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The Waning of the Overlapping Window Paradigm?
Bingo Foo asks: "The paradigm of movable, overlapping windows on the desktop has been around, and indeed dominant, for a long time. The original motivation for this was to mimic sheets of paper on a desktop. This is a useful metaphor, but may be a bit limiting given the capacity a computer has for automation of the layout and display of "desktop" objects. Lately, I have been pleased to see an increase in 'framing,' 'docking,' 'stacking,' and 'tabbing' being used, starting most conspicuously with frames in the web. More significantly, it has shown up as an application workspace paradigm that improved previously crappy MDI implementations in programs like Visual Studio and KDevelop. In my opinion, the most promising experimental application, even if still immature, is one of the neatest window managers around, ion. Does anyone else see a time when movable, tear-off docking and automated full-time tiling completely take over from the free-floating manually arranged desktops of today?"
I posted to
but this falls into the "I want the computer doing what I say, not what it thinks I want." category.
I mean, it is a personal preference, but I don't want a system that refuses to arrange windows the way I want because "it knows what's best" for me.
So, my answer to your question is "no."
-Peter
In reality, it was very difficult to duplicate, because it did not yet exist. Atkinson (Apple) ended up creating the algorithims to do overlapping windows on his own. At some point he was in a car accident, and there was alot of concern, because at that point, he was the only one in the world that had the knowledge.
Back in the late '80s for a while I owned a small OS-9 computer (some of you will guess which one) which used to lay its windows out this way. As time went on and Windows and X became bigger items, I started to desire those "overlapping windows" and eventually moved to Linux in '93 or so to get them.
Now you're telling me that tiled, edge-to-edge windows are the wave of the future? I don't know. How about some sort of compromise which allows overlapping windows but doesn't "require" them to the same extent as today's desktops? I'm not sure I'd really like to do away with them altogether... sometimes you just run out of display space, and I'm not really interested in 45" of computer display.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Why? Because it just isnt an improvement. Come up with a useful improved desktop environment that increases productivity by introducing 3d. Yes, it would be cool, but as long as it isnt *better* it is also *useless*.
I dont believe it can be done. Not until we have real 3d displays with 3d input devices and probably not even then.
Why? Because most of those working with computers are working with information. Information is almost always most efficiently conveyed via text, sometimes with added images. Text and images are 2d. You spend most of your time working with a 2d environment, in either case. So where is the gain in 3d? As an alternative way of navigating workspaces it's merely 'cool', but not even a navigational improvement over the pagers of multiple desktop spaces in most window managers, not to mention the problem that 3d spatial awareness isnt exactly something that most people find easy. I'm sure you or I could easily say at what exact position our wordprocessor is if we rotate the polyhedron a few steps around, but a lot of people dont find it a trivial task.
The ideal interface, in my opinion, would be to support nesting of window managers within other window managers and/or within applications. The biggest problem with MDI is that every MDI application basically acts as its own window manager. Usually this "embedded window manager" is a really crappy one, which turn people off to MDI in general, but there are exceptions; my preferred browser and text editor both use tabbed document windows to very good effect. It would be cool if we could tell applications what window manager instance (WMI) to use, so that the app can delegate window management to the WMI of the user's choice. Want SDI? Tell the app to plop its subwindows into the same WMI as the parent window. Want MDI? Tell the app to plop its subwindows into a WMI ("using *this* window manager, please") embedded within the parent window. You could use the same interface to switch between a Mac-style single menu bar and Windows-style per-window menu bars. All of this could go into a fairly simple config file, allowing users to choose whatever combinations of overlapping/tabbed, MDI/SDI, Mac/Windows styles - including hybrids and mixed modes - that they want.
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Two words: keyboard navigation. In the Windows world at least (yeah yeah, bite me), anyone who bothers to learn the relevant keystrokes and combos can whoop the pants off a mouser in basic, nuts-and-bolts text editing tasks like selecting ranges, cutting and pasting, applying attributes, etc. Why? It's not the amount of time it takes to reach for the mouse; that is as nothing against the amount of time it takes to orient hand/mouse to screen/pointer, navigate the pointer to the appropriate button by eye, and click. I type 100 wpm on a good day, and my fingers know exactly where to go at all times. The visual interface is fine, but (for me at least) it lacks the benefit of proprioception. When I use the mouse, I am forced to stare at the screen in order to be sure of the result of my mouse movements, whereas I always know exactly what my keystrokes are doing without having to look.
For example, in most Windows text editors, pressing Control-left-arrow moves back one word. Further, holding Shift while using any navigation key combo changes the navigation action to a select action. Therefore if, for example, I want to select the paragraph I am currently editing, all I have to do is press Control-Down (end of paragraph), Shift-Control-Up (Select to top of current paragraph), and it's done. Elapsed time, about a tenth of a second. A couple more keystrokes and I can cut or delete the paragraph, add formatting (B/U/I, justification, etc.), and so on. Compare that to the time it takes to lay your hand on the mouse, move the pointer to one end of the paragraph, click and drag to sweep out the paragraph by eye. No contest.
Heck, my typing speed wouldn't even be what it is if it weren't for keyboard shortcuts. As an instinctive touch-typist, I seldom miss a typo as I go along, and by now it's a perfect reflex when I notice I've just mistyped to press Control-Shift-Left and retype the word - elapsed time, maybe half a second; expended effort, negligible.
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I mean, if the real estate is there, don't overlap, tile.
If the realestate isn't there, overlap, but offset. That's what virtual desktops are for.
I find one thing.. and I'm not picking on OS's here... but in windows, I find window management a pain in the ass. I find myself using the taskbar to flip between windows more often than not.
On unix desktops, I tend to have several things side-by-side or neatly arranged so I can see the data I need, the way I need it.
I've never analyzed why.. but it always seems less intuitive, or downright harder to do in windows.
It's probably due to a combination of different focus mechanisms and the types of applications run.. and I realize windows can be tweaked to have similar, if not the same, focus mechanisms.. but still.
As a general observation.. I find the typical KDE desktop a lot easier and more intuitive to work with than a windows desktop.
Secondly... a few things about windows that piss me off (that generally, though not always, only happen in Windows).
one is the popup dialog box that steals focus from whatever you are doing. That's a nono.
Stealing focus from the app it's related to.. that's one thing... but from unrelated apps.. it's a nono. Second is when one dialog box pops up and I cannot move the underlying windows. THAT is a nono.. I should be able to move any window on the screen at any time, period. I should be able to hide it, peg it, minimise it, shade it, whatever the WM wants.
That's probably another reason I find X a bit easier to work with.