David Emery Online

Maximise Vs Zoom

18 July 2007

I normally have a great deal of respect for Jeff Atwood, who writes over at codinghorror.com; while he has an obvious and open Windows/PC bias what he writes is usually very insightful.

His latest post, however, is not:

The Non-Maximizing Maximize Button

He has sadly made the one true internet argument mistake: what I use is best, because it is; what you use is worse, because it’s different.

He is of course talking about the difference between Mac OS X’s Zoom button (the green one) and Window’s Maximise button, the conflict arising as actually they’re two totally different buttons with different behaviours which happen to be placed in similar places on a window’s title bar. On the Mac, the Zoom button toggles between making the window as big as it needs to be to fit its content, and changing back to what it was before (or at least it should – more on that later) whereas the Windows Maximise toggles between full screen and its original size.

Both have their upsides and downsides, which are mentioned in the Coding Horror piece, but only just before this wondrous paragraph:

Here’s where I think this argument starts to break down in a big way. Dealing with multiple windows is far too difficult, even for sophisticated computer users. Adding Z-order in addition to the traditional X and Y positioning is one variable too many. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that single window interfaces, such as the web browser, or Tivo, dominate the market. Microsoft killed off the multiple document interface in Office—a form of per-application windowing—years ago. Can you name one application with a multiple window interface that’s even popular?

One application with a multiple window interface that’s even popular?

How about, say Photoshop? Or maybe, Microsoft Office? Hell, lets just go the hole hog; practically every Mac application uses a multiple window interface.

It’s quite obvious that this is due to the fundamental differences between the Maximise and Zoom buttons; the Maximise button makes it easy to run all windows full screen, all the time and hence encourages single window interfaces; likewise the Zoom button encourages using multiple windows at once.

That’s not to say that a single window interface doesn’t work – and work well – for certain problem sets; simple apps that are single task or single document based make sense using a single window interface. Witness the popularity of iTunes, for example, which is largely single window based, or something like iCal which doesn’t handle multiple documents. Also, some tasks like game playing or web browsing normally want the content view to be as big on screen as possible, and again in those situations a single window interface makes sense.

However, as soon as you move to something multiple document based it all falls down. The amount of time every day I do things like dragging layers from one document to another in Photoshop, or copying and pasting from one text file to another really emphasises this. And that’s not even touching on all the other benefits of not maximising windows, like being able to see what’s happening in other apps without switching to them, for example – I use this all the time with apps like email or IM; continuous partial attention I think is the phrase.

Also, the argument that manipulating windows is a fundamentally difficult task doesn’t hold true in my experience. Now, if you’re a Windows user it probably is difficult, as you don’t get the practice, but that doesn’t mean it is difficult. I work in a virtually Mac only office, and I never seen anyone have a problem with manipulating windows; scrolling I’ve seen people have problems with, selecting icons can be tricky but never moving or resizing windows. Windows – out of many features of a modern OS – replicate how physical objects behave quite well; the fundamental concepts of moving them around, organising them, layering them are all familiar to users and hence not a major challenge to get your head around.

Of course, there is a but.

The “but” is that actually, neither OS have got it right yet. The concept of a Maximise button is – I think – fundamentally flawed, severely restricting the benefits you can get from a windows-based OS. However, the Zoom button on the Mac is next to useless; in fact, I can’t remember the last time I used it.

The problem is not one of concept, but more of execution; many Mac apps don’t behave in the right way when you hit the Zoom button, which means that you never really know what’s going to happen when you click it. Some apps do the right thing, and resize to a sensible size that fits all the content. Some apps implement it as a maximise button. Some apps do something else entirely, like resizing too small.

An unpredictable button is worse then no button at all.

So, in conclusion – both suck. I’d even go as far to say that it might – on the Mac at least, the Maximise action is too ingrained on the Windows side – be worth getting rid of the button all together. It’s more trouble then it’s worth.