tasks of the same process should be grouped

An important point with this feature : we must have a simply way to access all windows grouped on one icon. For example, it could be a menu when we left-click like on the gnome-panel (when grouping windows is active). So on the left click, the list of all windows will appear, and on the right click the menu for the last active window of the group will appear.
A second option is to have the list on the right-click menu, with submenus (close, minimize, etc) for each windows of the group.

When that is starting to be implemented, it would be cool if it was possible to say alt-click on the icon
of the task and minimize all windows of that task. The same way, clicking on the icon should raise all windows.

d-Pixie 2007-12-01: Propose

Two implementation alternatives for this feature. The first is to let the windows auto group always, like all the sub windows of GIMP. When you click and hold the list expands out, left and right, from the last window with focus in the list. The icons that are not in the list grows faded in some manner, desaturated, semi transparent or smaller. The icon you release on would get focus ... Problems with this general grouping is that in for example GIMP you normally want a few of the windows to raise to the top when you focus an open image ... I always want the tools pallet and layers to come to the top when I focus an image. This can be done dynamically by checking what windows are usually focused in sequence or by hard coding values for different programs.

The second would be, one icon, click shows a list above the icon when clicked. The list should be ordered with the most recently focused window above the icon and then alternately right/left for falling focus rank ... This gives the user the shortest path to the most recent windows. The list can be composed by thumbnails of the windows. These should then be scaled within the group to keep there relative size. This two will allow for the user to more quickly select the appropriate window from a group.

Further more a feature to group launchers should be included. All of the open office icons as one launcher group for example. This will save a lot of space, especially for programs that are handy but not used frequently. The behavior, I propose, would be like the first implementation alternative above. One icon with the most frequently used program for quick click. And, if click and hold, expand the icon to a icon list with all the programs and launch the one hovered on release (or quit selection and collapse if mouse exits the rectangle describing the background for all the icons).

fde 2007-13-01: Propose

The tasks could be grouped as a STACK. That could be particularly convenient if the tasks are represented by a thumbnail of the corresponding window, updated on real time (as in several compiz-fusion features).

It could also be useful to give the possibility to define a treshold - a number of tasks (of the same application or not) under which they are not grouped.

MisterBurns 20080114
i think the second implementation alternative from d-pixie comes close to what i had in mind. But the default behaviour of a left click should be to show/hide all windows owned by this application. And when opt-click or long-click the icon it should present the chooser.
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For the adventurous, moonbeam has written the standalone taskmanager/launcher applets; one of its features is window grouping.
-malept (20080227)

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Implemented in awn/0.4 branch.