Re: Panes vs. Separate Windows
Re: Panes vs. Separate Windows
- Subject: Re: Panes vs. Separate Windows
- From: Britt Durbrow <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 23:17:59 -0800
My preference would be multiple windows (one primary document window and several utility panel windows) that can be snapped into place against each other. This gives the freedom to use multiple monitors while also having the screen-real-estate efficiency that a single-window approach would. (FWIW, I’m typing this on a 27” 2560x1440 Acer LCD connected to a 13” Retina MBP; both displays are active at the moment).
I find that as the problem space that the app is trying to solve becomes more complex, the all-in-one approach that is being pushed by the “full-screen-window” model gets too inflexible.
As for the single-instance vs. multiple-instance auxiliary windows issue; to a certain extent it depends on the work-flow of the app. If there are common use cases where seeing data from two documents at once is useful, then they should be per-document; otherwise I generally prefer a shared inspector palette model.
Background: I’m currently working on two CAD applications, and a GIS system.
> On Jan 9, 2016, at 2:19 PM, Rick Mann <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> In complex apps (e.g. CAD apps, IDEs) a given document has many auxiliary windows. The trend in UI at Apple has been to consolidate these into panes in a single window. I've always preferred separate windows (e.g. separate toolbar window).
>
> One more concrete example is in a CAD program: the objects in the document are often related to each other hierarchically. There's usually a view of this hierarchy using something like an outline table. I can see this naturally fitting as either a pane in a split view, or as a separate window. Best of both worlds, I suppose, would be a dockable window (a window that can be separate, or live as a pane in a split view), but that might be a lot of additional coding (is there a nice library that offers this?).
>
> Complicating matters is whether or not each open document shares a single instance of these auxiliary windows or has its own. I think something like a tool palette is clearly shared (it's more app-global then per-document), but the model object hierarchy window is probably per-document.f
>
> Separate windows have tremendous advantages, but I think panes are considered more "simple." Simplicity has advantages, but we're talking about complex apps that by their nature demand more of their users than something like iPhoto.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> --
> Rick Mann
> email@hidden
>
>
>
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