People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what m…
Conversely I regard modal dialogs as one of the worse sins a ui designer can commit. Sometimes necessary, but they should never willingly interfere with interactivity. This then sort of leads into the next point. Overlapping windows. It lets you put more applications on the screen at once but it does not really do much for the user in terms of workflow. The window underneath is obscured so I can't really use it witho…
Actually, thanks to "responsive design" and whatever other new inventions, I often go "boy, would I like to only see half this browser window" when I want to have the (documentation|editor) setup on a smaller screen (i3 on a laptop). Because I want to see the actual documentation, not the multiple navigation menus that take up half the browser window. And no, I can't zoom in and pan, because then it will trigger some breakpoint and whatnot and the text becomes comically huge as it thinks I'm reading on a phone.