Subject: Re: POW user suggestion
From: Håkan Waara (hwaara@chello.se)
Date: Sat Aug 18 2001 - 18:33:45 CDT
Tim LaDuca wrote:
> Let's make this simple, I'm using myself as an example.
>
> User opens abiword. Blank new window comes up. User goies to file ->
> Open. File opens in same window. User is done with file and wishes
> to edit another one. User would tend to go to file -> close to
> close the current document since he is done with it. Uh-oh! AbiWord
> is gone. Must restart it. Go to File->Open and open next document. It
> would be more intuitive if AbiWord stayed open.
>
> Here's the ideal behavior. I go to File->Close, abiWord closes the
> current document and opens a new untitled document, UNLESS it is
> already displaying a new untitled docment, in which case it exits.
> (although I don't see the big deal of graying out close if it's
> already on a new untitled document).
"Mom, I just wanted to close the document! Now it opened a new blank one!"
>
> Comparing abiword document interface to a browser makes no sense to
> me. You don't "Browse" files, you edit them. I can't, while in
> AbiWord, just type in another filename to switch to a different
> file.
It makes sense because a browser is traditionally (except for Opera)
based on a SDI interface.
Now, if the user closes the last document onscreen, well, what the heck,
let her do that! She doesn't want a new window, she doesn't want an
alert, she just want to close that darn document.
Summing up, I think the ideal solution would be to just think of Abiword
as a document. The philosophy is that each document is its application,
much like Windows handles instances of applications.
You can have have several different Abiword documents opened at once.
But the distinction that they are *different* is important. Every window
is an Abiword application, kind of.
If the user somehow planned to make another document, she doubleclicks
Abiword to get a *new* Abiword document.
To make Abiword feel less like an app, but instead a set of
apps/documents onscreen at once you'd have to remove the splashscreen
(which I think is just annoying in general, and uninteresting for apps
that takes less time to open than Photoshop).
If you do this, the user will just think of doubleclicking the Abiword
icon on the desktop as opening a new document.
This is how I do with simple texteditors such as Notepad too. The
difference would be that the user never notices that we are using an
MSDI rather than a pure SDI.
What do you think?
-- Håkan Waara (hwaara@chello.se)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat Aug 18 2001 - 18:32:47 CDT