Re:Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Bro...
by kiwijamo on Sunday February 04, 2024 @08:26PM
(#39256283)
Interesringly the default DE in MOST Linux distros is GNOME which does not do what you describe, instead it follows the MacOS approach of alt-tab going through apps and not windows. I agree it is frustrating though! Have recently moved back to Windows and their alt-tab going through windows was one of the things I liked. However Microsoft has sadly enhanced it to include groups of Windows if you have stacked them side by side. One step forward and one step backward. As is the norm for modern UX.
It's not that I'm ignorant of these, it's that they're clunky for a browser centric workflow. The abstraction of an "app" is just plain wrong for the way that I and many others use computers these days, because one app (the browser) is home to most of the tasks I'm working on and already has its own second-level navigation in the form of tabs. The "app" layer means on Mac there are three levels of navigation to get to what I'm trying to do, which is too many.
What makes Windows (and most Linux DEs) better for the browser-centric world is that windows themselves are first class citizens—I don't have to pass through Firefox to get to GitHub.