The Waning of the Overlapping Window Paradigm? 535
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?"
Finally..... (Score:4, Funny)
If it's good enough for Geordi... (Score:2, Funny)
-EclipsE
You'll take away my xsnow... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:alpha channel... (Score:2, Funny)
No shit brother. I like seeing what's behind my monitor without having to lean to one side or stand up...
Re:Finally..... (Score:1, Funny)
If the mouse is always faster try typing a five page essay using only your mouse.
Hooray (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ditching the old GUI paradigm (Score:2, Funny)
Hey, this is a great idea! I can just imagine it:
You want to show your boss some documentation you found on the web. You click on "open location", and your computer, ever so helpfully, types in your favorite porn site, bringing up a bevy of blonde beauties on your screen. Embarrassed, you then hit the "done bad" button, and your computer
types in a new site, bringing up pictures of studly, muscular men on your page.
You hit the "done bad" button again, and try to laugh it off to your boss. You finally convince your computer to go to the website that you want, and when you try to download the specs, your computer auto-completes your request, downloads the file, and closes. Except that you don't know where the computer decided to put your downloaded file!
You then go to "find file" (after hitting the "done bad" button again) to find the file that the helpful operating system put somewhere on your hard drive, and start to type in the name of the downloaded file. Five aborted attempts at name-completion later (including the guesses "readme.txt", "Readme.txt", and "README.TXT"), you finally locate where the file was placed (in the
"Halleluja", you tell your boss, as you open up the downloaded specifications. Time to print them out! You convince the operating system to open up the print menu (after telling it "done bad" for bringing up the "open file" menu four times in a row), and it automatically prints one copy to give to your boss. Great!
Whoops, except that you wanted another one for yourself. Hitting the "done bad" button again, you (eventually) get one more copy printed, and your boss walks away, happy to have his copy of the specification, and happy to have a few new URLs to check once he closes his office door.
Grateful that the operating system had allowed you to accomplish something, you hit the "done good" button a few times, and go out to get a cup of coffee. Mission Accomplished!