Re: [Usability]Question on Multiple Document Interfaces

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

Do tabs really count as MDI? I can't believe that the HIG tells that
tabs are bad when in fact almost every GNOME app uses tabs. :)

> 2. To answer Bart's question, Multiple Document Interfaces force apps to 
> basically turn themselves into pseudo window managers. Also it definately 

But this doesn't really count for tabs, does it? Apps don't need to be
windowmanagers in this case, they just need to provide a way to switch
between several documents (similar to "buffers" in Emacs or w3m for
example). 

> complicates the design of simple menus (ie. the file menu in galeon) with 
> superfulous menu entries (open, open in new window, open in new tab, new tab, 
> new window, close window, close tab, close all windows etc.).

Not if tabs are standard like in gedit. There is only "new" and this
will open a new tab. And there is no such thing as "close window" in
neither gedit or Galeon. They only contain "close" and "close all" and
this is something you will also find in applications without tabs (where
close all will close all open windows).

> Imho poor window lists are one of the main reasons users prefer tabbed 
> interfaces, who wants to have 30 entries in the window list. In many ways i 
> think grouping in the gnome2 window list along with multiple desktops can 
> provide the same ease of use that MDIs provide, while not forcing app 
> developers to turn every app into a window manager.   

No, I never use the taskbar/windowlist anyway because it's incredible
bad UI compared to simply select the window on the screen which I do all
the time. But now let's say I would have eight browserwindows and twenty
editor windows. There is absolutely no way that I still would be able to
find the right window conveniently without using "external" applets like
the taskbar or windowlist. 

Having only one mainwindow for a lot of documents also allows the
application launchers to become convenient ways of task handling (they
could focus the already open application instead of launching a new one
or a new window). Also it avoids the neccessarity to draw the same main
window more than once (taking less screen estate and probably even less
RAM). Even Gimp does something similar, just with a lot of subwindows
which works great for this kind of application but wouldn't work that
well for texteditors and browsers where you will only work on or view
one document at the same time mostly.

So while I would agree that the kind of MDI where application windows
are drawn inside of a "container window" or awefull, I can't really
understand why managing a lot of documents inside of one window (with
convenient ways to switch between them like tabs or bufferlists) are a
bad thing.
At least I didn't hear a reasonable argument against it yet. I would be
more than happy to change my opinion if someone knows a better way to
work with multiple documents in one application. :)

- Daniel