Re: applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed
Re: applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed
- Subject: Re: applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed
- From: Nicholas Riley <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 17:03:47 -0500
- Mail-followup-to: Andrew Merenbach <email@hidden>, email@hidden
On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 02:38:59PM -0700, Andrew Merenbach wrote:
>
I've heard many people say that use of
>
applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed should be limited, as
>
users on the Mac OS do not generally expect their applications to quit
>
when the last window is closed. I do have a question, though: what do
>
people usually do, then? One can disable the close button, for
>
example, but is that against the HIG, too? Is it standard to hook up
>
the "New" File menu item in a non-document-based application to display
>
the main window? Or should we instead make a permanent window item in
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the Windows menu, a la iTunes? (All of this would be, of course, to
>
avoid the user closing the main window and being unable to reopen it
>
without quitting and relaunching the program.)
There's plenty of predecent on the Mac for single-window applications
to quit when you close the window. This goes back to System 7, when
'desk accessories' were given their own process spaces and menu bars,
thereby making it possible to quit what was essentially a single
window. DAs were originally the only items that were listed in the
Apple menu, and previously ran in individual applications' process
spaces under the single-tasking Finder or in the space of the
frontmost application if you so requested them to in MultiFinder, or
in a single application's space ("DA Handler") in System 6. In System
7.5, Apple began to deprecate DAs and converted most of them to
applications, but retained the single-window behavior. The same thing
happened with control panels as of Mac OS 9 - instead of running
within the Finder, they appeared separately the way DAs did, and
starting with Mac OS 8 (perhaps earlier - 7.6?) many Apple "control
panels" were actually applications with the type 'APPC', that could
also contain INIT code.
Some DA-descended apps which still exist in OS X are Calculator,
Sherlock (in 10.1) and Key Caps. Others in Mac OS 9 include
Scrapbook. Note that each of these applications quits when you close
its window.
Disabling the close box is definitely the wrong thing to do - people
expect to be able to close windows with command-W or the close box.
Simply having "Close" and "Quit" do the same thing is far more
sensible, and follows the pattern of decades of Mac OS evolution.
--
=Nicholas Riley <email@hidden> | <
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley>
Pablo Research Group, Department of Computer Science and
Medical Scholars Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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