Re: [HIG] Policy questions

[Matthew Thomas <mpt mailandnews com>]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>...
> We should make presence or absence of Quit a separate policy
> question. For the record, I disagree. I read Matthew's justification
> for this (that the world will become more document-centric and
> therefore that the set of documents hosted by one application will be
> an arbitrary set). I disagree with that argument, for the following
> reasons:
> 
> 1) The reasoning does not apply to non-document-oritented applications
> such as games, utility programs, terminal emulators, chat programs,
> etc. Clearly "Quit" is appropriate in such cases, certainly when the
> program has multiple windows.

Using `Close' instead would still work just as well.

> 2) The reasoning does not really apply to document-oriented
> applications where the organization of the documents is more
> fundamental to the UI than the documents themselves, such as a web
> browser, a mail client, an addressbook, etc. When I'm reading a mail
> message, I don't think of it as just any document but part of the way
> I interact with my mail.

On the contrary, the reasoning applies *especially* to those sorts of
applications. In some environments, the bookmarks manager and the Web
browser may be part of the same program; in others, they may not. Such
an implementation detail should not need to be reflected in the
interface. (We have had lots and lots of bugs complaining that `File' >
`Exit' in the bookmarks manager shuts down the whole of Mozilla.)

And more particularly for a Web browser, the fact that my book-buying
application (fatbrain.com) and my news-reading application
(slashdot.org) happen to be run by the same program is also an
implementation detail which should not be reflected in the
launching/exiting interface.

> 3) A key use of Quit, even using when traditional office-style
> document-oriented apps, is to free up the memory being used by a given
> program. For purposes of freeing memory, the set of documents hosted
> by a given app is not arbitrary.

If users have a compelling need to close all documents which happen to
be hosted by your application, then your application is too large and
should be split up. Having a command to close all documents which happen
to be hosted by a particular application should make no more sense than
having a command to close all documents which start with the letter P.

Even if such a command is necessary currently, it is better provided by
the window manager or taskbar than by individual applications, as it can
then be added or removed globally.

> 4) Quit is essential when closing all windows is distinct from
> terminating the program. Consider a chat program that pops up a new
> window for each message for instance (with, say, a panel applet in
> lieu of a control window of some kind).

If it needs a central point to quit it, it should have a control window.
Closing the control window would prevent new messages from opening, but
existing message windows would be closed individually.

>                                         Or a sticky notes app that
> works that sort of way.

In that case, instead of calling the app `gStickyNotes' or whatever,
you'd call it `Make a New Note'.

> 5) Even if the future blurs the difference between different
> applications more, I think today this change would result in a whole
> lot of "how do I quit" type questions on the mailing list. We should
> not make usability problems in the present for the sake of consistency
> witha future that may or may not arrive.
>...

I find this attitude annoying (and I've seen it from Seth too): saying
that we can't move towards a document-centric interface because we don't
have a document-centric interface yet. We'll never get there at this
rate. :-)

-- 
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mozilla.org/>