Re: [Usability]Keeping the Quit menu item

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 20Mar2003 02:15PM (-0500), Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 03:30, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > I'm not sure I like the Mac OS "feature" of an application continuing
> > to run after all windows are closed. It certainly took a long time to
> > get used to. But I don't think it's an essential part of an
> > app-centric model.
> 
> Well, the app-centric model works particularly well on the Mac because
> there is total decoupling between the windows and the app itself, which
> is conceptually represented by the icon in the dock and the changing
> menubar on the top, indicating which app is active at any given time.
> 
> In that kind of setup, it makes sense that closing all the windows
> doesn't close the app as well, because an app doesn't necessarily need
> to have windows at all.  I agree it is not essential, but it makes sense
> that you dont' have to restart the app if e.g. you are done reading a
> document and want to open a different one (close document window, select
> file -> open...).

Mac UI experts generally consider this a tradeoff. On the one hand,
you are more likely to forget about an app after closing all windows
and leave it running when you don't mean to. On the other hand, the
model has the advantage that you can open a new document after closing
the last one. Partly, this is to make up for the fact that launching
the app again can be slow.

On the Mac, many single-window utility apps do actually quit when you
close their window, in recognition of this tradeoff.


> On the other hand, it's hard to imitate this strictly app-centric model
> in GNOME because we don't have the dock, and also the menubar is
> embedded in the windows, which makes decoupling the app from its windows
> difficult.  For example, you can't handle the case where the app is
> running but it has no windows.

Right. If I were designing the model for GNOME, I'd leave out the
concept of "running app with no open windows". I'd probably also want
to make the panel more dock-like, although it could be hard to do this
while properly integrating legacy apps.


Regards,

Maciej