WindowClone: block close window action on touchpad devices #2210
Conversation
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I don't know whether we should do this. I personally use both gestures (three finger tap to close and three finger switch) every day without a problem (even if I start the swipe gesture while over a window in the multitasking view). So this really might be hardware/something else specific. |
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As someone who doesn't use the three-finger tap to close action, it does annoy me when it happens. However, I'm in agreement that disabling it wholesale is probably a regression. @lenemter confirming the related issue would imply to me that it shows up on different hardware. Perhaps this is a situation where adding a settings option under multi-tasking would be a suitable compromise? I don't know the usage split, so that may just be adding a switch for the sake of some 0.01% of people for whom it's an issue. I could see an argument for being able to disable it as a motor skills accessibility feature, but I'm not the person to ask as to whether that's actually an issue--I think I'd be putting words in that population's mouths. I could throw a poll up on Mastodon to see what general consensus might be. |
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Another workaround for the issue is to use four finger swipe for workspace switching, like on Windows. I have it set up like that so I have never encountered the issue. But I see that changing that default setting would also cause confusion so it's equally undesired. (also noting that even if this gets merged, I guess two finger swipe will still work) |
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This poll on Mastodon seems to imply that overwhelmingly, people use the close button over three-finger tap. @danirabbit also provided this data point in discord for context, taken from an earlier survey: However, the replies to the fedi poll seem to imply that some people don't know about the three-finger tap close functionality, and when they learn of it they see it as a positive. It's clear we shouldn't do away with the functionality. I think for this solving this specific issue, a switch is probably appropriate. If a user finds it to be an issue, they can turn it off, but otherwise it's there if you want it, and for those that turn the tap functionality off it probably won't break their muscle memory like needing to change swipes to 4-finger would. @TomiOhl does bring up an interesting point to me though: defaulting to using 4-fingers to control the workspace view, and 3-fingers to control applications within workspaces could be a good approach to explore. It would definitely break most muscle memory, but I could see a system like that working well, and also giving us the flexibility to do things like have 3-finger swipes move individual applications that are hovered over to the next or previous workspace, inside or outside the multitasking view. Perhaps a toggle to switch between which number of fingers controls what action? Given Windows uses 4-fingers for the workspace view, I think it's reasonable to expect that a wide number of touch control devices would be able to detect 4-finger inputs. |
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Ah see I'm kind of inclined to think we should just remove it if only 26% of people close from the multitasking view and of those people only 13% do it via 3 finger tap, that's like 3%. That's an extremely small group compared to the potential for accidental loss here imo. I do agree that some of the comments indicate that folks are interested in a way to close applications via gestures though. Maybe we could explore something a little harder to accidentally trigger like the swipe up gesture on iOS, iPad OS, and Phosh? |
I think that would fit into the model I proposed pretty well. e.g.
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I think for swiping application windows in the multitasking view folks would expect to use one finger on touch screen, which usually means two fingers on touchpad |
Fixes #2199