[Usability] The menubar, and windows vs. applications

[Jn By <jxdxbx yahoo com>]

First off, sorry about the Yahoo-formatted mail, but I
can't use my regular account.

I've been going through the archives of this list and
reading the discussions that have been had over the
years over menubar placement:  Shall it be Mac style
(the original WIMP design) or Windows/X style? 
Attached to the top of the screen, or to each window?

Good arguments have been made on both sides, but I
think they both miss the reason why the menubar is at
the top of the screen in Macs in the first place.  And
no, it has nothing to do with Fitts's Law.  That's
just a nice side-effect.

An application is not a window.  Applications own
windows.  At the same time, windows are their own
entities than can be rearranged, moved around, and
closed, etc, at the whim of the user.  That is:  some
of an app's windows might be visible, others might be
hidden by other apps, etc.

In Macs, it's always been easy to tell the difference
between an app and a window.  The toolbar tells you
what app is frontmost, and the drop-down menus are a
comprehensive listing of all application-wide
commands.  You can have two text documents open at the
same time, and they share the same toolbar.  Besides
being cleaner, this makes it obvious that two
different windows both belong to the same application.


Because Windows didn't have this, they've gone through
quite a few cludges.  First was the Multiple Document
Interface, where one "main" window contained all of
the document windows.  I'm sure you remember this. 
You'd have a document that couldn't leave the confines
of the main window, which became a sort of primitive
desktop and switcher for the documents it contained. 
This was an attempt to replicate the style of Macs on
a per-application basis.

Two other solutions to the problem are to have a
"main" window which does not contain its children
windows- a sort of floating toolbar or palette that
has the menubar.  The other way is just have each
window duplicate all of the user-interface elements of
the others, including the menubar.  The version of MS
Office we use at work (2000, I think) does this.  This
latter approach is very ugly and wasteful, I think,
and it makes it appear that two windows belonging to
one app are really two /instances/ of one app.  It is,
however, usable.  In fact, lots in Windows today blurs
the distinction between apps and windows.  I'm still
out as to whether this is good for users.

The first solution is workable, but it introduces an
unnecessary concept:  a "main" window.  This window
has to be open and accessible at all times just to use
the other windows.  And things get very confusing if
you are using more than one app at the same time,
especially design apps that have lots and lots of
little palettes.  It can be hard to tell what app owns
what palette, and so on.

The Mac approach eliminates all of these problems. 
It's easy to see what app is frontmost.  All windows
of an app have access to the menubar at all times. 
Working with multiple windows open and visible on the
screen is simpler, whether those windows belong to one
or many apps.  There are only three drawbacks I know
of:  One, you can't click-through to the menubar of
another application- you've first got to bring one of
its windows forward, to see its menubar.  Second, it's
weird to people not used to it to have an app open
with no windows.  (This can be a problem in OS X, when
an app is running and in the dock, but with no open
windows.  Unless the app knows to open up a blank
document when its dock icon is clicked when it's in
this state, a user might not know how to actually
start using the application.  So: apps should probably
close when there or no open windows, or they should
know to open a blank document when they are "launched"
or switched to when already running.)  Third, of
course, it's weird to use global menubars with sloppy
focus.

So, those are the thoughts of a Mac/Windows/Gnome
user. 

-j

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