Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Having those flows as running apps in current paradigm, with the example you gave of suddenly changing flow, how would that work? Or is it just a stack of open programs, so no actual change except going back to movie app would bring the previously opened email app as the "back" app?

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

So basically like the Activity concept in KDE ?

While, at least from my experience, it does not really work on desktop it could make quite a lot of sense in a mobile environment - and there seems to be even something already going on in this regard as part of the Plasma Mobile project. :)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Very cool concept! I could see implementing this with one of the most basic data structures in computer science: the "stack". Rather than starting a random app, you inform the OS that you're starting a new task, and push the first app down into that task. As other apps are needed, you push them on top of the stack (suspending the apps below if necessary), automatically bringing those apps back up when you pop the current one off the stack. If you need to start a new task, you tell the OS that, at which point it suspends (if necessary) the entire previous stack and begins a new one.

And you could switch between task stacks as desired. :) Anyway, that's one way you might implement this sort of concept...

EDIT: Szopin beat me to it... :)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I found that very interesting.

This is something that webOS actually handled more or less (barring lots of bugs), e.g. a browser window opened by a program would stack on top of that program, instead of stacking on top of the "web browser" stack.

E.g. note:

http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/...-webOS-2.0.jpg

Note how the onion.com web browser is on the same stack as the mail message that opened it. Note how the other web browser windows are unaffected.

Same thing if you clicked on a "mailto:" link on the browser window. A new "compose mail" window would open in the current stack. The other mail windows would not be interrupted.

And you could switch to different stacks and even different cards in the same stack by swiping.

I for example think that the current multitasking implementation is completely broken on Sailfish, among other things because you can't open a new "compose mail" window without closing the older one.

And as usual, iOS, Android, and the rest of the bang are even worse in this regard.


webOS would be my without a doubt my favourite (open) mobile OS ever if it wasn't for the entire... webOS thing. Although maybe that's the reason implementing proper multitasking was trivial to them.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Didnt xerox have some similar concept? "Cards" or something? Point is, given the concept s that old, and we still have no good realization of it, means it either is very difficult to realize properly, or nobody cares, or nobody thought of it. The closest i can think of is Microsoft ole, i do not know if apple has something similar.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Why not? I know a lot of people who organize their desktops like this, using virtual desktops and the ability of most desktop programs to open multiple instances.

E.g. you have a desktop for "research" (with PDF reader, web browser, terminal, source code editor, etc.), you have another desktop for "family & friends chitchat" (with pidgin/IM and the occasional procrastination web browser -- that does not interact with the "research" one), etc.

In fact, that usecase is slowly being forbidden on the desktop, since the number of programs that are not multiple instance friendly is decreasing. E.g. the browser now opens a new tab (thus taking you to a different virtual desktop instead of staying at your current "activity"), the terminal opens a new tab, the photo viewer is one-instance-only no matter what, etc. etc.


I don't think anything as big as OLE is required for this. Some semantic window tagging would be enough.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Definitely it should be lightwheight. And easy to use; ole is a mess;
But to be honest, this whole concept just rings "organizing " in my head; hence i am not sure of it actually faciltate a user s use of the phone, rather making it more complex. To be clear, with this you put the burden of organizing on The user s shoulders; but thats the last thing users want to do. Take facebook as an example, they try to distance the user from searching with different techniques, albeit showing him what (ok they think) he /she wants.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

What 'desktop'? What window manager? Even on work-desktop with win7 I manage to have two 'flows' running independently (one with work browser instance, few other programs, second monitor with second browser instance, outlook etc).

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Which browser window (and from which desktop) is activated when you click on a link from outlook? It has nothing to do with the window manager (and that's the problem).

In my experience it's always.. the wrong one. Probably Firefox does some most-recently-used heuristic, but it's often wrong, and it only takes one wrong guess a few times per day to make it annoying.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

It's the first one you opened (main one) when using IE, with two chrome instances running though it's just an IE window you can close as soon as you've finished with it, not that big of a deal (sure could be better, just not sure if overhead of initializing each window/flow as the one you want outlook to interact with is not extra management that has low ROI, on mobile would be even worse, Clippy: hey! We see that you want to open a browser window, please specify which flow that is now and which applications to interact with, or how would that work)