Rich Teer wrote: > On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > > >> There are different kinds of user. The typical "PC" type user opens >> one application, sets it to consume the whole screen, then works only >> with that application until he is done. Typical unix power-users may >> quite often switch between applications. I fit into the later >> category. >> > > I don't think this point can be emphasised enough. It's also one reason > why us UNIX users like bigger (higher res) screens than our Windoze > counterparts. One simply doesn't need as much screen real estate if one > only runs one app at a time. > > Large screens are the main reason why I don't like the idea of the Launch > or Start button. If my mouse is in the top right corner of the screen, > the last thing I want to do when I launch a new app is drag it several > thousand pixels to the bottem left Launch button. CDE's "right click on > the desk top to bring up the launch menu" is an ease-of-use winner here. > > Could be turned around if you like, I know of several users that run multiple applications on Windows. It's true that a lot of applications are designed to take up most the real estate, but then again Windows users could surely manage to run multiple applications if they had a bigger screen, it's not like it's DOS or something. The Mac OS X way of having each application instance encapsulate multiple documents is more efficient, and most UNIX window managers emulate some attributes of both Windows and OSX. What's the best way then? Obviously with giant multifunctional programs like Evolution, EMACS, and IDE's, having tiny terminal windows or several single functionality X11 applications running is not of much importance. Most users run maybe 3 programs at once, on any environment.
James
