Iconify gadget on Workbench windows too?

A sort of popular survey
What do you think, could it be a good idea to have an iconify gadget into the Workbench windows?

The ability to iconify any system windows as if they were normal application windows could be interesting

Yes or No?

especially if dragging an icon onto it did a move/copy same as the window does, sure why not.

Although, iconify in general needs a rethink, it's a bit of a mess.

@NinjaCyborg

Yep it's an interesting consideration, unfortunately the Workbench is extremely basic.
Developer of AmiBench seems to have been introducing something about

https://wiki.amiga.org/images/8/8b/A1200NG_Amibench_1.png

Digressing a bit personally I also like the Windows like functionality of changing (resize) the window size by double clicking on the bar

Personally, I find general window management in AmigaOS to be
fantastically better than lesser platforms.

Windows in the "stack" stay where you left them (above/below
each other) and you can use any without changing that. The
zoom gadget between two sizes & the shift-click to full screen
is great! Double clicking (w/ commodity) to bring a window to
the front is simple.

Every other OS misses those basic things. The snap to full
screen when you touch the screen title bar in loonix & doze
is beyond annoying.

But AmigaOS iconification could be better.

In the Workbench, I'd suggest it would be at its best if the
windows weren't specific to a specific drive/drawer. Digging
into a directory tree leaves you with a lot of windows -
iconifying each would be a real mess, IMHO.

But getting the file view to use just one window would need a
major WB re-write to accomplish, I expect.

Maybe with that, a quick to navigate column view (a la osx -
but with intelligent sizing) could be added?

Interesting topic in any case!

Thanks,

PJS

totally agree with @PJS on the amiga way of window management, with a couple of caveats:

- There's never been a true standard for Zoom behaviour - some (typically fixed size windows, like Calculator) minify to a title bar (in which case why not just iconify), others toggle between two different user set sizes i.e. the current size and the previous size, others toggle between 'current size' and 'full size'. Of course, since it's up to the software to decide what to do with the zoom event there's no way to retrofit a different solution. but it would be nice to set some guidelines for how it *should* be done albeit there's not much new software coming out these days...

- Thanks largely to MUI, for better or worse, Iconify became a defacto standard, I think because of MUI but not a standard set by cool people like Martin Taillefer, RJ Mical or Dale Luck, so it's always felt a bit awkward. However it has been adopted in OS4/3.2 formally as a thing. At least the behaviour is obvious and consistent - hide the window, make an AppIcon on workbench. Open the appicon again - unhide the window. I'd like to see other apps able to 'hook' into appicon to replace/augment the workbench functionality so i can send iconified apps to a dock instead for example.

For me arguably the zoom, depth and iconify gadgets would benefit from an overhaul and consolidation. zoom to title bar is not really any different from iconify is it? i mean, if you make an app zoom to title bar only, like calculator or iconedit, what you're really saying is 'get this out the way'. While depth gadget would benefit from some screen management features like 'move to pubscreen' not that public screens were ever properly implemented either...

Having said that it's not as if other platforms do it better. Even the one you'd expect to do it best (Mac) has problems still. While close and iconify are consistent, it's green 'zoom' button is a mess, so much so they added a whole submenu to it in recent releases...

@pjs

Quote:

This would probably be the most useful feature ever (imho), the chaotic management of the many windows to reach a directory is probably one of the main reasons that force users to adopt third-party solutions like Filer etc

The only new feature in this field introduced in OS4 is the possibility to automatically close the parent window when one of its sub-directories is opened... yep nothing revolutionary but better than nothing


Quote:

I think that Wanderer on AROS already has this feature, maybe a bit rough and not comparable to that of Ambient on MorphOS, but it's definitely something

@samo79

Quote:

I personally would welcome such a function for the Workbench, it is often the case that you have many windows open, but later need the main window again to quickly get to the main directory and so you could simply store it and retrieve it when needed.

Sometimes I find these many windows that are opened a bit annoying because it takes up a lot of space on the desktop. With an icon gadget the user could decide for himself whether to use it or not, but I am in favour of it.

I say yes, that would be cool

@pjs

Quote:You can - sort of - get this by holding down Right Amiga while double-clicking on a sub-drawer, that makes the parent drawer's window close automatically as the new one opens.

(This and other useful tricks can be learnt in the WBHelp guide, BTW.)

Best regards,

Niels