Mobile devices are designed primarily as a modal experience. You use one app at a time, but can switch between them quickly. Multi-window interfaces and floating apps have been implemented a few times as an alternative, but most of these solutions are a bit clunky. Ixonos has released a new video demo of its multi-window technology, and it looks much better. If only we knew where to get it.
This is very awesome, and essentially very similar to Metro snapping – except with traditional windowing abilities, something Metro should have as well. They won’t say who they are developing this for, but I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see Android applications running in a similar fashion on ChromeOS.
This would mean a giant leap in usability, hope it will come soon.
If I understand well what was written in a comment by +Panaoid Android on G+, Google CTS (compatibility test suite) does not accept that one resizes an app after it has been opened. Android apps can adapt to different sizes/DPI but once launched, the positions are supposed to be set in absolute.
If that’s the case some apps may work but many may not, as this is not a behaviour developers expected until now.
That’s kind of relative.
Most apps handle resizing anyway because when you switch from landscape to portrait, Android does in fact send a geometry change event. For OpenGL apps/games it would be completely transparent.
Also, most apps use layouts (otherwise dynamic DPI would be really difficult to handle) so adapting to this makes it even easier.
Edited 2013-09-25 15:38 UTC
This looks like nice technology and the video shows it working well. The four-way grid arrangement is particularly neat (especially covering more than the screen).
I can’t help feeling the overlapping Windows paradigm has had its day though. We should have moved beyond it. In particular, with the way windows leap to the front when you interact with them, I can envisage few use-cases where it’s beneficial.
Yes, this screams for a tiling window approach.
Ixonos was always mainly Nokia. Timing matches too.
So Nokia even added sugger like that on top of there Android. A shame we may never see the result.
They vetoed something like this before:
http://areyouanandroid.com/cyanogenmod-stop-working-multi-windowed-…
Although I rarely find myself needing multiple programs open on my Android device;(screen is too small and RAM is limited) I can definitely see the potential for the future.
Still for touch I think we need different controls than the old widgets in the corners. Seems pretty tedious to me. I see they’ve added an icon to the navigation bar. This is a good start, but it should make it so when you push the button you can resize, then push it again to lock them and lose the window controls. Unfortunately Samsung and maybe others don’t use a navigation bar, so I guess they’ll have to find their own way.
I would personally prefer *not* having a tiling window manager in a phone/tablet. Easy switching between full screen apps trumps tiling windows in many cases. This is more the case in phone/tablets. If you add the screen space overhead of window borders that would be required to implement resizing/rearrangement of windows in a finger friendly way… I think it is non-sense.
My personal opinion.
And one I happen to agree with. In addition I find that, so long as the apps that need to update can keep running in the background, having one task in front of me at a time really helps me focus on getting that one task done. That’s subjective, of course, and others will have a different workflow than I do, but I’m more productive when I can focus on one task at a time and flip between them at logical stopping points rather than being distracted by multiple windows trying to grab my attention at once. I’ve adapted rather well to the single-window workflow as it’s mostly how I’ve always worked anyway. It doesn’t work for everyone of course, but that’s what choice is for, right?
That is why funcionality like this should be simply left up to users to switch it on or off in the settings. Some users might like it and gain a lot of productivity in their work from it.
Same for MDI.
Edited 2013-09-26 07:16 UTC
Just an example, I could test in 2 browserwindows two different designs for phones.
It would help.