On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 7:08 AM, Avdi Grimm <a...@avdi.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 4:23 PM, jtuc...@objektfabrik.de < > jtuc...@objektfabrik.de> wrote: > >> I mostly work in other Smalltalk environments than Pharo, like VA >> Smalltalk. It has native windows and so the ability to switch between >> windows using alt-tab is there. I must admit that there is a certain >> threshold in the number of open windows when this is not really helpful any >> more. I tend to hit that number pretty fast in a typical Smalltalk >> coding/debugging sessions. >> >> Things have changed in Win 7, because there I can use the window manager >> to close the windows right in the window switcher. That makes perfect sense >> if you have 15 inspectors open, none of which shows current data or >> instances any more. Or if one of them does, I can't decide which one ;-) >> >> So sometimes I wish for features like "close all windows of this kind" to >> kill all inspectors, for example. >> >> What I want to say with this that I am not really using alt-tab to switch >> between windows, but rather to kill a few to come down to a sensible number >> ;-) But I understand why you miss it. For Pharo, there is a special >> problem: it is its own windowing environment, so it should probably better >> not use the O/S' key combination to switch its windows, right? >> > > Just as some food for thought for anyone contemplating this problem: > > Sometimes problems like this are indicative of deeper usability issues. > Decades ago, it was just sort of assumed that the "right" way to deal with > windows was to have a dedicated window for every "thing" in your system. To > some degree, Mac OS, Wind95, and OS/2 all took this point of view. For > instance, every folder you double-clicked on would open up a new file > manager window, and this got to be such a mess that some OSes included > "secret" shortcuts for killing them all at once. > > Then the web started to take off, and UX designers started rethinking the > whole paradigm. They started keeping things in the same window, but adding > back/forward buttons, and navigation histories, and sidebars, and address > bars, and tabs, and other affordances to make it easier to switch between > "things" without necessarily adding more windows. > > These days, most IDEs and editors have followed suit. I can't think of a > single editor in common use among the programmers I know which encourages > multiple windows. Whether it's Vim, Emacs, Sublime, IntelliJ, while you > *can* open lots of windows if you really want to, they all focus on making > it easy to manage lots of buffers in a single window rather than > encouraging lots of windows. > > Personally, I'm a fan of this trend. I'm much happier typing a few > characters to auto-complete the buffer I want to return to in Emacs, than I > am hunting around in an OS window list for it. > > This is all a long-winded way of saying: just because this is currently a > problem, doesn't mean it's the *right* problem. It would be interesting to > see what a "fewer windows" approach to Smalltalk development might look > like. > > This is an interesting UI area to explore. As a step in this direction, the Window Menu (small arrow in title bar) item "Create window group" may provide part of the behaviour you are looking for. cheers -ben
