Re: Close button on Single Window Utilities

FROM : Charles Srstka
DATE : Tue Nov 19 05:23:38 2002

On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 12:51  PM, Ondra Cada wrote:

> On Monday, Nov 18, 2002, at 19:33 Europe/Prague, Donald Brown wrote:
>
>> I'm with Matt on this.  A single-window app whose window doesn't
>> represent a
>> document, the users I deal with expect closing the window to quit the
>> app.
>> Actually, I had to add a preference where even in a document app,
>> closing
>> the last window quit the app, so many of the users expected it and
>> wanted
>> it.
>
> That's a windoze nonsense. System Preferences does it right: if I want
> to QUIT the app, well, I quit it. If I want just to close its window,
> I just close its window -- whilst the app still stays in Dock, easy to
> access. The other behaviour limits the flexibility.
>
> (Hide is not the same, and of course, so far as you have a preference
> for that, it's quite all right: pref for the behaviour is the best
> way. Though, second best is *not* quit automatically, and to do that
> unconditionally is the worst alternative.)

Whoa - here I am agreeing with Ondra about something again. Wow, weird.

Being able to close all of an app's windows without quitting the app is
a very useful feature indeed. Then, if you click the app's Dock icon,
it brings up a new window, without your having to wait for the whole
app to launch again. I'll bet there isn't a person on this list who
doesn't use this ability somewhere, and most commonly, I'll bet you use
it with your web browser - it's very convenient to leave it running in
the background and instantly get a new browser window when you need
one, by clicking on its icon. Can you imagine how annoying it would be
if this were Windows and you needed to wait for OmniWeb, Mozilla,
Chimera, or whatever browser to use to relaunch once you closed all its
windows? And although the effect is less dramatic, this ability is also
very useful for System Preferences, Terminal, Mail, etc.

So, in short - cheers to Apple for making an OS where we don't have to
leave a window open to avoid quitting an app. Boo to Apple for
violating this principle in some of their apps (although in their
defense, they have provided us with a way to determine which behavior
will occur - the ones that will quit when you close their window tend
to use the metal interface, while the ones that will stay open tend to
use standard Aqua).

Charles
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | <email_removed>
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.