::scr Drooling GUI

[Piers Cawley]

Michael Stevens <mstevens@etla.org> writes:

> On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 01:14:22PM +0000, Paul Mison wrote:
>> A lot of people do work like this, and in fact the software seems to
>> encourage it. Start up Office on a PC, and Word will probably maximise
>> to fill the window, and if it doesn't, you'll probably need to to see
>> stuff, and that goes double for Excel. I find a lot of the time when
>> I'm borrowing Wistow's laptop that IE windows are set to open
>> maximised. iTunes is only usable for browsing when it more or less
>> fills the screen, and iPhoto demands lots of space too. I can only name
>> a few apps that are really happy as small multiple windows, come to
>> think of it, and most of those are Mac-based (but then, so am I).
>
> I've seen a lot of inexperienced users who obviously aren't clear
> on the fact that more than one application is open at a time, and
> will:

Given well written OS/UI I don't see why that would be a problem

>
> 1) Open an application, do some work
>
> 2) Open another application to do something else.
>
> 3) Want to do another task in the first application, involving what
> they were already doing, and will open a new copy of the first
> application to work on it.

Which is where it all falls down. What should happen is that the already running copy of the first application creates a new document.

> 4) Look confused when everything falls over due to having dozens
> of copies of the same application open.

That's the fault of a bad OS/UI then.

The PalmOS gets this right. MacOSn did too though not necessarily
intuitively. I'm not sure about MacOSX, but it would be a step
backwards if .apps didn't do this. Some Unix apps do this too; if you
try and launch a second galeon for example, what actually happens is
that the running copy of galeon opens another window.

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?