[IxDA Discuss] are drawers on the way out?

[Jim Drew]

>From: Michael Tuminello <mt at motiontek.com>
>
>After poking around a bit, I've been realizing that Apple seems to be  
>moving away from them despite having originated (or at least  
>popularized) drawers as a UI element.   Applications that used to use  
>drawers (like Mail) use them no longer...
>
>Anyone have the skinny on these skinny window sidekicks?   Has  
>research uncovered problems with them?

The immediate obvious issue with them, to me, takes us back to the maximized window issue of a week or two ago.  What do you do when the user opens a drawer while the window is maximized?  Neither reducing the current window size nor opening the drawer off-screen seems to be the right thing to do.  (Some Apple apps do the latter, which is the least useful of the two options.)

-- Jim Drew
   Seattle, WA