<story><title>Rethinking Window Management</title><url>https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2023/07/26/rethinking-window-management/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamcalledrob</author><text>People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS.&lt;p&gt;Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient &amp;quot;palette&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;panel&amp;quot; windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find&amp;#x2F;replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple&amp;#x27;s going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don&amp;#x27;t really think to do it.&lt;p&gt;I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.&lt;p&gt;(If you&amp;#x27;ve only ever got comfortable with a windows-style &amp;quot;maximised window&amp;quot; approach, you&amp;#x27;ll probably disagree with me, however).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deaddodo</author><text>&amp;gt; (If you&amp;#x27;ve only ever got comfortable with a windows-style &amp;quot;maximised window&amp;quot; approach, you&amp;#x27;ll probably disagree with me, however).&lt;p&gt;Windows-style? Microsoft&amp;#x27;s APIs and design paradigms are as floating-window focused as they are maximized-focused. And I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve had a window open maximized since the XP days. Multiple document interfaces were a first class citizen for a decade and a half, so clearly they understand and encourage window use.&lt;p&gt;Single task, maximized windows are a &lt;i&gt;user&lt;/i&gt; paradigm. Usually by regular old users that just want a browser, tax program, video game, etc and that Windows doesn&amp;#x27;t get in the way of. These same people will use the expander in macOS, or just use their computer with a single half-sized window in the middle of their screen. &amp;quot;Power&amp;quot; users (devs, creatives, traders, PMs, CSRs, etc) will best use the environment in any OS, for their use case.&lt;p&gt;In addition, maximized windows are ubiquitous on &lt;i&gt;mobile platforms&lt;/i&gt; and are a paradigm that &lt;i&gt;Apple&lt;/i&gt; seems insistent on, considering how hard the Android (and Microsoft before their inevitable mobile death) companies are working on solving the multi-tasking problem. Even now, I can have multiple floating, resizable windows on a Galaxy device; while I can not on an iOS one.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rethinking Window Management</title><url>https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2023/07/26/rethinking-window-management/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamcalledrob</author><text>People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS.&lt;p&gt;Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient &amp;quot;palette&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;panel&amp;quot; windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find&amp;#x2F;replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple&amp;#x27;s going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don&amp;#x27;t really think to do it.&lt;p&gt;I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.&lt;p&gt;(If you&amp;#x27;ve only ever got comfortable with a windows-style &amp;quot;maximised window&amp;quot; approach, you&amp;#x27;ll probably disagree with me, however).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taeric</author><text>I would take issue with your first claim.  People, in general, have very mixed spatial sensibilities.  Is why it takes herculean efforts to keep dishes organized in a family.  Some people have organizations they want.  Some have different and incompatible organizations they want.  Some people just don&amp;#x27;t care.&lt;p&gt;Seriously, look at the insane amount of effort that a grocery store has to go through to keep things organized.  Keeping things spatially coherent is just not a thing that people do for things they don&amp;#x27;t care about.&lt;p&gt;To get even crazier, look at the vast differences in how different clothing stores spatially organize each other.  Each is organized.  Each is fairly incompatible with the others.  Even department stores have a great deal of variability in the different departments.&lt;p&gt;So, any attempt at rethinking window management with the idea that you can find a superior form of management is so doomed to failure that it is kind of comical.</text></comment>