So my question is: Is it possible to open, for instance, Discord, Chrome, Spotify or any files in "one process/window"? What I mean by that is, if I wanted to be able to open 3 apps but I don't want it to take so many tabs and so much space, I would want to have those 3 apps in one window. So lets say I were working on 3 different projects and I don't want to always switch desktops or look for the apps everytime I switch projects, I would just want to alt+tab to that project. It would also be nice to be able to prioritise one app in task manager instead of 5. If that is not possible then my thought was to create a "screen sharing program" that captures the other apps and displays it into a UI that I could design. If it were possible, how would I go about starting that?
Simply said, no. You could however try creating different desktops on Windows.
See this page for more information:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/multiple-desktops-in-windows-36f52e38-5b4a-557b-2ff9-e1a60c976434
Yes, it is possible to put a process's window inside another process's window. I did it in a very limited case once, but that involved placing a non-interactive (display-only) window inside of an application I wrote which was used by only a few people. I have no idea how well it would work with multiple interactive windows.
Use SetParent in your "screen sharing program" to place the desired applications inside your window. However, take note of Adrian McCarthy's answer to Good or evil - SetParent() win32 API between different processes, and note Raymond Chen's blog posts from the comments:
Is it legal to have a cross-process parent/child or owner/owned window relationship?
Sharing an input queue takes what used to be asynchronous and makes it synchronous, like focus changes.
Related
Related to my question here, is it possible to create a window hook that will monitor if an application has been opened or not?
Most that I have found about hooks seem to focus on user input (keyboard press, mouse events), but I could not confirm if it is possible to know that the "double click" the user made is to open an application, or just to highlight a word.
Thank you.
Indeed, window hooks would not be sufficient. In fact for the task you are asking about you could use various strategies, such as:
enumerating the processes to find the one you're looking for (Tool Help API or PSAPI)
enumerating the top-level windows on the desktop (but you're limited to your desktop then)
check for a global or local event, mutex (or other kernel object) to deduce from that that some instance of the application is running
... or even from kernel PsSetCreateProcessNotifyRoutine
probably there are variations on the above plus some more.
In essence the question is whether you want to check for the process or for some other indicator that signifies whether the program you want to check for has been started.
In a fairly graphics intsensive application the requirements state that it should default to full screen mode even though the application is running under Windows. I know many games do this but I find it annoying. The default IMO should be to open in a window rather than full screen mode. I am proposing the first time the user runs the application they should select the default behavior. Am I wrong?
I think the annoyance-factor depends a lot on what the application tries to do.
If it is some utility that I might start while working in 5 different applications and it forces its fullscreen-ness on my, then I'd get highly annoyed.
If it is a specialized application that helps me with the entire workflow of a given task (so that I never or rarely need any other apps open at the same time), then fullscreen might actually be a valid default.
Whatever you do, just make sure that toggling the startup behaviour is very discoverable. Because no matter which way you'll go, some of your users will disagree with your decision. And for them it should be very easy to change to their prefered way.
I would follow the requirement the first time the application is launched. I would also provide a simple way to switch from full screen to windowed, for instance by pressing ESC (and another way to go back to full screen). Then I would store the mode when quitting the application and restore this mode at next launch.
Before doing the opposite of what your requirements say, I'd have the requirements changed.
However, what about giving the user the choice at install time?
The window at first-start-up should default to the optimal size for the largest proportion of users. For a graphics-intensive full-featured app, that may very well be full screen.
As for individual user preferences for window size, it seems to me most users won’t know if they want full screen or not until after they’ve started to use the app and see how much screen space they need and how much they use the window in conjunction with other windows. Asking them which size they want at install or first-start-up could thus be annoying and even confusing. It’s better to put such a setting under Options/Preferences.
Perhaps the best thing to do is save the window status on exit. Users who like it non-maximized thus only have to non-maximize it (and size it) once and then forget about it. The only consideration is to have some way to reset the window to the default (e.g., Window > Standard Size menu item) for novice users who accidentally resize or reposition the window to something bizarre and don’t know how to get it back. Alternatively, you could have a Window > Keep Sizes and Positions menu item for users to explicitly save the window status across sessions.
Go back to the requirements writers and ask them if they have considered non-traditional monitor setups, such as:
30" or larger monitor. Do you really want your app hogging up all the screen real-estate?
Multiple monitors. Which monitor will you run on? Can the user move your app from one monitor to another? Can your app span more than one monitor?
Virtual desktops. Can the user move your app from one desktop to another? Can they switch desktops while your app is running? Can your app span more than one desktop?
Such setups are increasingly common, especially large monitors. IMO, full-screen mode (the default for many older Windows apps) is becoming less and less useful.
The problem with presenting the user with the option of initially selecting fullscreen / vs windows is that they haven't used the software yet. How can they make a decision on which is better for them, without experience?
I would run the app in whichever mode provided the best user experience and then offer an option to change it both in the Preferences and though a hint while starting up the application for the 2nd time.
new Windows 7 hides systray icons by default.
what is the recommended way to show information to users now?
I need to have a small clickable icon visible to user so user can access my "tool" anytime. Should I use the gadget to show my GUI instead? Can it communicate with my Delphi app somehow?
Without more information it's a little difficult to provide a recommendation.
However, I would imagine that a sufficiently important tool, the user would simply keep minimized. They could then use Jumplists to access quick functionality.
For example, Live Messenger uses this setup on Win7.
If your users really like your icon/application they can always choose to not hide your application.
The only difference is that only the user can choose which icon is shown, instead of every application claiming it's "real estate".
In my opinion this is a good functionality and if I were you I wouldn't change the application, just provide a first run GUI which explains how to make your tray icon visible in windows 7.
The entire reason why change was made, was to stop programs like yours. If you need to show information, go ahead and do so. But the notification areas ("systray") is not where shortcuts go. For that, you've got the start menu, desktop and/or the quick launch bar (and please let the user decide).
Using the Apple OS X Cocoa framework, how can I post a sheet (slide-down modal dialog) on the window of another process?
Edit: Clarified a bit:
My application is a Finder extension to do Subversion version control (http://scplugin.tigris.org/). Part of my application is a plug-in (a Contextual Menu Item for Finder); the bulk of my application, however, is in a separate daemon proces. For several reasons, we've chosen to put virtually all the code into the daemon; the plug-in only defines the menu itself, and Apple-Events over to the Daemon.
Sometimes, the daemon needs to prompt the user for further information. It can toss a window on-screen for this, but that's disruptive (randomly positioned), and it seems to me the work flow here is legitimately modal, for example "select a file, pick 'commit' from the menu, provide commit comments, do the operation."
Interprocess cooperation (such as passing a reference of some kind) is acceptable: both processes are mine, but I want to avoid binding the sheet's code into the primary process.
Really, it sounds like you're trying to have your inter-process communication happen at the view level, which isn't really how Cocoa generally works. Things will be much easier if you separate your layers a bit more than that.
Why don't you want to put the sheet code into the other process? It's view code, and view code is inherently process-specific. The right thing to do here is probably to add somewhat generic modal-sheet support to your plugin code, and an IPC call that your daemon can make to summon that code. Trying to ship view objects over to the remote process is going to be nightmarish if you can make it work at all.
You're fighting the frameworks with this approach.
You can't add a sheet to a window in another process, because you have at most only the most restricted access to the windows in the other process.
Please don't do this. Make the interaction nonmodal if at all possible. Especially in something like a commit, it's much nicer to be able to browse around your files while you're writing commit comments.
OS X does have window groups, but I don't think they can (easily) span applications.
Another thing to consider is that in OS X it's possible to have many Finder windows open on the same folder (unlike in OS 9). Even if you did have sufficient privileges/APIs to add a sheet to a Finder window, it's not like the modality of that window would prevent the user from being able to continue working with the files.
(My personal opinion as a long-time Mac user is that this kind of interaction would drive me right up the wall.)
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Even though MDI is considered harmful, several applications (even MS Office, Adobe apps) still use it either in its pure form or some as a hybrid with a tabbed/IDE-like interface.
Is an MDI interface still appropriate for some applications?
I'm thinking of an application where one typically works with several documents at one time, and often wants to have multiple documents side to view or copy/paste between them.
An example would be Origin, where one has multiple worksheet and graph windows in a project; a tabbed or IDE-like interface would be much more inconvenient with a lot of switching back and forth.
On the mac, it's natural and convenient for an application to have multiple top-level windows to solve this, what is the preferred way in Windows if one doesn't use MDI?
The disadvantages of MDI are the following:
It generally requires the user to learn and understand a more complicate set of window relations.
Many simple actions can require a two-step process. For example, bringing a desired window to the foreground can require that the user first brings the container window forward then bring the right primary window in the container window forward. Resizing or maximizing a window can mean first adjusting the container window then the primary window within.
If multiple container windows are open, the user can forget which one has the desired primary window, requiring a tedious search.
Users are easily confused by the dual ways to maximize, iconify, layer, and close a window. For example they may close the entire app rather than a window within the container window. Or they may “lose” a window because they iconified it within the container window without realizing it.
The user is limited in the sizes and positions his or her windows can assume. Suppose I want to look simultaneously at 3 windows of one app and 1 from another app. With SDI, I can have each window take a quadrant of the screen, but I can’t do that with MDI. What if I want one window in the MDI to be large and the other small? I have to make the container window large to accommodate the large window (where it occludes the windows of other apps), but that wastes space when looking at the child.
Note that all of these disadvantages apply to tabbed document interfaces (TDI) too, with tabbed interfaces having the additional disadvantage that the user can’t look at two documents in the same container window side by side. Tabs also add clutter and consume real estate in your windows. However, overall TDI tend to be less problematic than MDI, so they might be preferred for special cases (read on)
In summary, it hard to think of any situation to use MDI. It’s no better than an SDI while adding more complexity and navigation overhead, and working poorly with the windows of other apps.
There’s no reason an app can’t have multiple top-level SDI windows. Even with an app like Origin, I don’t see a problem with a project being spread across multiple SDI windows as long as the project is well identified in each window. SDI also allows different kinds of windows (e.g., graph vs worksheet) to have different menus and toolbars, rather than hiding or disabling items depending on the active window (the former is confusing, and the latter wastes space).
SDI gives your users the more flexibility over either MDI or TDI. Users can overlap or maximize the windows, and use the taskbar/dock as a de facto tab interface. Users can alternatively resize and reposition the windows so they can look at multiple at once. Each window can be sized independently to optimize screen space. Whatever advantages an MDI or TDI may have, you may be able augment SDI to have those advantages too (e.g., provide a thumbnailed menu that makes switching among windows faster than using the taskbar and comparable to selecting tabs, or provide a control that iconifies all windows of an app with one click).
Unless you have compelling reasons to use a TDI, go SDI to allow this flexibility. Compelling reasons include some subset of the following:
Each tab is used for unrelated high-order tasks and user will not be switching among tabs frequently or comparing information across tabs.
You’re working with very low-end users who are ignorant of or confused by the taskbar/dock and multiple windows, and don’t know how to resize windows (it seems compelling tab imagery works better than the taskbar for such users).
You anticipate there’re typically be a large set of tabs (e.g., 4 or more) and you can control their display in a manner more effectively for the task than the OS can if they were SDI windows on the taskbar/dock (e.g., with regard to order and labeling).
With SDI, you’re having problems with users confusing the toolbars or palettes of inactive windows with active windows.
Tabs are fixed in number and permanently open (e.g., when each tab is a different component of the same data object). The user is not saddled with trying to distinguish between closing a tab and closing the entire window; figuring out the window to navigate to is not an issue because all windows have the same tabs.
There is really only one way to properly arrange the data for task, with no variation among users or what they actually use the app for. You might as well set it up for the user with a combination of tabs and master-detail panes and rather than relying on the user to arrange and size SDI windows right.
In summary, given your users’ abilities, app complexity, and task structure, if your app can manage the content display better than the user/OS, use TDI, otherwise use SDI.
Note that the examples you used (MS Office and Adobe applications) are big programs and have lots of features. Users will be dealing with that program, and only that program for much of the program's lifetime.
Newer versions of MS Office (2007) and Adobe Photoshop (CS4) use multiple windows and tabs, respectively.
Note that with Windows 7, MDI's will probably lose popularity even more because of the extra power of tabs given by Microsoft's API's (although you needn't strictly use tabs -- MDI windows could work, but would be more confusing for the user than usual).
The old-style MDI (where to switch between documents, you had to go through the Windows menu) was annoying. The newer MDI (like tabs in Opera and Mozilla) make switching between documents very easy and seem to have been accepted well. They also don't clutter your taskbar as happens if you had more than one document open in something without MDI.
The main advantage of MDI is when you want to keep track of two or more windows at the same time, and those windows need to be grouped together. For example, there's a running process in one window, but you need to work on another window, MDI would be the most ideal.
I agree with slavy13 (old-MDI = bad, new-MDI = much better). But don't use programs like Microsoft Excel as your model. Ick! You get one window on your desktop, regardless of how many spreadsheets you have open (which may or may not be your preference.) But you get one taskbar icon for each and every document you have open. And your Alt+Tab window similarly has one icon for each document you have open. Plus, there is an additional icon in there just for "Excel" which takes you to whichever document happens to be "current". So yeah, do your MDI like Mozilla. Or at least give your users the option of switching to the cleaner style.
To more succinctly answer your question, I feel the answer is yes, MDI is still appropriate in some instances. But, in all things, moderation is the key.
It appears that multiple top-level windows is the way to go. As for whether there should be one global app instance or one per document is up to you I think. It's not visible to the user.
Only one benefit for MDI:
Programs that use large amounts of resources, such as Adobe Photoshop, often have an MDI due to the prohibitive cost of running more than one instance at a time.
But you shouldn't develop programs that drain huge amounts of resources to start with.
One advantage I can see for MDI occurs if a lot of screen real estate is going to be used for stuff that's shared among many windows. It may be more logical to have such material at the top or side of the enclosing window than to have it repeated in each SDI window, or have it appear in a window entirely separate from the SDI windows. For example, a chat program might have a status pane and a control pane. Having those be somewhat tied visually tied to the chat windows might be better than having them as standalone windows.