The Waning of the Overlapping Window Paradigm?

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?"

Ick!

[vanyel]

That's the one thing keeping me from switching to Opera on my Windoze boxes: I can't stand not being able to get multiple windows up on my desktop. I feel like General Zod and company in that window pane prison in Superman.

Windows Solutions

[Angry Black Man]

For those of you who use Windows, Cristi Posea has written a nice window docking code. It allows you to dock objects inside ActiveX containers. Until recently there were some major flaws in the code. However, Greg Winkler has fixed them all with this. You may want to take a look at it: Docking CSizingControlBar objects inside ActiveX containers [codetools.com] by Greg Winkler.

Re:We aren't too far from these ideas already.

[Anonymous Coward]

The (primary) difference is that with Ion you have the multiple windows in one frame thing going on, which is oh so nice... it just makes sense. Plus it's DESIGNED for keyboard users. And yes, in a normal WM, you can align your windows so that they don't overlap, but Ion does that for you. And no, that's not a bad thing. I cannot think of a single situation in which I would ever want my windows to overlap.

Oberon had all this

[Anonymous Coward]

take a look at Oberon [oberon.ethz.ch]. Wirth/Gutknecht had the same thoughts back in 1986, and i still think they were right. but still, a gui like that is not so easy to teach to the masses. looking at the all the messy blobbs and popps on a winXP or MacOSX screen, i think the trend is going the oposite way.

Re:Xerox did not have it

[Simon Brooke]

Actually, I believe that Xerox did NOT have overlapping windows, it only appeared to.

Then you believe wrong.

I personally used Xerox [spies.com] 1108 ('Dandelion') and 1186 ('Daybreak') machines from 1984 until 1988. They definitely, without question or possibility of doubt, had multiple overlapping windows, and, indeed, all the features of a modern WIMP environment. Xerox Stars, Dolphins, Dorados, Dandetigers and a number of other Xerox machines (including the Smalltalk ones whose model designations I've forgotten) had multiple overlapping windows at least as far back as 1978. It's probable (but I don't know this for a fact because I never saw one) that the Alto also had multiple overlapping windows, at least in it's Smalltalk mode.

Good thread

[Anonymous Coward]

This gigantic thread [infopop.net] examines the "overlapping windows vs. alt-tab-mania" battle in some detail.

some more info

[buzzini]

When I interned at Microsoft, one of the designers gave a talk about this. He said that part of why overlapping windows were originally used was that monitors had such low resolutions. With the advent of large, high-resolution monitors this has become less necessary. Hence OfficeXP containing a lot more "docked" palettes (e.g. Task Panes). This is definitely the direction of the future.

No window manager thing

[redhog]

Actually, I do the same thing using fvwm, maximized windows, and a program I wrote - Xmerge [dhs.org], which merges two windows into one with two frames.

Re:Maybe I'm just stubborn

[nickjennings]

Man, I think alot of people posting here have no idea what Ion is really like. You *can* overlap windows in Ion. You just design the frameset for them. For example:

I have a left frame that is the height of two xterms stacked, this is god for programming, on the right, I have two seperate frames each the size of an xterm (one long frame on left, two regular sized frames on right).

in each of these frames I can have as many xterms as I want (or any other type of program). To move between frames, I use Alt-, to cycle through the xterms in that frame I use Alt-tab.

On the bottom, I have a very short frame that is as wide as the entire screen, this is great for log files, and I can easily switch between them.

Re:Everything comes around again...

[DGolden]

Multiple desktops aren't quite good enough in most implementations I've seen (enlightenment comes close) - I've been spoiled by Amiga pubscreens.

Later versions of AmigaOS, in conjunction with common Amiga GUI toolkits such as MUI, allowed you to _persistently_ associate an application with a particular "screen" (a named virtual desktop). - So you could set your web-broswer to always open on its own screen called "Internet" for example, while your word processor opened on another screen called "Work", as did your spreadsheet.

The automatic creation/destruction of screens on an as-needed basis, the persistence of the application associations with particular screens, and the ability to name each screen, tend to be missing from X window managers. You flicked between screens by clicking the top-right hand corner of the screen, and you could drag them up and down to partially expose screens behind.

The "pub" in "pubscreen" comes from the fact that more than one application could use the same screen - in earlier versions of the AmigaOS, each application tended to use its own screen anyway, rather than being under user control.

I miss screens!

tabbed windows save time

[rixdaffy]

Once upon a time I noticed that I always have too many windows open and spend too much time finding one of the many xterm's and netscape windows I open at the same time... The first solution for me when was when Powershell arrived, which was I think one of the first xterm apps to allow tabbed shells into a single window... Later kde's xterm started to support this as well (though I don't use KDE so I don't fancy getting the extra bloat that comes with it)...
Later I found ion's sister windowmanager called 'pwm' which does the same thing of all windows and can automatically stick windows from the same app into one single window... ie if you open a new Netscape window, you can have it automatically stick to all the other netscape windows you have opened... it only sucks with popup windows on sites as they will be opened at full size but then you never ask for them anyway...

tabbed windows are a great solution IMHO as I never found any quicker way to navigate the many windows I open at the same time...

Re:Why keyboard beats mouse for text editing

[vanguard]

I like keyboard shortcuts too but you example isn't perfect.

For one, I pasted your paragraph into notepad and your shortcuts didn't work. (The paragraph selection) I tried it in winword and it worked fine. So if it's not standard in yhe OS you lose a lot.

Finally, paragraph selection isn't quite as easy if you're not talking about the current paragraph. If you needed to pick a paragraph that was six pages away the mouse would be better. In short, you need both. (I bet you'll agree with this)

get yourself a copy of Smalltalk-80 (free)

[mj6798]

If you want to see what was available essentially in 1980, you can get yourself a copy of Squeak [squeak.org]. Squeak contains a complete Smalltalk-80 environment with the original Smalltalk-80 user interface (I think there is also a Smalltalk-76 emulator inside it).

Apple's user interface improved on Smalltalk-80 by making it easier to learn (more user interface functions are represented by explicit graphical elements) and with its graphical design. But I have a hard time coming up with any area in which Apple improved on Smalltalk-80 in terms of functionality or usability for experienced users. Even today, I find the Smalltalk-80 interface better than what you get on the Macintosh. Furthermore, Smalltalk-80 came with a development and debugging environment that puts even the best C++ and Java environments available today to shame.

Like many other people who have been in the computer industry for more than two decades, we can't help but shake the feeling that innovation in software has basically stopped since the 1980's; most of the change that we have experienced has been to make things "bigger" and "faster", but very little seems to have gotten "better".

To all the people who are working on software like Gnome, Java, KDE, etc., my message is: do your homework first. Find and use some of the old user interfaces. There is way too much reinventing the wheel, mostly very poorly.

ion is a rip-off of the Oberon user interface

[Anonymous Coward]

The oberon GUI has tiled windows that you can grow or shrink. Although it's difficult to get used to, it's excellent. And makes the better use of the 3-button mouse I've ever seen.

Tastes Great, Less Filling!

[clheiny]

An alternate subject for this might be "Another Xerox GUI idea rises from the dustbin". Dunno how old Cliff is, but around 1982 the original Xerox Star/8000 desktop forced users to tile their documents (B&W on a 1024x768 display, if I recall correctly). General user community reaction was "Bleah!". Some folks liked it a lot, many didn't. The next software release included the option of choosing betweeen tiled and overlapped windows. [OK, the idea might not have been Xerox's originally, but it's the oldest one I'm acquainted with] Personally, I like to choose between the two models, and frequently find myself using a hybrid, with some windows tiled (whether in an MDI or within the wm) and some overlapping. Additionally, as I grow older, I find that even with a 21" 1600x1200 display, I require larger fonts. There are times when the amount of information required simply will not fit on a forced tiled screen, unless I make the font smaller and put my face right up next to the display. But basically, it's the old light beer question. Some people want one, some people want the other. Some people want both. As a side note, I must say that window managers that force the active window to the top of the stack of overlapped must die! Or at least be rewritten. I like my windows to stay where I put them, thank you.

Give vtwm a try..

[defile]

I never used to realize how constrained working with the desktop metaphor felt until I played with vtwm.

The big distinguishing feature of vtwm is how it implements virtual desktops. Unlike most virtual desktops in other UNIX window managers, this one can be of arbitrary size and you can scroll through it freely, instead of one chunk at a time.

I have vtwm set up so that the top 90% of the screen or so can be the "focused" area of the desktop, and the bottom 10% represents the entire virtual desktop, with boxes that represent where your windows are.

A blue box on the virtual desktop bar represents what the screen is currently focused on. You can either slide the blue box over to other windows, or pick windows up and move them into view.

You never feel cramped, and things like iconification are obviated. Simply move to a different part of the desktop if you need space. Also comes in very handy if you're at work and looking at porn and the boss comes by. Just click on the portion of the desktop that contains all of your busywork.

Here's a screenshot [bacarella.com] [if you see nothing but pitch black, scroll to the bottom right] to better illustrate my setup. The screen is right-center, and the gimp's toolbar is off further to the right off screen which is how I took the screenshot.

It's amazing how restricted I feel sitting at a windows box now, or with a window manager that doesn't support this. It's also great if you want to show how much of a badass you are, since with no windows open, the screen is entirely black, except for a thin white horizontal line at the bottom and a blue box beneath it.

Re:Maybe I'm just stubborn

[Paul Komarek]

So many answers in this thread talk about wanting overlapping windows. I'd like to point out that the utility of overlapping windows comes partially from "focus-follows-mouse" behavior (without "autoraise"). You can look at both logs at once, while scrolling through both without changing which is in front.

If you don't have focus-follows-mouse, the bottom window is less useful because it is static.

-Paul Komarek