Rethinking Window Management
People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS.<p>Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory.<p>I'm grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple's going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don't really think to do it.<p>I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads.<p>It's unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen.<p>(If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however).