Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 5th Oct 2008 15:57 UTC
There is one thing that really pushes my buttons, one thing that is sure to send me off on a rant on life, the universe, and everything. I have a 21" widescreen 1680x1050 display - which might not be large to some of the real geeks in here, but to me, it's pretty huge. With so much screen real estate, why oh why do my friends all still insist on maximising every window they come across when they sit down behind my computer? This - and more - is the subject of the latest post on Microsoft's Engineering 7 weblog.
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RE: What we actually need is Context Management
by sbergman27 on Wed 8th Oct 2008 21:44
in reply to "What we actually need is Context Management"
Member since:2005-07-24
Member since:
2005-07-06
My typical development desktop has the IDE taking up as much screen real estate as possible, with a media player streaming something in the upper right, and an IRC/Chat window in the lower right.
However, the IDE itself is basically a bunch of windows too. The only difference is that they're part of the program and not the desktop.
So if the IDE had an instant messenger and media player, I wouldn't need to reposition and resize the desktop windows. And while it shouldn't because instant messaging and movie watching are not part of any software development task, they are part of MY software development task.
It's the task context that's important, and switching contexts is not always orthogonal to switching windows. And it's the user who ultimately decides what this context is, and window management is just a very primitive tool they can use to customize it.
What we need is context management, NOT window management.