Long rambling message ahead...
I have the same problem too. However, I'm not so sure this is entirely the
fault of the windowing system. There many times when I find it extremely
useful to be able to have several applications running and once and switch
my attention between them. If I'm really engrossed in a task then I tend to
be able to focus on that task and get it done.
For example, most of the time I want to be told about new mail, but I think
the most distracting thing is the *way* I'm told about new mail, not the
fact that the system notifies me. I find that I'm either distracted
because:
a) I'm notified in a really intrusive way (ie a window appears right in the
middle of my screen and I have to take some action in order to make it go
away)
b) I'm not given enough information (ie just told that new mail has arrived
in a particular folder) and so I'm tempted to use my mail reader to find
out whether the mail that arrived is of immediate interest or not. This
is better than (a) because if I'm feeling particularly single minded I
can just ignore mail and carry on.
I imagine that my ideal would be a program which occupied a small area of
my screen and which maintained a small unobtrusive list of unread mail in
some prioritised order. This display would give me enough information to
make a decision about whether to read it immediately or not (ie who from,
title, perhaps the first couple of lines of the message). Ideally, I'd be
able to use filters to control which mail messages I was notified about (ie
only messages directly addressed to me) and to put them in some order of
priority.
I think the user interface on the rememberance agent
(http://rhodes.www.media.mit.edu/people/rhodes/remembrance.html) has a well
thought out user interface that addresses some of these issues.
> The main reason I mention it is that I've been frustrated for
> a while that multi-tasking windowing interfaces often make it *harder*
> for me to get work done. If the interfaces to next-generation CVEs
> don't do away with these problems, then people with my problem may
> not get any benefit from them.
I agree entirely. Any system would need to carefully handle issues such as
how intrusive it was, and how much information it presents to the user. It
should also allow to user to change these settings easily to accomodate a
user's moods.
Dave
-- Dave Snowdon Communications Research Group Tel: +44 (0)115 9514226 Department of Computer Science Fax: +44 (0)115 9514254 The University of Nottingham E-mail: dns@cs.nott.ac.uk Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK <http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dns/dave.html>"This mind intentionally left blank"