Office style menus and mdi

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=2748

That discussion has some good stuff in it, and I have two points to add
that I did not see there (I didn't read ALL of it, however)

1) MDI is not cross platform. It is emulated (poorly) with tabbed
windows on the other apps.

2) What bugs me the most about MDI is that I very rarely work with only
one app at a time. With MDI, if you have more than one document open (if
you didn't this would be a non-question), you pretty much have to
maximize (or make very large) the main app window, so that you can lay
out your docs the way you want. The problem here is that now you have
just covered up all the other apps you're using. I don't like this.

Another point about terminalogy: MDI is a MS concept, and I think we all
know what it is. SDI is really kind of a misnomer: some apps really only
let you work with a sinfgle docuemnt at once, some let you have multiple
docuemnts open, butyou can only see one at once, and somw let you use
and see more than one at once in various ways. My favorite are apps that
let you open any number of documents, and let you see (in separate top
level frames) any number as well. Two frames can have two differnt
documents, or two differnt views of the same document.

By the way, a tabbed interface is a bad substitute for MDI: it only lets
you see one doc at once: a bad idea. HAving any number of frames, and
each of these having tabs to select the docuemtn being views, is fine.

-Chris

ยทยทยท

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Damoc" <pdamoc@gmx.net>

<mail@mjclift.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Also, I have read a lot of negative comments about mdi, though
I'm still
> uncertain as to why it's so bad. Could someone explain their
views on
> this to me? At the moment my project in it's early stages uses
mdi.
here is a nice discussion: