[Usability] HIG and MDI/SDI/Tabs

[Mike <mike redtux demon co uk>]

Following a discussion on epiphany, I've just realised that the HIG
mandates against the use of tabs/MDI

I feel that it is a mistake to mandate this for all apps.

Personally I would have the following criteria

1. Apps where a user would typically have several documents/pages open
at the same time during a session.

This would include text editors, word-processors, web-browsers

IMO the best usabilty would be a default of MDI/Tab interface.

Reason - far easier to switch between different documents.

Personally the three examples I can say that use this approach are
gedit, epiphany and gnome-terminal and I think it works well. I would
like abiword and gnumeric to behave the same way to avoid cluttering my
screen/taskbar. (grouping is not really a solution and an extra click)
 
2. Documents that have differing views available such as edit, preview,
old, new

This I would see as SDI with multiple tabs so you can switch between
views easily

3. Applications which typically are  worked on one or maybe two
instances in a session

This would include pdf viewers, image viewers, archive extractors

SDI would be the simplest approach.

4. Applications where it is natural to have more than one window visible
simultaneously eg:nautilus

SDI multiple instances.