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What is the meaning of the different rows of dots in Day view?
I don't understand what the different rows of dots mean in Day view.
The same window appears in different rows at different times with no apparent rhyme or reason. Plus, there's numerous instances of windows appearing in different rows even without any other windows open from the same app, so it's not to indicate multiple windows being open at once (though doesn't Slife only scrape the frontmost window anyway?).
The same window appears in different rows at different times with no apparent rhyme or reason. Plus, there's numerous instances of windows appearing in different rows even without any other windows open from the same app, so it's not to indicate multiple windows being open at once (though doesn't Slife only scrape the frontmost window anyway?).
I’m confused
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Inappropriate?No, there's no meaning to the different rows. They only exist to spread the event "dots" spatially. We've had some ideas for what the rows could convey, but no implementation yet. Do you have any ideas?
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Inappropriate?What's the benefit of spreading the event dots spatially? Deciding on a particular layout and then trying to find some justification for it seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Form should follow function.
What is it that the user is supposed to learn/observe from looking at that graph? The only thing I can really retrieve from the current layout is the relative density of dots in the different areas, and that information could be more clearly conveyed in other ways. Revisiting the basic design of this is probably too major to be happening in the immediate future, but spending some quality time with Tufte and a sketchpad might not be a bad idea. =) -
Inappropriate?The user should be able to visually identify and distinguish the event "dots". When things get busy, there are lots of them, so even when the view is expanded to show just one hour, you still need to spread them around.
I understand that there might be other solutions, this is the one we chose and we like it! And there are a millions ways to use the "rows" as another dimension to represent data properties. We just haven't used it. There's no reason to have to use every depth and direction to represent something.
And as you pointed out, this approach lets you see how busy you've been through the density of the dots. If that was the only thing you could draw from the visualization, I think that would be very interesting by itself.
But as always, we are always open to suggestions. -
Inappropriate?I see the purpose but like Mr. Rister I'm not sure that it's the best way since it also fails the principle of least surprise. When I look at that graph I'm only interested in two things, long bouts of activity on one webpage and gaps in time.
I think it would be neat to have a graph that looks like a sound wave (the symmetric spikey graphs you see in audio editors) which shows activity or cpu time or something then if there are some recognized long bouts have them floating around on top of the sound wave graph.
Just think it would be cool to have it look like an audio editor with 30 tracks on it. Some really tiny with little peaks of activity, some with constant noise.
I think me web browser is a heavy metal rockstar. But iTerm is piquant, small but very active.
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Inappropriate?I like that Chuck. Thanks for your suggestion. This is something that we could "layer" on top of the dots, so that those interested in the dots could still click on them and get detailed information about their activities.
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