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Comment by ethana | Hacker News Reader

I like it. I think the 2+ decades old idea of resizable and draggable windows is becoming a nuisance. With 5+ windows overlaying each others, the desktop becomes a chaotic mess.

People who say they need to be able to have multiple windows on screen should really be having multiple monitors if they don't already. Because even with high-res monitors, most productivity applications (IDEs,Excel,etc) are unusable anyway when not in full screen.

The drag&drop can be easily solved by dragging content from one app to another by dropping on their desired app icon on the taskbar. Or have dedicated share button to other apps like how Android does it.

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Resizable and draggable windows lets you arrange items on the screen very similar to the way that you have items on a desk. It works - it isn't broken or out of date. When writing in a notebook on my physical desk, I do not want my notebook to be the size of my desk. I might be taking notes from a book. If my notebook was the size of the desk, how can I read my book? I can't.

Overlaying windows is brilliant. It isn't a problem to press Alt-Tab or use the taskbar. Personally, the grouped buttons on the taskbar is a nuisance as you need to click on it (XP) or hover over it and wait for a popup (7+) rather than just seeing loads of window buttons.

I have multiple hires screens but this doesn't suddenly mean I want one fullscreen window on each screen. That effectively reduces the windowing system to only displaying two items at a time. My physical desk has more - why should the computer suddenly be limited to only a couple of items?

While I personally tend use applications fully maximized, I do have a need to open two (or more) applications side-by-side from time to time. I do not like a multiple monitor setup because I find it very distracting having a second monitor on my peripheral vision. I do agree that overlaying windows can become a mess. How about an eclipse style (or gimp 2.8 style) interface, which doesn't allow you to have overlapping windows? I don't think I've ever needed to have windows overlap on purpose. If anything, I'm usually wasting time trying to align them to maximize the usable screen space.

Have you tried other window managers besides explorer.exe? There is more to window management than the old Windows™ routine of resizing and dragging windows by pointing device.

I disagree, first of all I already have multiple monitors, and while my IDE is maximized on my main monitor, the secondary monitor has multiple windows with documentation, file manager and logs, or other stuff depending on what I am working on.

About the drag&drop I have a problem with that, supose the application supports more than one place to drop with different functionality, how do you solve that?

I used to do this too actually. Throwing a bunch of windows to my secondary screen. But over time, I realized I don't use them at all over time. Sticky notes are all over it and it was just a mess.

Now I try to have only two things open at once to streamline my work flow. Everything in excess, I try to have it my IDE when possible using plugins.

What if you have a laptop? I often have some crappy tv show over on the right hand side of my screen with the code editor taking up the other 3 quarters. Or two notepads in semi different places to be able to type text from one to the other with different formatting (eg eg brainstorm notes into DB query).

Not going to give those options up

> people.. should really be having multiple monitors if they don't already.

Multiple monitors are used because hires monitors are expensive. Once that changes we are back to the same problem.

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