[Feature request] an option to make window thumbnails come up instead of the app title on hovering over an icon.

[person666]

I am using the windows_thumbnails_318 branch and it works great, but I think it would be nice if getting to the thumbnails was faster. An option to make all windows menu section with the thumbnails and close buttons come up instead of the app title on hovering over an icon would do this nicely. Thanks for all your hard work please consider it.

[micheleg]

Yes, that's one of option was considering (a la Windows 7), but it was easier to start from the popup menu. I'm personally not a fan of things which require hovering and the careful movement of the mouse cursor to be used, but I haven't decided yet. One small change I was testing is also to just pre-open the all windows menu.

[person666]

Preopening all windows would certainly help, but I think making an on hover
option would make navigation much faster.

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 7:48 AM Michele [email protected] wrote:

Yes, that's one of option was considering (a la Windows 7), but it was
easier to start from the popup menu. I'm personally not a fan of things
which require hovering and the careful movement of the mouse cursor to be
used, but I haven't decided yet. One small change I was testing is also to
just pre-open the all windows menu.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#273 (comment)
.

[dffischer]

I also just found the branch and eagerly tested this extraordinary idea. I rarely use the popup menu for anything else, so to me, too, pre-opening would be very useful, but including an option to show the thumbnails on hover would be even more. I would also appreciate that this separates the window list from the rest of the popup menu entries keeping things assorted. And, as a completely irrelevant side effect, providing more vertical space before #277 happens.

[micheleg]

To start I added a commit to pre-open the all windows menu, so you can test this behaviour too. I agree with your considerations, I also mostly use the the menu for looking at the thumbnails. I will most likely give a try to the hover option, but I can't guarantee when I'll manage to get the time to look into it.

[dffischer]

That already makes it much more useful, I would even consider the feature suited for release even without the hover version. I would much appreciate if you could even find the time to look into the hover effect.

[jonnjonzzn]

What is the status of this feature and branch? I have been testing the windows_thumbnails_318 branch but it seems to introduce some instability not present using the master branch. Are there plans for this to be incorporated? I enjoy this feature +1.

Background: F23 up to date.

[micheleg]

Thanks for the feedback. I was wondering if merging the branch as it is. I haven't work on it for a while, but I haven't noticed any problems either, although there are still some rough edges to be polished. What are the problems you are experiencing?

[jonnjonzzn]

I'll see if I can pinpoint and better define the issues I saw. Hold tight ;-)

[jonnjonzzn]

This seems pretty stable to me after double-checking. I typically have 20+ windows open during the workday and haven't experienced any issues I can remember. I believe the issues I may have seen earlier were related to me messing around with shell and icon theme switches.

I vote to merge :-)

[franglais125]

@micheleg I rebased your windows_thumbnails_318 branch on master.
I'm running it now to test it, it seems to work well. I just had to do a few modifications due to the restructuring. I'll let you know how it goes.

You can find the updated branch here: https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock/tree/windows_thumbnails_322

[micheleg]

@franglais125 Good, thank you. I should really add this functionality as it should really be 99% ready.

[micheleg]

I get this error when opening the popup menu:

JS ERROR: Exception in callback for signal: open-state-changed: ReferenceError: getPosition is not defined
MyAppIcon<.popupMenu/<@/home/michele/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/appIcons.js:214
_emit@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/signals.js:124
PopupMenu<.open@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/popupMenu.js:825
wrapper@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/lang.js:178
AppIconMenu<.popup@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:1931
wrapper@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/lang.js:178
MyAppIcon<.popupMenu@/home/michele/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/appIcons.js:236
wrapper@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/lang.js:178
AppIcon<._onButtonPress@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/appDisplay.js:1674
wrapper@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/lang.js:178

[franglais125]

Thanks for the feedback!
My apologies if it sounded as if the branch was 'all done' for merging. I actually didn't have that much time to test it yet.
I did backport it to 3.14 (when merging I think the only conflict came in the Makefile), I have been running it without issue for ~1 week. At least it's not crashing.

• I'll look into the error you mention and see if I can find the problem
• Do you happen to know if this commit is still necessary? 3757faf

Cheers

[franglais125]

@micheleg I added this patch [727fa74] which hopefully fixes the issue.

By the way (assuming you tested this on Debian Stretch), where are the usual logs with errors? For some reason I can't see them on Stretch. However, I did find the same error as you easily on Jessie, on the usual /var/log/user.log.

[micheleg]

No problem, i was just reporting the error. beside the error, everything seems to be working fine on 3.22 (Debian Stretch). To look for the logs I still restart the shell in a terminal with gnome-shell --replace, to be sure to get all of them. They also seem to be logged in /var/log/syslog.

[micheleg]

I've merged the branch with the feature in master [72bd2c8]. At the moment the windows previews menu is close by default, as for my initial plan. I'll reconsider this option later.

[Baltix]

@micheleg , thanks for including windows previews, but please add an option to make window thumbnails come up instead of the app title on hovering over an icon or clicking with left mouse button

micheleg commented:

I've merged the branch with the feature in master [72bd2c8]. At the moment the windows previews menu is close by default.

[haiderrehmanbutt]

I second @Baltix

[micheleg]

Once #504 is merged, we will have an independent popupmenu with the thumbnails in place. I will then look into adding an hover option.

[franglais125]

@micheleg I've started to implement the previews-on-hover, importing most of if from dash-to-panel.

I'm not opening a PR yet, as I have a few small things to improve, both from functionality and code style. At the moment I think it would be good to also get some feedback.

Here is the branch: https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock/tree/hover_preview

In particular, I want to be careful as I still need to test Wayland and 3.24.

[franglais125]

Forgot to mention... (I was itending to do it in the PR anyway), @jderose9 thanks a lot for the code I borrowed! If you have some comments and feedback it would be great too!

[gunwald]

I tried it for a couple of hours and it did work nicely! I think it's really a great feature.

ps.: For all helpless people like my, to test this branch, try the following:

git clone https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock.git
git checkout hover_preview 
cd dash-to-dock && make
make install

And don't forget to activate the preview on mouse over in the settings.

[franglais125]

@somepaulo tagging you here if you want to test the branch! Feedback would be great.
https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock/tree/hover_preview

[somepaulo]

Thanks, @franglais125
Seems to be working nicely so far. Arch x64, Linux 14.12.6, Gnome 3.24.3, Wayland 1.14.0, all packages up to date synced to Arch repos and AUR.

[trixnz]

@franglais125 Firstly, thanks for doing this! Makes transitioning from Windows based environments that much easier, and is a general nice feature to have when working with multiple copies of the same program.

Something I've noticed that is particularly annoying is that the order of the previews seems to jump around depending on the last window that had focus. Is it possible to see some stabilisation of the ordering of the previews such that no matter which window was last focused, they'll always be ordered in a predictable manner?

[franglais125]

@trixnz Thanks for the feedback! I will actually open a PR for this soon, as the Unity7-backlit stuff is apparently nearing completion. We can discuss it better over there.

The difference comes from here: https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock/blob/hover_preview/windowPreview.js#L440

I believe in dash-to-panel it's done how you want it: https://github.com/jderose9/dash-to-panel/blob/master/windowPreview.js#L1042

I am not sure what behavior is better, I really don't have a strong opinion on this. So I'll leave it up to feedback & @micheleg 's take on it.

[joca-bt]

Having an option to have window previews like in dash-to-panel would be great!

[micheleg]

@joca-bt have a look at #574. If you can test and provide feedback that would be great!

[karangarg45]

is this feature available in master/current release branch?

[micheleg]

@karangarg45 not yet.

[DCdeBrabander]

@micheleg Can you give an E.T.A. ? :D I would love to have the previews on hover as well. I understand the feature was (almost) done for a while now?

Maybe one of us can help speed things up?

[tiotrom]

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/ offers this feature, but they don't have the option to move the panel vertically. Preview on hover is so useful when you have multiple windows opened for teh same application. Super useful Cheers!

[overjolted]

git clone https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock.git git checkout hover_preview cd dash-to-dock && make make install

Can you please publish a direct instruction of how to install this feature?
I tried:
git clone https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock.git
git checkout hover_preview
cd dash-to-dock && make
make install

and then reloaded shell, but it didn't work.

PS Do I understand it right: this fix suppose to show windows thumbnails in dock on mouse hover, instead of doing the right click on the app icon and then "All windows"?

I am using Ununtu 18.04 with Gnome

[r4t31]

git clone https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock.git git checkout hover_preview cd dash-to-dock && make make install

Can you please publish a direct instruction of how to install this feature?
I tried:
git clone https://github.com/franglais125/dash-to-dock.git git checkout hover_preview cd dash-to-dock && make make install

and then reloaded shell, but it didn't work.

PS Do I understand it right: this fix suppose to show windows thumbnails in dock on mouse hover, instead of doing the right click on the app icon and then "All windows"?

I am using Ununtu 18.04 with Gnome

For me, it also not work. But I think that it is very important thing...