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Window-based or process-based would be much better. The first thing a Linux user like me thinks when I hear task-based is activity-based, which is quite different.

But I guess I have to take into account who is writing and Thom is a Windows user.

This makes a lot of sense...

The only thing is that with some apps it is desirable to open multiple windows (OOo, Firefox)...the user will have to use the file menu to open a new window. no big deal.

I think Gnome 3 is going to be a fantastic release with all of this polish being added. We are finally moving away from the windows UI model and creating our own distinct environment!

I think it sucks, to put it very bluntly. It seems like they're trying to rip off Windows 7's taskbar and doing a terrible job if it by hybridizing it with this ugly sidebar. My parents will not be able to operate this. Hell, I might have trouble operating this.

Xfce will take GNOME's place as the GTK+ desktop of choice. Lets hope the Xfce guys don't go crazy in the future and screw up the great project they have going.

Edited 2009-09-03 13:23 UTC

While I can see this being all well and good for apps from the gnome project itself, I don't see how this change will work well for independent apps. You can't expect everyone to conform to gnome's own vision.

Take VLC - it doesn't have a new window option and you can't guarantee that the VLC devs will implement it just for the gnome desktop.

I think this sort of behaviour should be user changeable on a per app basis, but the GNOME project seems to have a lot of antipathy towards user configurability so I doubt that will happen.

I would like the default to be task-based, but configurable to be otherwise if needed by the user, or if it doesn't make sense to be task-based.

But... don't do it the OS X way. If you close the last window of the program, just close the program ok?

I don't really understand why this kind a system is implemented, I mean shouldn't application coder make sure there can't be 2 instances if they see it harmful to application? Doesn't Linux support this??? Atleast in Windows it's possible to check if instance of program excists and then use it or pop warning message.

Why not leave the current procedure as it is from the user's point of view, and just open a new window for the application when the user chooses it second time from the menu? You can add the New Window command, just don't remove this familiar way of opening new windows.

It's a meh, but what I really want is for them to stop assuming I don't want multiple instances of an application.

It's the #1 reason I avoid Totem. Often I'll have a show or movie paused, and I want to quickly listen/watch to an mp3/video a friend just sent, only to have it load in the same instance as my paused video.

I think it should work in exactly opposite way. If launching multiple instances of an application may cause harm, then it is a bug in the application and its devs should either fix it, or prevent multiple launches. For example, Firefox works this way: by default, launching another browser just opens new window in the already running process, and if you specify command line option forcing it to open a new process, then you must also specify different profile, as firefox will refuse to run second instance with same profile.

Detecting running instance is quite easy, so it won't put too much burden on the developers, but a easy to use framework implemented as part of GNOME would make it even better.

Using Gnome-Do in docky mode already provided this functionality, a really good blend of task manager and launcher. it can also launch multiple windows for tasks with simple right click and select 'run'. It's been a while since I have tried the other popular docks (AWN and Cairo) but pretty sure they work similarly.

I am not sad to see this implemented by default in Gnome, it just seems like no big deal. I can't really foresee it affecting how I use my desktop at all.

I agree that the application based behavior of going to the current window is good default behavior. However, for applications where multiple windows make sense, wanting a new window is common enough that it should be easily accessible. This shouldn't entail switching to the application and then selecting "New Window" from the application's menu. The "New Window" (or just "New") option should be available from the launcher/switcher with minimal effort (few mouse clicks and very little mouse movement). I'm operating off minimal info here, so it is likely the devs already have this covered.

My personal preference would be to have "New Window" behavior available through a right-click menu, middle-click, and ctrl-click, but there are other ways that would work. This behavior would only be available on applications that implement the "New Window" behavior. Having scriptable launchers for non-Gnome applications would also seem a necessity here.

This behavior, or at least what they seem to be trying to do, reminds me a lot of the way Applications are handled on Mac OS X. For example, in OS X, you very rarely (if ever) have multiple instances of a GUI app open. Clicking on or otherwise opening an already running app merely switches to its window or, in the case of opening a document from your file manager of choice, creates a new window under the already existing app.
Personally, I think this is something that application developers should be able to control depending on the app in question, but on the flip side, often times the application developers do not consider this and, if they do not account for what having multiple instances of the application open may cause, you can certainly have some undesirable behavior. Perhaps this new default in GNOME is good, but definitely allow it to be overridden explicitly by the application developer if called for in a particular situation, or even explicitly if desired by the user if they know what they're doing.

I can see why for something like a calculator, you might only want one, to cut down on confusion. However, if you open a calculator and then go to another desktop and try another instance, another calculator should open up IMO. For the most part, I agree with this though; I don't know how many times I've accidentally double-clicked something without meaning to (involuntary muscle movements, I guess). But, I use multiple file manager windows all the time; I *don't* want anything to get away from that. And don't say to use tabs; I like seeing both the source and destination directories. So maybe have a predetermined list of programs that are allowed to have multiple instances, like file managers and text editors, and allow adding others.

On the other hand, this will prevent double-opening programs that really shouldn't be, like Stellarium, games, the GIMP, etc.

This is all well and good for usability--I cannot count how many times I have had to help users who double clicked a single click launcher and could not figure out why they had so many windows--but what happens when I *want* to open the application twice? Even the article's contrived calculator example is a problem. Sometimes I really do want two calculators side by side, so I can do two sets of calculations and see the results of the other at all times. Yes, I know I can copy/paste, write things down, etc., etc., but I don't do that now and don't see why I should have to.

If launchers check this for me and save me from myself, fine, as long as:
* I can access (maybe in a context menu) a way to say 'launch new instance anyway'
AND
* I can change the default behavior to not save me from myself.

If these things are not possible then this is a massive step backward... not that I expect anything else from GNOME.

So instead of keeping things consistent they are going to deviate. Brilliant. Click on it and it starts. Click on it again and it focuses. Brilliant.. Its just stupid! Instead of people writing their applications properly so if I start two they dont clobber each other have the window manager(env) manage this? What!? So then depending on what WM/ENV I use the app may or may not break. Consistency is FAR better than hand holding. Its not the job of the ENV/WM to ensure applications run themselves properly. Stop copying the other desktops. Especially the inefficient and DEFICIENT ones such as OSX and Windows. Next thing you know they are going to make it so the entire gnome panel takes on the menu bar of the application akin to moronic OSX. Hey while were at it lets go back to a one button non-scrolling mouse and get rid of those virtual desktops(pager) as man those things are just annoying. 7 thumbs down. Yep 7. 4 people here and one had a sandwich in one hand so it was hard to call.

And here I was, thinking that maybe Gnome 3.x would be what I needed to go back to Gnome (used the 1.x series for a few years, the 2.x series for more than half a decade). But they are taking into shit bullshit?

Seriously, if I click a launcher, I want to LAUNCH an application, not activate one that's already launched.

Too bad. Let's see what'll take me away from WM Hopping again.

In the Gnome Configuration Editor there is/was already an entry "application_based" with the description:

Why can't they just provide a checkbox for each launcher's properties, where you select the behavior individually?

The thing they ought to fix, never mind the launcher, is this:

There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon.

Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.

The last error message was:

Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in.

This behavior should be left to developers to implement. You can only run one instance of my application, because I coded it that way. Trying to launch another instance of my application will just open a new window in the same process. With another application I wrote trying to launch a new instance of it will just show an already running instance if available. I think what they're trying to accomplish is a good idea. However, my position is that such behavior should be left to developers to implement.

With due respect to the Gnome devs for the wonderful work they are doing on Gnome 3.0, I have to say that this seems to be a wrong decision.

It should never be the responsibility of a launcher to decide how an application manages multiple instances. It is always the responsibility of the application process to determine whether multiple instances should be supported or not. If an application is not designed to support multiple instances, it would handle a new process invocation gracefully, by just switching to the currently running application window, or informing the user that it is not allowed.

If this logic is built into Gnome Shell, what would happen if I go to the command line and run multiple instances of the calculator?

Not only is the problem an illusion that I have never encountered but it breaks several major use cases and makes GNOME behave in a way that is not expected by people who are used to using any other GUI. So where is the gain?

e.g. how will I open up another text editor when I have several documents open already and I want to start a new one? Will I have to find one of the existing windows and then ask it to open a new document? What if I "view-edit" a file in a file browser - do I open up with a new or an existing instance of my editor?

What If my existing instance has hung and it can't do the "open new" action - how am I supposed to work that out?

Why not put some development effort into something that's actually useful or new? e.g. who cares about "application oriented." If anything one wants "object oriented" - so how about spending some time thinking about that? Maybe we could catch up to where OS/2 was in the 1990s.

This behavior works well for a dock. I really hope GNOME 3 gets a usable dock implementation even if it isn't the default. Panels are more than a bit outdated.