Vanishing windows: an approach to adaptive window management

Window management systems have been successful in assisting users in controlling multiple applications but this success has been achieved at the expense of an increased number of window management operations. Intelligent window management is proposed as a way of reducing the number of such management operations and a particular approach—the Vanishing Windows approach—is discussed in detail. In this approach the inactive windows gradually shrink and move to the side. Choice of the basic design parameters is discussed and the reasons given for implementation decisions. Knowledge about simple geometric reasoning is stored in the system. The system is evaluated against a traditional window management system and performance gains are demonstrated. User opinion on the system is positive. Overall, the users did not find the system intrusive or feel that they had a lack of control.