Re: [Usability] Grouping Windows: Sticky Windows

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam holoweb net>]

On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 23:19, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> "Accidental stickings" are definitely a bad thing, and any design should
> avoid them; I'm just saying they don't directly impede usability (ie: it
> doesn't stop you from using your email).

Maybe you want a little pot full of needles you can use to sew windows
together, just as an older desktop interface had pushpins you could use
to keep windows or menus "pinned" to the desktop, a powerful feature
when pervasive.

So that leads me to wonder if you could make groups of things a
pervasive idea gnomishly.

I've used a window manager that let you move groups of windows around
at the same time - you selected multiple windows by shift-clicking on
the titles and then could drag or minimise them all at once.  It was
a frequently asked question why this happened, as people did it
sometimes by mistake.  People didn't have the concept of "selected
window" different from "window with focus, active window", so although
there was some visual feedback, people didn't know how to interpret it.

Taking this further, I've  considered in the past the idea of
jigsaw-puzzle style interlocks near the top left and right of each
window, so it's obvious you can lock windows together.

I think if you make something visually obvious (when it's a primarily
visual thing like window locations) people may react differently than
if it's subtle and hard to understand :-)

Liam (rambling slightly, sorry)



-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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