Vanishing Windows: An Empirical Study of Adaptive Window Management

One problem with windowing systems today is that the desktop quickly becomes cluttered with the number of windows in use, hindering users in the performance of their tasks. Users can become disorientated by the number of active and inactive windows, lose track of documents and spend time locating document and managing windows rather than working on application tasks. The Vanishing Windows approach aims to reduce the window manipulations required by the user and to aid the user in the performance of search activities. The technique gradually reduces screen real-estate requirements for inactive windows. The reduction of inactive window size progressively increases the overall visibility of windows. This paper briefly discusses the design of the system, based on empirical studies, and presents an evaluation comparing the approach to a Non-Vanishing Windows system using a search task.