Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!agate!ucbvax!husc6!lloyd!kent
From: kent@lloyd.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 7.0 speculations - Feature wishlist
Message-ID: <459@lloyd.camex.uucp>
Date: 2 Aug 89 18:35:57 GMT
References: <587GDAU100@BGUVM> <19201@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> <656@sys.uea.ac.uk>
Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 32

In article <656@sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@uea-sys.UUCP (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>I havent seen it mentioned in this thread yet, but it's a long-standing
>gripe in the Mac community: why do Finder icons always lie behind all the
>windows of other applications?  Kludges like the BLAST Fkey and the latest
>MultiFinder's Set Aside command are still pretty inconvenient.
>
>When an application (the Finder or any other) is in the foreground, all
>its graphic objects should be in the foreground.  Obvious, yes?

Obvious, but obvious is not always a good idea.  

How would you tell the difference between an icon in a window, and a
desktop icon which is floating above a window?  

If you can't keep your desktop clean enough to be seen, then don't put
file icons there.  I can't, so I don't.

Getting to disk icons is clearly a problem.  Should Apple turn them
into some sort of window?  Maybe, but you can already get them to be
windows, yet people still close the windows into icons.  Should Apple
add an anti-zoom-box?, one which shrinks a window to its smallest
size?  Maybe, but that is a far cry from the floating of icons which
you suggest.

With user interfaces it is easy to spot problems.  It is also easy to
suggest changes.  But it can be very hard to suggest changes which
actually fix a problem without breaking something else.

Kent Borg
kent@lloyd.uucp
or
...!husc6!lloyd!kent