Usable Wine interface

[Remco]

I'd like to add a feature-request (should this go somewhereelse?). What about making a Wine GUI to behave more like emulators likeVirtualBox. It's extremely hard right now to get Wine in desktop mode.It would be nice if you could start Wine as an application, which opensup a window like this:

http://xs224.xs.to/xs224/08081/mockup918.png (ignore the virtualbox-stuff)

And if you start one of those prefixes, it by default opens a WineDesktop with a simple Taskbar & Start-menu. Somewhere in theStart-menu could be the option to switch to desktop integration mode.There could also be an option to run the Wine Desktop full-screen. Likethis:

http://xs224.xs.to/xs224/08081/winedesktop771.png (forgive my GIMP skills)

I believe this would be very good for usability. Desktop mode is morestable than seamless mode, yet it's hidden in winecfg. This kind of UIalso exposes the prefix-functionality in a transparent way. Wouldn'tthat be a nice 1.0 polishing idea?

Remco

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[Chris Robinson]

On Sunday 17 February 2008 05:35:46 pm Remco wrote:
> I'd like to add a feature-request (should this go somewhereelse?). What
> about making a Wine GUI to behave more like emulators likeVirtualBox. It's
> extremely hard right now to get Wine in desktop mode.

winecfg->Graphics->Emulate a virtual desktop (kind of a redundant option name) 
isn't that hard. Besides, I've actually had more problems with the virtual 
desktop because I had to use a smaller resolution, like 800x600, that some 
GUI apps don't tend to like (Google Earth for example, will complain and 
subsequent starts cause crashes because one of the window sizes went into the 
negative).
> It would be nice if 
> you could start Wine as an application, which opensup a window like this:
>
> http://xs224.xs.to/xs224/08081/mockup918.png (ignore the virtualbox-stuff)

IIRC, there was an app that managed Wine prefixes, wasn't there?
> And if you start one of those prefixes, it by default opens a WineDesktop
> with a simple Taskbar & Start-menu.

Wine doesn't have any shell programs. Though there are some Windows shell 
replacements floating around. If you set one of them into the Run registry 
key, it'll automatically start up with an app (except Run entries on startup 
are currently disabled..).

Personally, I think it's the wrong way to go. Wine is supposed to integrate 
with the X11 desktop, so users should be encouraged to use that (and get any 
integration bugs fixed). The virtual desktop is for when you really want to 
run an app, which won't work under non-virtual desktop mode (which I think 
there's fewer and fewer apps like that left). Some people might want it left 
in for fullscreen apps that they want run in a window, though.

My 2c...

[Vitaliy Margolen]

Remco wrote:
> I'd like to add a feature-request (should this go somewhereelse?)

Yes, bugzilla -> enhancement.

Vitaliy.