Rubbish.
I have spent hours sitting behind the mirrors at the big MS, during usability studies. Profiling user/PC interaction takes a carefully designed study, lots of test subjects, lots of data, lots of subsequent analysis… I read in many of the comments that MS GUI is terrible, sucks, is broken, whatever. I myself specialize in UI design. The goal here is to find a paradigm that closely matches a human cpu’s “native interaction modality” - meaning, something that they intuitively understand without having to read a manual. Guess what? Every kid in the world who ever sat on the floor reading the Sunday comics intuitively understands MDI. Every college kid who ever turned in a term paper spent plenty of time in the library, with a stack of books spread out on the table, and notes, and papers, and whatever.
I see much characterizing of people as brainless, incapable of moving one document (or application, or window, or surface) out of the way to reveal a lower z-index doc, which they then click on to give focus, and bring to the foreground.
C’mon, folks, this is rubbish. In the mid 80’s, the Windows thing started, replacing DOS and Pong and Visicalc and Lotus 123. Did people have a meltdown? Heck no. They loved it. I did a lot of UI work back then, and we were very strict about what we did. People had to “know” how to interact with the UI at an intuitive level. We found that, surprise surprise, MOST PEOPLE DID! It was no big deal. Here is a simple example: the scrollbar on the right side of most docs, browser windows, many apps: this scrollbar is ubiquitous. I have seen many websites with “hand rolled” scroll UI’s. Guess what? They don’t work as well as the scrollbar that we are all “programmed” to use. There are scrollbars with little arrows that point up and down, with a funky track of some sort between them, with red lights between them, with dancing chickens between them, whatever. None of them are as intuitive as what we have already. Therefore, we will never see some incredible “scrollbar” breakthrough, because the territory is all sewn up. It’s done. That particular UI element has been accepted by the entire human race as the single best, most pleasing, easiest to use, most intuitive, most reliable interface.
Back to MDI windows: most people don’t have two monitors. I bet 0.2 percent of users are power users. The rest are students, housewives, laptop owners, video gamers, Google searchers. Advocating a UI that depends upon multiple monitors, or huuuuuuge monitors, means a real small market. That is why we have what we have, because it offers max client reach.
If you can’t handle MDI windows, then, well, errr, gee, I’m sorry for you. Maybe computers aren’t your thing, you should go back to paper.
For the rest of us, though, stick around.
Soon, your browser will be MDI. And, in short course, all browsers. Why? Because humans like to “cluster” like with like. They like to “cluster” related windows close by each other. This establishes a visually binding relationship.
Having a whole ton of apps showing up in the taskbar, willy nilly, is useless. Look how quickly tabbed browsing became popular. Why? Because all your searches for a particular item can now be grouped into a single browser instance. This is a huge improvement over a bunch of disparate taskbar icons.
The next frontier is MDI in the browser. I already do it, and have done it, for seven years. It rocks extremely.
It is simply a more powerful paradigm. And it is intuitive, and everybody already knows how to do it (except, apparently, several of the forum contributors here). You see, we, as a race, have been visually programmed since the late 80’s to deal with MDI. The very nature of the PC is to deliver apps, each in its own visual container.
My two year old used to sit on my lap, years ago, and we played Descent, the video game. Six degrees of freedom. He flew his little spaceship upside down, sideways, backwards… Adults play the game and get vertigo, headaches, and want to hurl.
The boy is older now, and has no fear of heights, and hangs upside down from trees, and can spin on an innertube hanging from a tree for five minutes and then walk straight afterwards. He learned how to cope.
So has the human race. We have been “educated” by the PC interface, and it is now second nature for “most” of us. There are, apparently, a few who are uncomfortable. However, to state that the rest of us can’t deal with what is basically a simple paradigm, is simply untrue.
Norzilla
