Chris Barker wrote:
Exactly, notebooks are good if you have multiple windows
that have DIFFERENT information -- like multiple pages in a
complex config dialog.However, the trend now seems to be to put notebooks in a big
frame, and each page of the notebook holds a different
document -- this is different information, but of the same
kind, and very often I want to look at two of them at once,
and I can't -- aaarrgg!I find that I very, very, often want to be able to see two
(or more) Windows at once -- maybe in the same app, maybe in
different apps -- I want a UI that supports that. MAC and
many *nix apps do a pretty good job -- put each document in a
top-level Window (wxFrame) -- then you can move and re-size
them as you like, mixing and matching what you see from
multiple documents and multiple apps.
I'm not sure if this is relevant, as it is not very standard, but FWIW this
is what I do.
I am writing a mid-range business app. Most of my frames are used as
'forms', either for data entry or for enquiry purposes. I wanted to cater
for the following scenario. A user is in the middle of entering a long
transaction. They get a phone call from someone requesting some information,
or needing another transaction to be processed urgently. I wanted them to be
able to leave the current transaction where it is, call up a different
option, do whatever is necessary, then return to the transaction and
continue from where they were.
After logging in, the user is presented with a menu, which is implemented as
a tree control, in a top-level frame. When they select an option, a new
top-level frame (i.e. with parent of None) is opened. The user will normally
interact with the frame, then close it and return to the menu, but if needed
they can return to the menu at any time (either by shrinking the open window
or by clicking on the taskbar) and select another option. There is no limit
to the number of options they can have open concurrently. I keep a list of
open frames, so that I can check that they are all closed if the user tried
to close the 'menu' frame, which effectively logs them off.
This works fine on MSW and GTK2. I have never tried to use Apple, so I don't
know if there would be any problems there.
My 2c
Frank Millman