Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!mart
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
From: mart@csri.toronto.edu (Mart Molle)
Subject: Re: System 7 question
Message-ID: <1989Dec21.105013.7047@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Keywords: MultiFinder
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <10734@claris.com> <578@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <1353@unocss..unl.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 15:50:13 GMT
Lines: 55

In article <1353@unocss..unl.edu> dent@unocss..unl.edu (Local Submission) writes:
>Quite frankly, it's my opinion that Switcher did a far better job of making
>context switching obvious, especially if you turned on animation.
>[description of switcher and animated context switching deleted]
>Well the whole point of that was that context-switches were never a mystery.
>It was always /very/ obvious when you were switching to the next application.
>MultiFinder did take a few hints from Switcher, and it's descendant, Servant
>(no, I'm not going to try to explain Servant here :-).. perhaps not enough
>though?  So here's the suggestion:  If we /really/ must keep MultiFinder
>around (it looks like we have no choice), then how about changing the way
>that windows are "deselected" when another is selected? 
>[proposal to "grey out" scroll and/or title bars for inactive windows]
>
>That's the realistic solution.  What I would much rather see is this: (and this
>has no chance until the "Compact Mac" line is dead, so in other words, it will
>never happen.)  Put the menubar for an application /in/ that application's
>window, and leave the menubar at the top of the screen for exclusive use by the
>"Finder".  This eliminates a /very/ modal aspect of the MultiFinder interface
>(where the exact same menus and menu items do /very/ different things at
>different times, and what they do is not always obvious.
> . . .
>Perhaps the simplest way of doing this is to give each application it's own
>"virtual screen", similar to Switcher, but put that screen in a window, on
>the Finder's desktop.  This brings up a /lot/ of Interface Design issues, like
>how do you scroll around in that window; what if the window contains a
>document window that also has scroll bars; is this too confusing? etc etc.

Having just upgraded from an "old rom" 512K "fat mac" to a IIci, I have just
entered the mysterious world of multifinder.  I agree that it is far more
confusing than switcher, which was brilliantly obvious.  However, I also
recognize that that paradym isn't workable for [even?] Mac-style multi-tasking,
because you can't see the status window for your background file download
while you're doing something else in the foreground...

Maybe everybody else on the net has used a "new rom" HFS system for so long
that they've forgotten what a nice innovation the little "zoom box" on the
right-hand end  of the title line of a window is.  Why not replace the funny
multifinder "blob" on the menubar by a similar "zoom box" where the normal
situation for an application in the foreground would be for its window to
cover the whole screen, but clicking the "zoom box" would shrink the
application's window to a smaller size (may not be possible on a toaster mac),
perhaps "greyed" somehow to indicate that it is not part of the forground,
or even reduce it to an icon size.  I remember finding this "shrink a window
into an icon" feature quite handy on a Sun running X windows -- you can even
specify that the icon be "active" i.e., that it is a compact version of the
contents of the real window instead of just a static bitmap, which was very
handy if you were waiting for some event (e.g., output) to happen.

Mart L. Molle
Computer Systems Research Institute
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
(416)978-4928
v