Comment by pta2002
1 day ago
I mean, old photoshop versions (CS3?) also used multiple windows, so if I were to take a guess that’s where Gimp got it from.
1 day ago
I mean, old photoshop versions (CS3?) also used multiple windows, so if I were to take a guess that’s where Gimp got it from.
"palette" windows were common in a lot of creative applications for a really long time. it seems like with larger screens and higher resolutions, that's a lot less common by default than it used to be.
They indeed feel way less of a pain than dealing with an app with complicated UI stuffed into a single window on a screen with half the size the app was designed for. Even with the site we're discussing here, once I cranked scaling to 200% it became noticeable harder to read than a regular webpage with some text on it would with the same scaling.
However, I believe there is a better way to approach this: put each significant piece of functionality into a separate window or even executable, and use regular moveable toolbars and well-known hotkeys inside each window. One window for code editor (with working Ctrl+Tab and Window -> Tile Horizontally menu), another for configuration, yet another for terminal and output window (with a Pin on top button). When I write code I don't normally need configuration tool, but if I need it even so often it gets opened alongside the editor and is now one Alt+Tab away, not taking any screen space at all.
I used an engineering tool suite written with this approach and it was much better experience than the single-window monstrosity that came as a replacement, stuffing entirety of functionality into a single app and breaking (not implementing) a lot of small conveniences like aforementioned Ctrl+Tab.