Zipped Windows

Validation level: 5. CHI, UIST, CSCW and TOCHI paper publication

Zipping windows allows users to assemble several windows into a single entity for smoother window management. When two windows are zipped, the two windows are given the same size along their common edge, which becomes a dividing line that can be moved.

window management Graphical user interfaces (GUI)

Publications

Copy Bibtex Beaudouin-Lafon, M. Novel Interaction Techniques for Overlapping Windows. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pages 153-154, ACM, New York, NY, USA, UIST '01 , 2001.

Also featured in

Storyboard of Functions

(1) Two windows have similar dimensions one one side.

(2) One window is dragged nearby so that their edges line up.

(3) The two windows are zipped together.

(4) The two windows can be manipulated as one whole.

Highlights:

Zipped windows allow for easier window management for larger content windows, or content panes that have similar dimensions one one side. By zipping windows together, multiple windows can be combined into a single, manipulatable entity.

Limitations:

This technique is developed in the paper to address larger windows, however, in their use case there are only two windows that can be zipped together.