MDI & SDI

[Ripsnort]

Forgive my ignorance, but does Word 2003 or Word 2007 have the option of
going to MDI instead of SDI?
I'm thinking no, and if no, does Microsoft have any intentions of giving
that option?

[Tom Serface]

I think Word is still MDI they just present each page as a separate icon.
This can be annoying, but it is also useful if you only have a couple of
documents open and you want to switch between them. I've never used it, but
I think this is similar to the "Multiple top level documents" thing in the
New Project wizard.

Tom

Post by Ripsnort
Forgive my ignorance, but does Word 2003 or Word 2007 have the option of
going to MDI instead of SDI?
I'm thinking no, and if no, does Microsoft have any intentions of giving
that option?

[Ripsnort]

I've used Windows 2003 on my wifes computer, and when one opens up the
second document, another tab is opened up on the taskbar. This did not
happen in
Word 97.
I've read from W2000, that all is SDI now. I was wondering if Microsoft had
given
the option of having the child window and each document opening within that
same pane.

Thanks for the feedback Tom.

Post by Tom Serface
I think Word is still MDI they just present each page as a separate icon.
This can be annoying, but it is also useful if you only have a couple of
documents open and you want to switch between them. I've never used it, but
I think this is similar to the "Multiple top level documents" thing in the
New Project wizard.
Tom

Post by Ripsnort
Forgive my ignorance, but does Word 2003 or Word 2007 have the option of
going to MDI instead of SDI?
I'm thinking no, and if no, does Microsoft have any intentions of giving
that option?

[Scott McPhillips [MVP]]

Post by Ripsnort
I've used Windows 2003 on my wifes computer, and when one opens up the
second document, another tab is opened up on the taskbar. This did not
happen in
Word 97.
I've read from W2000, that all is SDI now. I was wondering if Microsoft had
given
the option of having the child window and each document opening within that
same pane.
Thanks for the feedback Tom.

Although you see a second tab open up on the taskbar, there is still only
one instance of Word running. In software architecture Word is still a
multiple document application. But at some point (2000?, 2003?) they changed
the visual presentation to multiple frame windows, one per document. Word
does not give the option of returning to the MDI visual presentation. I
would guess it never will, because at the time they changed it Microsoft
said usability studies convinced them that the MDI presentation format was
confusing many users. Personally, I have seen many users "lose" a window in
the MDI presentation.

[Tom Serface]

I think this started happening in 2003. For some reason MSFT thought it was
better to have multiple icons for the same program. It does make it easier
to close a single document, but I'm not sure I really like the interface.
If you close the documents from inside of the UI you can click one to many
times and close the program as well.

It is still MDI, it just presents itself as multiple frame windows.

Tom

Post by Ripsnort
I've used Windows 2003 on my wifes computer, and when one opens up the
second document, another tab is opened up on the taskbar. This did not
happen in
Word 97.
I've read from W2000, that all is SDI now. I was wondering if Microsoft had
given
the option of having the child window and each document opening within that
same pane.
Thanks for the feedback Tom.

Post by Tom Serface
I think Word is still MDI they just present each page as a separate icon.
This can be annoying, but it is also useful if you only have a couple of
documents open and you want to switch between them. I've never used it, but
I think this is similar to the "Multiple top level documents" thing in the
New Project wizard.
Tom

Post by Ripsnort
Forgive my ignorance, but does Word 2003 or Word 2007 have the option of
going to MDI instead of SDI?
I'm thinking no, and if no, does Microsoft have any intentions of giving
that option?

[David Wilkinson]

Post by Tom Serface
I think this started happening in 2003. For some reason MSFT thought it
was better to have multiple icons for the same program. It does make it
easier to close a single document, but I'm not sure I really like the
interface. If you close the documents from inside of the UI you can
click one to many times and close the program as well.
It is still MDI, it just presents itself as multiple frame windows.

Tom:

Personally I never liked the traditional floating MDI windows, so I
guess I see this change in Word as an improvement.

But I'm not so crazy about multiple frame windows either, and I usually
run these applications full-screen, which provides the illusion of
having a single window (especially if you "glom" the taskbar, which I
always do).

There is something I am confused about though. What is the difference
between Word and Internet Explorer (IE6 to be specific) in this regard?
Both have multiple entries on the taskbar, and multiple entries in the
task manager, and when you end any one of them in task manager, then
they all close. The only difference seems to be that Word has a Windows
menu, while IE does not (score 1 for Word here, IMHO).

Actually, I never use either Word or IE if I can help it, preferring a
simple text editor and Mozilla browser. I actually use SeaMonkey, the
successor to Netscape/Mozilla suite. This works much as Word does, with
multiple top level windows, and a Windows menu. Interestingly I recently
spent some time on a computer with Firefox installed, which does not
have a Windows menu, and I really missed it.

[Tom Serface]

I think until IE 7 IE has been an SDI application. IE 7, of course, has
tabs so that multiple pages can be used seemingly at once. So far as I can
tell Word just runs a single instance and opens it's own icon for each
document. I've never tried SeaMonkey, but I used to use NetScape about 100
years ago or so (seems like it). I should give it a try again.

I do like that the Office applications still present the "Switch Windows"
dropdown on the ribbon bar, if you can find it.

If I remember right the older version of Word always maximized the documents
so it had the illusion of being an SDI if you only opened one document.

Tom

Personally I never liked the traditional floating MDI windows, so I guess
I see this change in Word as an improvement.
But I'm not so crazy about multiple frame windows either, and I usually
run these applications full-screen, which provides the illusion of having
a single window (especially if you "glom" the taskbar, which I always do).
There is something I am confused about though. What is the difference
between Word and Internet Explorer (IE6 to be specific) in this regard?
Both have multiple entries on the taskbar, and multiple entries in the
task manager, and when you end any one of them in task manager, then they
all close. The only difference seems to be that Word has a Windows menu,
while IE does not (score 1 for Word here, IMHO).
Actually, I never use either Word or IE if I can help it, preferring a
simple text editor and Mozilla browser. I actually use SeaMonkey, the
successor to Netscape/Mozilla suite. This works much as Word does, with
multiple top level windows, and a Windows menu. Interestingly I recently
spent some time on a computer with Firefox installed, which does not have
a Windows menu, and I really missed it.
--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP

[David Wilkinson]

Post by Tom Serface
I think until IE 7 IE has been an SDI application. IE 7, of course, has
tabs so that multiple pages can be used seemingly at once. So far as I
can tell Word just runs a single instance and opens it's own icon for
each document. I've never tried SeaMonkey, but I used to use NetScape
about 100 years ago or so (seems like it). I should give it a try again.
I do like that the Office applications still present the "Switch
Windows" dropdown on the ribbon bar, if you can find it.
If I remember right the older version of Word always maximized the
documents so it had the illusion of being an SDI if you only opened one
document.

Tom:

Until today (!) I thought that IE6 was an SDI application also. If you
open multiple windows, then you get multiple taskbar icons and multiple
entries in Task Manager, just like SDI. But if you do "End Task" in Task
Manager for one of them, then all of them close. This is the same as
Word (and FireFox/SeaMonkey), but different from an SDI application
(which only closes the one you killed).

So IE6 seems more like a multiple frame window MDI application.

[Tom Serface]

I did not know that. I just tried that with IE7 and it opened multiple
instances of iexplore.exe in Task Manager and if I kill one of them the
others live on so they must have changed it somewhere.

Tom

Post by David Wilkinson
Until today (!) I thought that IE6 was an SDI application also. If you
open multiple windows, then you get multiple taskbar icons and multiple
entries in Task Manager, just like SDI. But if you do "End Task" in Task
Manager for one of them, then all of them close. This is the same as Word
(and FireFox/SeaMonkey), but different from an SDI application (which only
closes the one you killed).
So IE6 seems more like a multiple frame window MDI application.

[David Wilkinson]

Post by Tom Serface
I did not know that. I just tried that with IE7 and it opened multiple
instances of iexplore.exe in Task Manager and if I kill one of them the
others live on so they must have changed it somewhere.

Tom:

Ah, it seems if you open two instances of IE6 from the Start Button,
then they can be killed separately. But if you open a second one from
the first, using Ctrl-N for example, then they get killed together. I
had never thought there was a difference between these two situations.

Gotta make you love straight SDI ...

[Tom Serface]

Indeed.

Post by Tom Serface
I did not know that. I just tried that with IE7 and it opened multiple
instances of iexplore.exe in Task Manager and if I kill one of them the
others live on so they must have changed it somewhere.

Ah, it seems if you open two instances of IE6 from the Start Button, then
they can be killed separately. But if you open a second one from the
first, using Ctrl-N for example, then they get killed together. I had
never thought there was a difference between these two situations.
Gotta make you love straight SDI ...
--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP