Jesse Ross wrote: > > Each workspace is a scroll view, containing windows. "Squishing" the > > contents of the workspace causes the contents of the scroll view to be > > compressed such that they are all visible in the workspace window > > without scrolling. The workspace window stays the same size. At this > > point, clicking a compressed window within the workspace causes the > > workspace contents to become "unsquished" again, and it automatically > > scrolls to the window that you clicked. > > Okay -- the term "scroll" confused me in this context. So, would it behave > more like a zoomable interface (where the other documents retain their > proportional distance from the clicked document), or do the other windows > fall behind and stack (like Expose)? Am I assuming correctly that it's the > former, and that to get to another document the user would scroll > up/down/left/right?
Yes, the former. In "scrollable" mode, a workspace window is a normal window comprised of a normal scroll view. The scroll view contains windows, some/all of which may be workspace windows, and none of which overlap. Each of these windows is either closed or open (manually sized). A workspace window can also be shown in "squished" mode, meaning that the contents are dynamically scaled down sufficiently to allow them all to be shown in the workspace window, without modifying the size/shape/placement of the workspace window. All of the spatial relationships of the workspace contents remain intact, none of the windows overlap, and the workspace is no longer scrollable. When the user clicks a scaled-down window inside the workspace's "squished" contents, the workspace changes to "scrollable" mode, and auto-scrolls to where the user clicked. Now that I've explained all of this, I'd like to take it further by generalizing things a little more. Imagine that there are 3 possible window states instead of two: - Locked. (Iconified, perhaps with a padlock badge. Clicking attempts to change it to "interactive", which requires credentials to be supplied as set for the window.) - Interactive. (User can manually size the window and interact with its contents.) - Presentation. (Dynamically sizes itself to fit in all available, visible space in the workspace, without affecting other windows. Clicking changes it to "interactive".) Doing it this way: - The key window and all of its containers are "interactive". - When a workspace window is "presentation", it shows its contents in "squished" mode. Otherwise, it shows its child windows in whatever mode they were last set to. Jesse Ross wrote: > I think that something like that would be good for content you have to > log-in to. I wouldn't use it for content you have full access to though (a > miniature gives far more information for attempting to identify the file). If the user wants a miniature, they can switch the window to "presentation" mode.
