This proposal suggests complex approach for window display. It combines several ideas like iconic taskbar, tabs, tiled windows, etc.

Inspiration

The proposal is inspired with:

- Group Based Window Management

- Microsoft research for Windows 7

- Google Chrome tabbing/window system

Iconic Taskbar

Each application is represented with one icon on the taskbar. The icon shows the list of instances (open documents) on mouse over (probably with preview thumbnails). The icon also have drop arrow for showing the list of instances.

This approach allows efficient use of taskbar space and fast access to all opened windows.

Application without icons

Some applications doesn't have their own icons and default icons are very ininformative with the icon taskbar. I suggest generating unique icons for applications, which doesn't have them. This generator should use default icon and add the application name as text over it.

The default icon should not depend on theme and generation process should be strict. This way autogenerated icons will be the same on all computers with all themes.

Windows and Tabs

Each window is shown in full-screen by default. The application instances are shown as tabs. User could drag tabs into taskbar, creating new windows. This feature is similar to Google Chrome. User could also drag tabs into other window's drop arrow, adding the tab to this instance tabs.

Also user could drag a window into another window's tabbar, joining their tabs.

This feature allows more control on the taskbar. Also tabbing approach makes icon taskbar more informative.

Questionable: not sure if we should allow users to mix different applications' tabs under one window. This offers more flexibility, but windows containing different applications may be confusing.

Groups and Tiles

As stated in Microsoft Research, most of the time user operates with one window. 2 or 3 window are rare and almost nobody use more. That's why defaut window stated is "maximized". To work with 2 or more windows simultaneousely, groups and tiles are introduced.

By default, each window is in its own group, but user could drag one window onto another to merge their groups. This way screen is automatically divided vertically to 2 equal tiles, each window on its tile. Windows could be dragged to reposition.

Alternative way of making group is to drag window from taskbar to the edge of the screen. This way it creates group and positions the windows related to each other. User could drag another window, making complex tile constructs.

Dragging divider between windows resizes them both. Dragging the window border near the edge of the screen, resizes it, leaving an empty space. Another window could be later dragged to this space or this window could be maximizwd for its whole tile.

The reason for resizing with empty space is the same Microsoft research, indicating what users often resize windows to make text lines shorter and thus more readable.

Hotkeys

Speaking of hotkey mapping we use familiar concepts for the new ones:

- Tabs inherit their concept from the modern tabbed browsers, using Ctrl-Tab to cycle through them.

- Windows in taskbar should use Alt-Tab to cycle, regardless of their group (it should use the taskbar order for less confusion).

- Groups in fact replace multiple desktop paradigm, so they should use the same hotkey mappings.