Window Interfaces A Taxonomy of Window Manager User Interfaces
Brad A. Myers · 1988
This article presents a taxonomy for the user-visible parts of window managers. It is interesting that there are actually very few significant differences, and the differences can be classified in a taxonomy with fairly limited branching. This taxonomy should be useful in evaluating the similarities and differences of various window managers, and it will also serve as a guide for the issues that need to be addressed by designers of future window manager user interfaces. The advantages and disadvantages of the various options are also presented. Since many modern window managers allow the user interface to be customized to a large degree, it is important to study the choices available. A window manager is a software package that helps the user monitor and control different contexts by separating them physically onto different parts of one or more display screens. At its simplest, a window manager provides many separate terminals on the same screen, each with its own connection to a time-sharing computer. At its most advanced, a window manager supports many different activities, each of which uses many windows, and each window, in turn, can contain many different kinds of information including text, graphics, and even video. Window managers are sometimes implemented as part of a computer’s operating system and sometimes as a server that can be used if desired. They September 1988 0272-1;1618810900-0065s0100 198R ltEE 65