Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 28th Feb 2009 11:47 UTC
Apple A few days ago, Apple surprised everyone by releasing the first beta of Safari 4, the company's latest version of their WebKit browser. While I generally love Safari on the Mac (my browser of choice on that side of the fence), I've never felt as comfortable with it on the Windows side of things. In any case, this latest beta has made a very bold move in the interface department, and I'm sad to say that it's not for the better. Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.
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OSGuy
Member since:
2006-01-01

Yes you are right, with Windows, every control IS a window (this excludes the menu bar) but unlike X.ORG, by default "visually" it does *not* live outside the parent form (which is the case with X when you show the widget) that created the control (widget). With X.ORG, each control/window/widget can live outside the parent window (form) that created the widget. The Window Manager gives it a border so it is treated like another form (when speaking with Windows terminology). Thus, the "window manager should handle the tab bar logic".

With windows however it is a different story. Each newly created control must be assigned to a real window with borders or what we call a "form". Thus, the "window manager should handle the tab bar logic" is voided because visually, it is not a form.

Because of the way X treats controls, it makes it a bit difficult to create an MDI and not just that but if things get messy, you may end up with a task bar button for each icon on your desktop because each object in X is treated as if it was a form equivalent in Windows. So you have to do a few extra steps to make it behave the way you'd expect to.

As far as Safari is concerned, I trully doubt that's a real title bar. It's probably a panel aligned to the top and masked to look like a title bar. With Windows you can make the entire form behave like a title bar so it's not that hard.

Edited 2009-02-28 22:43 UTC

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