Double-clicking a document in Windows

[Chipp Walters]

Graham,

> I am surprised that a second double-click will create another
> instance of an application in Windows, because IMHO this behaviour
> would be counterintuitive for most non-technical PC users, who after
> all are Msoft's most numerous customers. Indeed, grabbing the first
> PC I could find (running Office 2000 under Windows 95), I find that
> Microsoft Word works the way I expected, i.e. double-click on a
> document will open the app, double-click on a second document, the
> app acts like you did File/Open from a menu. Of course in MS Office
> applications, it's legit to have several documents/files open at the
> same time.

Using MSWord 2000 and XP: when you double-click a .doc file, it appears that
it *also* launches a separate instance of MSWord (at least it shows so in
the Application tab of the task manager) - though MS does have a special
quick launch memory handling feature for all OFFICE apps.

I'm not so sure this is a big problem. What *should* the desired behavior
be? This was a bit confusing for me, too, coming from the Mac platform
several years ago. But, since the menubar is not tied to the top of the
screen, but rather to the window, it seems appropriate for Windows to 'open'
another version of the app with the document. Especially since Windows
handles memory so much better than Macs do (no App memory size -- VM
*substantially* better).

>
> I had no idea that there was an 'intra-application' issue, which I
> suppose MS Office itself has had to grapple with.
>
> I suppose then my fallback is to design the app to deal with only one
> document (double-clickable file) at a time - but even with this
> restriction published to my users, how can I tell if the user has in
> fact done a second 'unauthorised' double-click and somehow reject it?

What is your app trying to do that it doesn't want a second file (app) open?

>
> Incidentally, since Mac OSX is based on Unix, it seems worth asking
> if this problem also exists there - I sense that this
> multiple-instantiation thing is more 'classical' in some sense than
> the original MacOS solution and therefore likely to exist in Unix too.

Don't have an answer here. Perhaps Ken or someone else might know.

>
> TIA for any further info.
>
> Graham
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>           Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France
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