Comments on: Blending it in versus bolting it on, and Alt-Tabbing

By: Philip Haine

Philip Haine — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:27:48 +0000

Thanks, Johnny Winters, you're right that on the Mac it's Cmd-Tab, not Alt-Tab. (I use the Goldtouch keyboard so I happen to actually press Alt-Tab.) Also a good point about Exposé being yet another way to switch apps and docs, and that it, too, should be examined for possible ways to simplify by blending together.

By: Johnny Winters

Johnny Winters — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:39:00 +0000

Interesting. However, careful when using the term Alt-Tab. The original concept introduced by Windows refers to switching between windows. OS X’s version, Command-Tab, switches between running programs.

Arguably, it could be interesting to figure out how to combine Expose with Command-Tab to provide the best switcher.

By: Dave Cortright

Dave Cortright — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:34:25 +0000

Got it. Makes sense. I was trapped in the old way of thinking where the current app is always highlighted by default. I did the worst thing a designer can do: not challenge established conventions.

By: Philip Haine

Philip Haine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:39:39 +0000

Dave, when you alt-tab, the first one to pop up is the last one that was front-most. So if you are in FF then you alt-tab a couple of times to get to get to TextEdit and do your paste. Then the next time you alt-tab Firefox is the first. Yah?

By: Dave Cortright

Dave Cortright — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:27:28 +0000

It’s a good idea, Phil, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t preserve the order of icons in the dock and also allow the user to toggle between two recently used apps. In your example, what if Firefox was the app I had last used, and I was copy/pasting some text from a web site into TextEdit. How would I do that easily in your design?