Shell: Improvement idea: window selection indicator/animation

[leviport]

When changing focus to different windows on my 4K non-scaled monitor, I'm finding that it's sometimes hard to follow the mouse cursor around the screen and keep track of which window I currently have focused. If we had an animation or something to indicate which window was becoming active, I think that would make window navigation much quicker and easier.

[mmstick]

I do also think that we need to have a border around a window indicating that it is active, as it works in i3wm.

[mmstick]

This is implemented in da05f6d914c284b0ce66e1545e59ec185a067772. Tell me what you think. It's disabled by default, but can be enabled in the appearance options.

[leviport]

I like it quite a bit, but the behavior seems a little buggy on this initial implementation. When I change to another window, the window that was previously active flashes orange before the border moves to the next window. Also if I change workspaces, it seems to stop working completely and it starts outputting these errors in the console:

pop-shell:  [INFO] focused Window(5,0) {
  name: Firefox Web Browser,
  rect: Rect(1924,4,1912,1074),
  wm_class: "Firefox",
  fork: (4,0),
}
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2735: instance '0x55dae5ef6ae0' has no handler with id '35569'
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2735: instance '0x55dae5ef6ae0' has no handler with id '35570'
== Stack trace for context 0x55dae24bc380 ==
#0   55dae5f4e108 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:44 (7f8e12cf9b80 @ 130)
#1   55dae5f4e068 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:15 (7f8e12cf99d0 @ 30)
#2   55dae5f4dfe0 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/extension.js:385 (7f8e12cdc700 @ 61)
== Stack trace for context 0x55dae24bc380 ==
#0   55dae5f4e108 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:44 (7f8e12cf9b80 @ 130)
#1   55dae5f4e068 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:15 (7f8e12cf99d0 @ 30)
#2   55dae5f4dfe0 i   /home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/extension.js:385 (7f8e12cdc700 @ 61)
Object Clutter.Actor (0x55dae74ecd70), has been already deallocated — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
Object St.BoxLayout (0x55dae5fe9cd0), has been already deallocated — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
JS ERROR: Error: Argument 'child' (type interface) may not be null
untrack@/home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:44:13
track_window@/home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/active_hint.js:15:9
on_focused/<@/home/levi/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/extension.js:385:74

I also saw gnome shell crash once while I was using it, but I can't be certain it was because of this feature.

When I did have it running, it definitely made it faster and easier to traverse tiled windows.

[mmstick]

This should be fixed now; besides the flashing

[mmstick]

Seems something is occasionally destroying the box. Have yet to figure out what

[mmstick]

Issues with workspace switching are now resolved.

[leviport]

I'm not sure if this is currently in-progress, but it looks like Active Hint has stopped working completely.

[mmstick]

It should still be working. If it's not, something destroyed its St.BoxLayout. Perhaps I should recreate it whenever it gets destroyed.

[leviport]

I've discovered that Active Hint has only stopped working on my machine. I'll move to a clean install to continue testing, but it also seems odd that it only doesn't work on my install :thinking:

[leviport]

It looks like active hints sometimes to draw on top of their windows between workspace switches.

Tangentially related question: active hints disappeared forever some time ago. Even uninstalling the pop-shell extension and rebuilding didn't bring them back. Is there anything I could try to make them return? I do really like the feature.

[mmstick]

It could be that the CSS for it is not being loaded. Is the focus highlighting working for the launcher?

[leviport]

Ah I think you're onto something. The blue highlight box appears, but I don't get the orange item highlight box inside of the launcher itself. Is there a way to force the CSS to reload?

[mmstick]

Try the most recent commit

[leviport]

Woo, that did it! Thanks! It does still draw the orange hint box over the top of windows on workspace switching, but that's separate. I can file it as a separate issue if this one has become too chaotic.

[mmstick]

See if the overlay is fixed now

[leviport]

Much better. It doesn't draw over windows anymore. It does persist on empty workspaces though.

[leviport]

Ah, I may have spoke too soon. It will draw on top of a window if I close an adjacent window. In this image I had the left terminal split in two, then closed the bottom one. The hint drew over the top of the one on that side that I didn't close.

[leviport]

This is implemented, so I'm going to close this issue. It's just getting crowded at this point.