Re: Cocoa Document-Based App v. Windows MDI App
Re: Cocoa Document-Based App v. Windows MDI App
- Subject: Re: Cocoa Document-Based App v. Windows MDI App
- From: Alastair Houghton <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:53:04 +0100
On 28 Jul 2009, at 09:09, Kyle Sluder wrote:
On Jul 28, 2009, at 12:29 AM, Graham Cox <email@hidden>
wrote:
MDI is a solution to a problem of Windows' own making, where window
== process.
Please don't spread misinformation about Windows, it makes us look
bad. Windows' concept of a window is very different from our concept
thereof. Nothing restricts Windows apps to one window or enforces a
window = process equality.
Quite. I was going to point that out also; there certainly used to be
apps on Windows used top-level windows in a Mac-like way (indeed,
Visual Basic used to do this before it became part of Visual Studio,
as did Delphi and its cousin C++ Builder, and arguably most web
browsers---including Internet Explorer---still do).
Windows' concept of a window is certainly more fine-grained than on OS
X; they're more like NSViews than NSWindows in many respects, and
indeed many controls *are* windows on Windows (though some, as an
"optimisation", were built to draw into their parent window in a
manner somewhat analogous to the relationship between NSControl and
NSCell... obviously this means that the parent window needs special
support for this arrangement, which can be irritating as it's usually
just a normal window or a group box or something as opposed to an
NSControl analogue).
MDI is a design choice. One that conflicted with MS's goals for a
more document-centric UI in Chicago/Win95 and won out.
Indeed.
Anyway, debate over MDI versus document-per-window is not really
needed here and is in danger of drifting off topic. We all know the
pros and cons.
The important thing to take away from this, I think, is that as a
general rule your application will look and feel bad if it doesn't
match the UI style that is expected on a particular platform. Windows
apps that try to do a document-per-window approach will probably
attract criticism from Windows users, just as Mac apps that try to do
MDI will annoy many Mac users.
Kind regards,
Alastair.
--
http://alastairs-place.net
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