Hi Anne, I agree with your analysis - I think that the size of a window is the user's decision, not the application's. While it may be OK sometimes for a desktop application to size itself, I think you are right in pointing out that this is a bad idea for a browser-based app. Of course, the app may work better or worse at any given size, but ideally it should deal gracefully with resizing by the user.
Cheers, Darren >Hi, > >before we move on with the development of a new web UI, I would like >to comment on the use of browser resizing. > >Based on the drawings in Bill's document, it looks like the UI will be >living in it's own browser window to work best. >When I look at the design it looks like it is sometimes not a full >browser window but more like a floating box in a broswer window to me. >See "The Shrunken Window" chapter for instance. > >I see a possible problem with a UI that runs in a separate browser >window. Most modern browsers (FF, IE7+, etc) use tabs. >Most users have learned to use multiple tabs rather than multiple >browser instances. >Therefore, resizing the entire browser window based on ESME-related >changes would cause problems with the other applications that are in >that browser instance. > >The problem for me with this is that I would never use a UI which >needs a seperate window. (unless I am forced to use IE6) >My browser window is always set to 1024px with at any given time at >least 5 open tabs. Google Reader, gmail, twitter and SDN are the four >services I *always* have open as tabs. >I would like to see a UI which doesn't affect the size of my browser >window, which means in any give state is no wider than 1024 px. > >What do others say about this issue? > >/Anne -- [email protected]
