For those confused on what the navigation does and how it works, I'll try to give a basic example in desktop terms and build up.
1. If we want to switch between windows on a desktop, we use alt-tab.
2. Suppose we could arbitrarily group the windows from multiple applications into a single entity (sort of how Ubuntu defaults to grouping all terminals for application switching). For example, say we have a terminal and a web-browser in a group, and a file explorer and a web-browser in a group. We can switch between the two groups and within a group we can switch between applications.
Why do we care? If you have a large number of applications open, it's tedious to alt-tab through them all to get to the application you want. Other mechanisms exist, like ctrl+f10 for kde, but there is some economy of motion in a tree traversal vs looking at the applications, finding the one we want out of a large display of them and typing in the name of the application to bring it up. For example, if we want a particular terminal when we have 5 to switch between with 20+ other apps also running. ctrl-f10 breaks up the nice flow of alt tab and alt tab takes too long if we want to change between 5 applications rapidly.
3. Over time you may end up with a lot of groups, making navigation by group tedious. Lets introduce another level, say categories. Categories contain groups. So you can switch between Categories, within a category you can switch between groups, within groups you can switch between applications.
This plugin acts like the desktop framework above, but for files and with more features.
Did you consider allowing arbitrary tree structures? That might be easier to explain, by analogy to directory trees. Of course having fixed levels has its benefits. It reminds me a bit of the notebook/section/page hierarchy in OneNote (although OneNote also allows arbitrary subsections and subpages).
1. If we want to switch between windows on a desktop, we use alt-tab.
2. Suppose we could arbitrarily group the windows from multiple applications into a single entity (sort of how Ubuntu defaults to grouping all terminals for application switching). For example, say we have a terminal and a web-browser in a group, and a file explorer and a web-browser in a group. We can switch between the two groups and within a group we can switch between applications.
Why do we care? If you have a large number of applications open, it's tedious to alt-tab through them all to get to the application you want. Other mechanisms exist, like ctrl+f10 for kde, but there is some economy of motion in a tree traversal vs looking at the applications, finding the one we want out of a large display of them and typing in the name of the application to bring it up. For example, if we want a particular terminal when we have 5 to switch between with 20+ other apps also running. ctrl-f10 breaks up the nice flow of alt tab and alt tab takes too long if we want to change between 5 applications rapidly.
3. Over time you may end up with a lot of groups, making navigation by group tedious. Lets introduce another level, say categories. Categories contain groups. So you can switch between Categories, within a category you can switch between groups, within groups you can switch between applications.
This plugin acts like the desktop framework above, but for files and with more features.