5 Window and Session Control

Window Control Guidelines

Window Management Actions

Window Decorations

Window Menus

Window Icons

Window Placement

Workspace Management Guidelines

Session Management Support

Window Control Guidelines

The fundamental user-visible characteristic of primary windows is that stacking, workspace placement, and minimization can be independent of other primary windows. Secondary window stacking, workspace placement, and minimization must be tied to the associated primary window.

Required

aa:

Application windows should be clearly distinguishable as primary or secondary windows based on appearance and behavior. See link.

Window Management Actions

Required

aq:

Windows should follow Common Desktop Environment window management functionality conventions, as shown in Table 10-2. See link.

Primary windows should provide Close, Move, Lower, and Minimize as the minimum set of capabilities. They should allow Resize and Maximize as appropriate. Secondary windows should be designed so that resizing and maximizing are neither necessary nor appropriate. Most secondary windows should only include the Close, Move, and Lower capabilities. In extraordinary cases, a secondary window may provide the Resize and Maximize capabilities. Secondary windows do not provide Minimize capability - they are minimized with the associated primary window.

Required

as:

Windows that have form factor constraints need to set Window Manager hints for minimum size, maximum size, aspect ratio, and resize increment as appropriate. See link.

Recommended

at:

Maximizing a window should show more content (objects or controls) if appropriate (as opposed to scaling up the sizes of objects and controls). See link.

Required

au:

Windows that have Close or Exit functionality need to support the window management protocol for Close if there is a window menu. In the case of dialog boxes, the Close item on the window menu corresponds to the Cancel functionality or dialog box dismissal with no further action taken. See link.

Window Decorations

Required

ab:

Windows that support particular window management functionality must request the corresponding window decoration (for example, a window that can be minimized should request the minimize button). See link.

.

In addition, windows that support any window management functionality (move, resize, minimize, maximize, close, and others) must have a window menu with the appropriate items for that functionality.

Required

ad:

Follow Common Desktop Environment window decoration conventions, as shown in Table 10-1. See link.

Secondary windows should be designed so that resizing and maximizing are neither necessary nor appropriate. Most secondary windows should only include the Border, Title, and Menu decorations. If your secondary window allows resizing or maximizing, however, it must also include the appropriate decoration. The Figure 5-2 shows a typical secondary window decoration.

Figure 5-2 Example secondary window decorations

Window Menus

Required

ae:

Follow Common Desktop Environment window menu conventions. Items should appear in the window menu if they are applicable to the window or its minimized window icon. See link.

The following items are valid English-language choices in the window menu (the mnemonics for each choice are listed in parentheses). They should be added to the menu in the order listed. Unless otherwise noted, the functionality of these menu items is as described in the OSF/Motif Style Guide, Revision 1.2.

• Restore (R)

• Move (M)

• Size (S)

• Minimize (n)

• Maximize (x)

• Lower (L)

• separator

• Occupy Workspace ... (O)

  Allows a user to specify which workspaces the application occupies.

• Occupy All Workspaces (A)

  Enables the user to place the application in all available workspaces.

• Unoccupy Workspace (U)

  Removes the application from the current workspace. If the application is only occupying one workspace, the item should be made insensitive.

• separator

• Close (C)

Optional

af:

Applications should not add items to the window menu. If an extraordinary requirement has an application add items to the window menu, the items should be appended to the end of the menu with a separator between Close and the application items. See link.

Optional

ag:

Accelerators, aside from Alt+F4 for Close, should not be used in the window menu (to minimize conflict with other uses of the Alt key for application accelerators, localization, and others). See link.

Window Icons

Optional

ah:

Applications should provide unique window icons for their primary windows. The window icon image should have a similar appearance to the associated file or Front Panel icon image. See link.

Optional

ai:

The window icon label should contain the same text as the title of the corresponding primary window, or an abbreviated form of it. Refer to "Layout" for window title guidelines. See link.

Optional

aj:

The window icon image should have a similar appearance to the associated file or Front Panel icon image. Refer to "Design Philosophy and Helpful Hints". See link.

Window Placement

Recommended

ak:

Applications should not require or force windows or window icons to be positioned at a particular screen location. See link.

Recommended

al:

A secondary window is placed by the application relative to the associated primary window. It should be placed close to, but not obscuring, the component that caused it to be displayed and the information that is necessary to interact with the dialog box. See link.

Recommended

an:

If a secondary window is allowed to be stacked below its associated primary window (not constrained to stay on top of the primary window), it should be placed such that it is not completely covered by the primary window. This recommendation takes precedence over other placement recommendations. See link.

Recommended

ao:

If a menu or dialog box is already on display, reinvoking the command that caused it to be displayed automatically brings that window or menu to the front of the window stack without changing its position on the screen. See link.

Workspace Management Guidelines

Recommended

av:

When your application creates a new window, it should come up in the user's current workspace and only occupy that single workspace. See link.

Recommended

aw:

Application windows that are related to a particular task should move together between workspaces. See link.

On the other hand, a word processor may have several windows open, where each is used to edit a different document. In this case, when a user moves one of the windows to a different workspace, the other windows may remain where they are.

Session Management Support

Required

ax:

Applications should support Interclient Communications Conventions Manual (ICCCM) mechanisms for session management of their primary windows and key properties. See link.

The ICCCM defines important relationships and behaviors between applications and the window manager, including protocols for saving and restoring application state across invocations.

Required

ay:

Applications should support ICCCM mechanisms for session management of all associated windows (that is, secondary windows that may include help windows). See link.

Associated windows include multiple primary windows and secondary windows, such as online help windows.

Optional

az:

Applications should accept messages from the Common Desktop Environment Session Manager that inform them the user is logging out and should save their state at that time. See link.

Optional

ba:

Applications that have a single primary window that is open at the time the user logs out should restore the primary window, in the workspace last occupied, when the user logs in again. See link.

Optional

bb:

Save user context wherever possible. For example, applications that support the editing of files should save the state of the file at logout and should restore the file in the application window when users log in again. See link.

Optional

bc:

Applications that have multiple primary windows that are open at the time the user logs out should restore all primary windows, in their respective workspaces, when the user logs in again. See link.