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Comment by anonymouz | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree. We all have some sort of window manager that deals with handling multiple windows in a consistent way. We don't need every website reinventing window management in their own half-assed manner, that is utterly inconsistent with other sites and other applications.

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I don't think the average user can really deal with multiple windows efficiently.

True. But I'm very skeptical that they'd be able to deal with a given websites' reinvention of multiple windows either (or even recognize it as such).

I hate hate HATE new windows. It reminds me of IE or MS outlook manage this particular problem. I like this idea of a smaller chat like window, it's really blurring the line between chat and email once again. (Like google did when they started chaining emails together. Remember when that wasn't even a thing! I do, cuz I was amazed when google started doing it.) I think google really gets me when it comes to how I like to communicate via email..

If I'm reading the wikipedia article correctly, Mutt was threading email in 1995.

Gmail's innovation wasn't threading, but conversation view - displaying all the messages in a thread (linearly)in a large scrollable region rather than one at a time.

haha touche. Granted... Mutt was terminal based....

> Mutt was terminal based

And it still is, as many satisfied users will tell you.

> We all have some sort of window manager that deals with handling multiple windows in a consistent way.

Don't you like having tabs in your browser or windows in Vim? I remember the same argument being made when tabs were introduced in web browsers and yet, most people aren't complaining now.

I like tabs, but thats because most window managers do a piss-poor job of actually managing windows. I can get a nice row of 20 or so tabs across the top of chrome and it's pretty easy to keep track of them all still. 20 windows on the windows task at will have you pulling your hair out. Mac OS and Ubuntu unity are pretty much useless with more than 5-6 windows. Maybe some obscure window managers have a more tab-like interface that can handle a lot of windows, but I'd say tabs are better not because we need two layers of window management, but because tabs are just better.

I do use and like tabs, but they tend to have better window manager integration, as they are more or less a way to consolidate the "old" multiple window paradigm into a different interface, so for example I can cycle through my Firefox Tabs with Ctrl+Tab. For me they streamline the "usual" mode of browsing, but slow down other tasks, e.g., if I want to display something side by side I have to first pop them out into windows and let the WM handle it.

But what Google is introducing seems to be similar to their Google Talk "windows" that are already available in Gmail. They come in two modes: Either I get a small Ajax-y popup on the bottom right of my browser window, which I cannot resize, move or see when Alt+Tabbing/Ctrl+Tabbing. I absolutely loathe this mode. The second mode is where they pop out an actual window. I like this mode, as I can interact with the chat window as with every other window on my desktop. My assessment above is based on this experience.

A few different web services are trying more and more to be "Online Operating Systems". I think GMail and Facebook have gotten to that point.

I agree. Plus the visual and mouse distance between the "Compose" button and the lower right corner Compose pane is far and uncomfortable. Ugh.

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