why do you think MDI is a failed experiment?

OK, that was a bit of an inflamatory stance :-). Let me explain ...

I almost always have multiple windows open. I prefer to Alt-Tab between my most recently used windows and almost never click on a task bar icon/button. The MDI interface breaks that functionality. Instead of thinking "I'll hit Alt-Tab 2 or 3 times until I get to what I want" I have to think "which application window is the document in?", Alt-Tab to that and then think "which client window is it in? and which hot key did the application vendor use for cylcing between open documents?" To make matters worse there is no standard for the hot keys and some applications always cycle through documents rather than using a most recently used stack.

I was under the impression that MDI was a Microsoft 'innovation' - although I'd be happy to be proved wrong. My first encounter with MDI was certainly with MS Word, Excel et al. The reason I say it was a failed experiment is that recent versions of Microsoft Office apps no longer default to MDI and in fact I don't think they even support it any more.

When Opera first came out, my first impression was oh dear thay've used that nasty MDI interface - and they seem to consider it a feature. Surely if MDI was such a good idea, Microsoft as it's principal proponent would have used it in their own browser.

It is certainly true that opening lots of top-level windows chews up icon space on the task bar. Perhaps that is a problem with the task bar rather than the windows - I don't know I don't use it.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: Making off site links a little better by grantm
in thread Making off site links a little better by Petras

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.