Uli's Web Site
[ Zathras.de - Uli's Web Site ]
Other Sites: Stories
Pix
Abi 2000
Stargate: Resurgence
Lost? Site Map!
 
 
     home | blog | moose | programming | articles >> blog

 Blog Topics
 
 Archive
 

15 Most Recent [RSS]

 Less work through Xcode and shell scripts
2011-12-16 @600
 
 iTunesCantComplain released
2011-10-28 @954
 
 Dennis Ritchie deceased
2011-10-13 @359
 
 Thank you, Steve.
2011-10-06 @374
 
 Cocoa Text System everywhere...
2011-03-27 @788
 
 Blog migration
2011-01-29 @520
 
 All you need to know about the Mac keyboard
2010-08-09 @488
 
 Review: Sherlock
2010-07-31 @978
 
 Playing with Objective C on Debian
2010-05-08 @456
 
 Fruit vs. Obst
2010-05-08 @439
 
 Mixed-language ambiguity
2010-04-15 @994
 
 Uli's 12:07 AM Law
2010-04-12 @881
 
 Uli's 1:24 AM Law
2010-04-12 @874
 
 Uli's 6:28 AM Law
2010-04-12 @869
 
 Uli's 3:57 PM Law
2010-04-12 @867
 

More...

GNOME understands me

I was just reading the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, and during the discussion of MDI ("Multiple Document Interface") I fiiinally realized that tabbed browsing is just a variant of MDI.

I've been whining about how Tabbed browsing is a workaround for a problem that should be solved outside the browser instead at least since Chimera (now Camino) brought us backwoods Mac users tabbed browsing. Now I can put the weight of a whole organization of well-regarded developers behind me. The following is a quote from the aforementioned HIG:

MDI has several inherent usability problems, so its use is discouraged in applications. It is better to open each document in a new primary window, with its own menubar, toolbars and statusbar, or allow multiple instances of your application to be run simultaneously. In either case, this leaves it for the window manager (acting on the user's preferences) rather than your application to decide how to group and present document windows from the same application.

This basically sums up perfectly what the problem and the solution should be. Fix window management. If you keep opening tabs because opening a new browser window takes so long, you need a faster window manager. If you keep opening tabs because you want to use your screen space more effectively, you need a window manager that allows aggregating or "docking" several windows together.

A window manager would probably use tabs to switch between docked windows, too, but the advantage would be that you could do this both in your browser, your text editor, or your photo retouche app. Not to mention that if the window manager does it, it would be the user's choice which windows to dock and which not to, or whether to use this feature at all. *And* it'd be consistent across apps.

C'mon, side with me, already! ;-)

 
Created: 2004-12-29 @006 Last change: 2004-12-29 @018 | Home | Admin | Edit
© Copyright 2003-2024 by M. Uli Kusterer, all rights reserved.