I'm pleased to see so many in favor of multiple windows. It seems the arguments in favor of a single monolithic window hinge smaller screens. But I find that monolithic windows require larger screens (and can't share screens). The thing about separate windows is they can overlap and still be useful, increasing available screen space.
Remember before windowed user interfaces, when each app controlled the entire screen? As to whether or not there should be a single instance or a shared instance (that presumably changes its content based on the frontmost document window), I think a guiding principle should be whether or not you need to drag from one to another. For example, the object hierarchy of a CAD program, it seems entirely reasonable to want to grab a part from one and drag it to another (or to a graphical view, or vice-versa). Windows uses copy-and-paste a lot more than drag and drop because multiple windows are so hard to use on that OS. Drag-and-drop was traditionally much more fluid on Mac OS, although I frequently run into situations where it'd harder to use now because of monolithic windows (for example, I can't as easily drag a file from the finder to the Xcode Files & Groups list, because it's part of a ginormous window that obscures all the Finder windows). Anyway, I think I'll just proceed with a multiwindow approach, and later see if I can't modify that to make them dockable into the the main document window. > On Jan 11, 2016, at 08:15 , Alex Zavatone <z...@mac.com> wrote: > > Way back in the mid '90s, there was some double click tool that simply felt > like the holy grail to me. > > You double clicked or option clicked on the title of a window and it would > turn that window into the "floating windoid" title bar only. We took this > model and made it so that when you collapsed a window in that manner, it > moved the tiny title bar up below the last one you collapsed. When restored, > it resumed its previous position. > > This way, you could see all of of your windows and hide and retrieve them in > an instant. And they only took up a small and organized portion of the > screen when collapsed. > > I loved it. I was simple, fast, organized and remembered how you positioned > things previously. > > On Jan 11, 2016, at 9:57 AM, Dave wrote: > >> >>> On 9 Jan 2016, at 22:19, Rick Mann <rm...@latencyzero.com> wrote: >>> >>> In complex apps (e.g. CAD apps, IDEs) a given document has many auxiliary >>> windows. The trend in UI at Apple has been to consolidate these into panes >>> in a single window. I've always preferred separate windows (e.g. separate >>> toolbar window). >> >> Yes, separate windows definitely much better IMO. I think the trend towards >> one big window has been adopted on the Mac because of the iPad/iOS. This is >> silly IMO because iPad’s only have one screen but on a Mac you can have lots >> of screens - I have 4 on my main development machine and having one big >> window is a real pain. I would have thought that for CAD/CAM and Photoshop >> type apps, most people would be using multiple monitors these days, so I’d >> go with the separate windows based on that assumption with maybe the option >> to dock them…… >> >> Cheers >> Dave >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) >> >> Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. >> Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com >> >> Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: >> https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/zav%40mac.com >> >> This email sent to z...@mac.com > > > _______________________________________________ > > Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) > > Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. > Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com > > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/rmann%40latencyzero.com > > This email sent to rm...@latencyzero.com -- Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
