random8

I’m quite interested in context. What iPhone OS does is quite genius in disguise.

It makes a decision for you: you are only going to look at one app at any one time.

Turns out this is very useful because too many things on the screen confuses people and makes it harder for most people to use, because we have to process all the visual items on screen.

One of the “features” of windows which mac os x doesn’t have, which is possibly the most useful is “expand to full screen”. We have a “zoom” feature which switches a window between two sizes, but we don’t have the former.

Context is very important, but if I want to get something particular done, I need to hide all that context while I work. I’m fairly sure I’m not alone here :)

What I find quite a need for… is not programs (or apps if you will), but “slices” across sets of programs. I will have several tasks that I’m doing (which I currently use spaces on the mac for). For a particular job I’m doing, I will use up to five programs… xcode, a browser for testing sites and things I’m working on, email, a couple of web apps inside the browser, a couple of interface apps, itunes (gotta have that music), apps for looking at database data, a console or two (sometimes three).

NetNewsWire on the iPad actually does do this… it has a browser built in. This is two-app slicing.

So… what I’d really like is “named sets”. Spaces works for this - sort of - but wasn’t really built for it. I’d like to be able to save and open “projects” (slices of context across multiple apps)… and have an “app-universe” overseer co-ordinate the many apps (unix command line prompt-like?)

So when I open one of these “things” whatever they are, I want browser windows to open to specific points, terminals to “cd” into directories for me, textmate to open folders of code, etc. etc. You know… reinstate the named context :)

Food for thought?