Suggestion about an UI detail

[Nicklas Avén]

Hi


I am a new happy Qubes user. Getting almost everything to work on a Dell
7530 with xeon 2186 and Nvidia P3200. Qubes 4.01 made things quite easy :-)


I find Qubes very intuitive to work with, but I have a suggestion that I
have no idea if it is easy or hard to do.

It is just a work flow thought without any knowledge about what would be
affected.


When I work in one qube it is a common task to open other programs in
the same qube. If working in a terminal I want Scite for scratching for
instance.

Then it would be awesome if there was a quick way to get the
application-list from only that Qube. My suggestion is that I could find
the application list for that specific Qube by right clicking the top of
the application. In the menu about maximizing, minimizing and so on.
With that in place I guess it would be possible to also put a
key-combination on that feature. Since that would be a 1 dimensional
list it would be easy to navigate just with up and down arrows.

Just a thought since I notice, when I am in the middle of a thought in
some work, it rips away the focus to think about what Qube I am in,
searching the start menu for the right qube and then searching the
application list for the right application.

I use Qubes primary to separate different customers when I work as a
consultant. Never mixing data from different jobs gives confidence.

BTW, I became a monthly supporter from today, worth every penny. Thanks
a lot for Qubes OS


ATB


Nicklas Avén

[Mike Keehan]

Hi Nicklas,

I use a number of xfce Launchers on the taskbar to achieve something
similar. Each of the launchers is for a separate qube, and has only
as many individual program entries as I want shortcuts for in that
qube.

This was described in this list some time ago, but I can't remember
who it was unfortunately, nor find the original email. I think it was
in reply to a question about how to organise workflow, or maybe was
it possible to edit the main menu. Anyway, kudos to the guy who
described it - it's worked brilliantly for me ever since.

Mike.

[Nicklas Avén]

Hi Mike


Thanks a lot. I will try to find out.


/Nicklas

[Stuart Perkins]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 16:19:47 +0100

I don't believe I wrote anything about it, but I do that myself.

I begin by dragging a single item from the menu to the top panel to create a shortcut there. I then right click on the shortcut and use properties to add other items.

I rearrange the shortcuts in one so that something innocuous like "x-term" is first, and the drop down arrow leads to the other frequently used items.

I only have keePass2 on "vault" so it has no drop down or other items, but my e-mail machine has a few, as does my "money" machine (wouldn't we all like to have one of those? Seriously, I run Gnucash for my business and a dosemu execution of an old check book system I wrote in the 80's for my personal records, and this appVM is firewalled to ONLY connect to my home system for backup.) and my untrusted appvm (mostly just shortcuts to Chromium, Chrome and Firefox).

I also have another machine I use exclusively to connect via VPN to a particular client, and the VPN connection is at the top of it as well as a shortcut to a windows program running under wine and a terminal session.

I also have a shortcut for a dom0:terminal on the panel, but otherwise pretty much default settings. This setup allows me to quickly go to what I want most of the time without wading through the whole xfce menu.

I have attached a screenshot of that area of my desktop so you can see how it looks. It is not very cluttered at all.

Stuart

Stuart

[Dupéron Georges]

> I rearrange the shortcuts in one so that something innocuous like "x-term" is first, and the drop down arrow leads to the other frequently used items.

To avoid accidental clicks starting an application and have a larger
clickable zone:

Right-click on the XFCE launcher → Advanced → Arrow button position:
Inside Button.

Cheers,
Georges Dupéron

--
Georges Dupéron