[Usability] In short, I hate windows.

[Jacob Beauregard <jake13jake comcast net>]

Okay, so I just tried ubuntu for the first time. I had never used Linux 
before. As you can guess I've used Windows pretty much all of my life, 
and I've had very limited use of Apple computers.

ubuntu came with gnome (hooray). I am wondering if anybody is going to 
really pay attention to me on this mailing list, since my views are so 
radical, but I have a few things I want to say, in general, about GUIs.

-----Use of Desktop/Windows-----

First I would like to talk about Desktops.
Desktops are very important in getting to information that you want to 
get to quickly and easily. Multiple desktops are good for categorizing 
certain things you want to get to quickly and easily while you are doing 
different types of activities.

PROBLEM:
As soon as a user opens an application window, their access to the 
desktop declines very quickly.
There are, of course, solutions to accessing the desktop: resizing, 
mobility, and minimizing.
These solutions, however, create more problems. These are most notable 
when there are many windows being accessed at once. Using these 
solutions modify the state of the data that you are viewing. The 
importance of that state is very dynamic. However, it would be best to 
assume that that state is of the utmost importance. It would also be 
best to assume that accessing the information on the desktop is of the 
utmost importance.

We have been seeing, more and more often, people desiring less windows. 
AIM now has one window that contains every IM conversation. More clients 
are coming out that integrate different IM services into one. Web 
browsers have now incorporated tabs in favor of the use of multiple 
windows. In short, people are fed up with how inefficient the use of 
windows are.

A good goal to have would be to optimize the navigation through the 
large amount of information that is stored on your computer. I don't 
just mean folder trees, I mean even viewing the information in an 
application. My least favorite experience with trying ubuntu was trying 
to browse through all of the preferences. Every last thing that 
controlled the visual experience and display of information was a 
separate choice on a drop-down menu, that each opened a new window. For 
first time users, I imagine this can be very very frustrating. There is 
a lot of information that the user wants to manipulate to his or her own 
preferences, but excessive navigation to do so. I hope this can be changed.

Now for my radical idea. I'm going to shorten this up by assuming that 
the pros and cons and the reasons of use of different GUI elements are 
known.

Using tabs/frames to a desktop environment rather than windows.
This would be a step to optimize the navigation between different 
applications by a user.
Frames are most optimal for multitasking and tabs are most optimal for 
navigating between tasks.
I would love being able to use tabs to navigate between different 
applications. I would also love being able to use frames while using 
multiple applications at the same time. The implementation of tabs would 
probably be much easier than the implementation of frames in regards to 
mobility.

Let's imagine this.
Open a window
Create a frame for AIM buddy list in that window
Open a tab for Firefox in that window
Open a tab for Thunderbird in that window
Receive an IM, opens a new window, but that window is linked to the 
application window, so if Ia user minimizes the application window, it 
will also minimize the IM.
Open a tab for a text editor
Copy IM text into text editor

Does anyone like this idea in rough? There are definitely 
implementations of ideas that have a similar goal, but not quite like 
this one. The goal of this would just be to minimize the use of windows 
because they're annoying.