Posted by Travis Newbury on 07/08/05 12:18

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

> Every Web application I can think of at the moment is designed to
> accommodate for all (reasonable, say 600x800+) screen sizes. So, I don't
> think it's ever justified to mess about with the window.

Do you put arbitrary limitations on all aspects of your life or only on
the web?

> For the same reasons, people hate pop-ups. When you place an application in
> your workspace and restrict it to stay within the window decorations, you
> don't want it to invade other processes unless you permit that. Other such
> nuisances are focus stealing and sound/music.

We make a web conferencing application that can be launched in two ways.
First is in a sized pop up window, the other is in the same browser
window as the launch page. Based on customer feedback the sized popup
is by far the most popular by a factor of almost 10 to 1. The main
reason given is the aesthetics of the presentation. We have similar
results for CBT software we sell but the main reason given is it is
easier to keep the user focused when they are not distracted by menus,
toolbars etc in the CBT. The LMS software that comes with the CBT
software, also based on customer feedback, does not have a pop up
window option because almost no one wanted it.

So while you personally may not like it, the overwhelming majority of
the users of two of these applications prefer the sized popup window.
We find we have more happy customers when we give them what they want
rather than putting limitations on them from the very beginning.


--
-=tn=-

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