Designer wrote:
Since then, the systems have grown and improved and are the norm - the
thought of going back to DOS is pretty repellent for nearly everyone,
and esp for folk doing graphics (Photoshop for DOS? Illustrator for DOS?
- the mind boggles!
So, we all work in Windows, of one sort or another.
True, but there have been significant steps taken over the past several
years in order to reduce the number of windows open. Tabbed-browsing is
probably the most significant example of this. Also, the find-toolbar
in Firefox is a wonderful invention, compared with the old-style find
dialogs.
The whole basis of our way of working centers around windows: if you're
in an application and need help, you hit the help link/button and it
opens in a new window.
Which unfortunately covers up the application I'm using, making it
difficult to both reference the help while working with the application.
I need to mess around with resising the windows to align them
side-by-side to do so.
One of the best help-windows I've seen is the way it's done in MS
Office, with Clippy (yes, I love the paper clip, though it shouldn't
prompt me about writing letters nearly as often as it does) sitting
nicely in the bottom corner which doesn't cover up any of my work.
Then, when I open a help topic, it opens up in a nice side bar, which is
very easily referenced while working in the app and it doesn't cover up
anything. (it actually takes care of the resizing for you and puts it
back again when you close it.
This is good - instead of removing what you are
working on, the help is displayed separately, maintaining the original
content intact.
I agree with not losing what you're working on, but that is exactly what
that form help without popups script does, from juicy studio which I
linked to earlier in the thread.
You want to send a mail? No problem. just click your
mail icon and another window opens.
Yes, but it would be nice if it didn't open a new window. I can't wait
for tabbed-mail-clients to be introduced. I read somewhere a while ago
that Thunderbird will be introducing this in the future. I find it
annoying that I need to have a separate compose window for every e-mail
I'm typing at the same time, I would love to have a single tabbed
interface for this.
...and has improved productivity enormously,
Actually, I disagree with that. From my own experience, my productivity
is inversely proportional the number of windows I have open, as a
significant amount of time is wasted keeping track of them all, and
looking for the one I want to switch to next.
The same is true of browser tabs, I can't handle more than 5 or 6 open
at a time. The ability to re-order tabs has helped since I can keep
them in a logical order, but still I find it difficult and really don't
understand how people can have 20 or more. Although, I understand that
is a personal choice and, for some, that many may increase their
productivity. My point is that everyone is different and has different
requirements and work habits and, therefore, it needs to be up to the
user whether they want so many new windows or not.
in this standards environment, you'll find that the web developer
toolbar for firefox opens its results in a new window (tab, whatever).
That must be configurable, it never opens a new window for me. It
defaults to opening tabs for validation, viewing response headers, etc.
View source? Certainly Sir : here it is - oh yes, it's in a new window!
There are Firefox extensions that cause View Source to open in a new tab
(web dev toolbar can do that) and Opera will view source in a new tab by
default.
Even this mail you are reading is probably in a new window (unless you
use a preview pane and risk opening a virus, of course)!
What? The preview pane is no more of a security risk than than opening
the mail in a new window, unless you're using Outlook (aka. Virus
Express) and there's some unpatched security vulnerability in it (which
wouldn't surprise me at all). However, it seems you're using
Thunderbird 1.0.2 (note: it's way out of date, upgrade to 1.5), so it
would very much surprise me if you could point out a valid vulnerability
specifically related to use of the preview pane, even if it's already
patched in more recent versions.
Anyway, the most secure (and recommended) way to view (and send) e-mail
is plain-text only. It's immune to any potential JavaScript security
holes (TB disables JS by default anyway, unlike Outlook) and it's not
vulnerable to the common URL spoofing techniques with HTML mail (even
though recent versions of TB will give warnings about that in HTML
mode). It's also much more readable than HTML for various reasons (but
that's getting off-topic).
So, having been accustomed to this way of working for many years, I try
to get some of this flexibility and uncluttered approach into my web
How could opening new windows be considered an "uncluttered approach"?
Remember, one of the major benefits of tabbed-browsing is that it
reduces the clutter of windows on the desktop.
pages. If I have a gallery of images, a click on a thumbnail will
perhaps open a larger display of the image - in a new window.
Eek! I hate galleries that do that. Have you considered the
possibility of a better alternative?
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/imagegallery/
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox/
Lightbox looks better, has the same result of a popup, in that it
doesn't navigate away from the current page, but it's easier to close by
clicking anywhere, there's no need for clicking the close button. It's
currently got some keyboard navigation problems, but it could always be
improved.
If a link is waiting for the content to be completed, an alert box "available
shortly" pops up
I really don't understand how you think popping up an alert box that the
user needs to dismiss before anything will continue is a usability
benefit. Browser developers realised a long time ago that alert boxes
are useless and annoying. This is why they are moving the much less
obtrusive information bar approach.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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