Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

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I think going back historically, overlapping windows appeared on PCs around the same time as VGA (more powerfull platforms had them earlier). The early apps didn't have so many features (and menus) and often had to work together often so it made sense to have them side by side and not to bother closing them to open them again in a few seconds.

Now, it depends on the screen (resolution). Isn't it pointless to maximize everything on a say 23" 1920x1080? I don't. on the side of my browser I often have chat, terminal, even spreadsheet windows. They even overlap sometimes, which I don't mind because its convenient for switching. However, on a 1280x800, I maximise my browser, IDE, etc.

Desqview had this prior to Windows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwYWt-3gElw First released in 1985 (with "Desq" preceding it in 1984).

For a while there was a windowing environment "twin" (Textmode WINdowing environment) available in some distros which behaved somewhat similarly visually. Looks as if the project's still alive on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/twin/

It can be somewhat useful on XVGA consoles with framebuffer enabled.

I maximize even on large screens because I like to remove the clutter for focus more than because I need the space. I don't want to have a chat window or terminal or anything else distracting me when I read or write something, for example.

So if you used workspaces, you could have an active workspace, and just move the application that you want to focus on into that workspace. Then it wouldn't matter if it was full screen or not. It could be your distraction free workspace.

I do use workspaces. And I maximize the applications because when they're the only one on the workspace I rarely have a reason not to have them fill the screen.

I guess that's down to personal preference. I feel that some applications just don't suit full screen.

Sure, my assumption is that usually people want to multitask during most activities. Reasonable I think, most of the time.

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