Re: Thoughts on window sizing

[Mike Bursell <mike hingston demon co uk>]

On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 07:59 +0100, Ross Smith wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Greg K Nicholson <greg gkn me uk> wrote:
> > On the subject of resizing: what is the use-case for it?—why do we
> > need to be able to resize windows to arbitrary sizes?
> 
> I would say that there are quite a few reasons to keep it around:
> 
> 1. Familiarity - everybody is used to this, anything else would feel alien.
> 
> 2. Freedom - My personal feeling is that enforced sizing would feel
> restrictive.  People like to feel that they are in control.  Yes, the
> UI could do with helping them tile windows more easily, but I think
> this needs to be in a relatively subtle way.
> 
> 3. Unknown reasons - There may be a myriad of other reasons why
> somebody wants a window 'just so'.  Flexibility for the user to do
> what they want is important.

The very idea of not being able to resize windows fills me with dread.
Here are some reasons:

1. sizing of documents: some I need to read at particular sizes, and I
need to be able to resize the window they're in, and not scroll around
all the time
2. sometimes I'm referring to one window, and doing things in another:
I'll make the first one the right size so that I can read what's going
on, and but have my main focus as the (big) window.
3. video formats: need I say more?
4. looking at images of varying sizes
5. different sized screens, with different resolutions, require
different sized windows (and I'll drag them across desktops and then
resize as I wish
6. need I go on...?

-Mike.