remain in the same workspace as my hyperlink, and open a new Firefox window in that WS leaving the other WS intact. The easy solution is for me to first open a Firefox window in the current WS before clicking on the hyperlink, but that is two extra clicks. (I know, how lazy or forgetful can you be?) It would be nice if this hiccup were addressed, but it may be too trivial for the MX programmers to "fix".
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Unrelated observation: I really like the Margins setting of Workspace Switcher (in Properties) that controls the maximum window size. On my wide screen I like to keep my vertical panel unhidden and I don't want any windows overlapping the panel. So I set the left margin to 1 or 2 pixels more than the panel width. The ease of setting up panel(s) and this Margins setting are a big reason why I prefer Xfce to Mate.

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fehlix
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Re: Observations of Workspace Switcher and Window Buttons

#2 Post by fehlix »

Antediluvian wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:25 pm ... I would like to remain in the same workspace as my hyperlink, and open a new Firefox window in that WS leaving the other WS intact.
The default is to open hyperlinks within an existing instance of firefox.
If you like to change this, you would need to change the hyperlink association to
open firefix with a new instance as

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firefox --new-instance 
You can either do by adding just "--new-instance " to the command line of the
firefox-starter.
E.g. try this rightclick within Whisker-menu under Internet -> on firefox and adjust the command line.
Save and exit.
This will create an adjusted "firefox.desktop" file within your ~/.local/share/applications - folder,
and by this becomes your new default firefox-starter.
I dont use WS-Switcher, so no comment on this.
Gigabyte Z77M-D3H, Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 (Quad core), 32GB RAM,
GeForce GTX 770, Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB, Seagate Barracuda 4TB

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Antediluvian
Posts: 304
Joined: Sun May 20, 2018 7:42 pm

Re: Observations of Workspace Switcher and Window Buttons

#3 Post by Antediluvian »

fehlix wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:50 pm The default is to open hyperlinks within an existing instance of firefox.
That is the behavior I normally want, so I don't want to change that. However, what would be nice is that if Firefox is not open in the current work space then the hyperlink would open a new instance of Firefox in that work space. (With my limited understanding I don't know if that is possible.)

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