Microsoft and Tiled Windows

In the grand tradition of focusing on the most visible aspect of the new PARC GUI, Bill Gates named his hastily cobbled together response to the Macintosh's success "Windows."

The first version of Microsoft Windows diverged somewhat from the pattern established by Xerox and Apple. Instead of using overlapping rectangular windows to represent the overlapping sheets of paper on one's desktop, Windows 1.0 relied on what was called tiling to allow the user to have more than one application on screen at a time. Tiling meant that applications would divide up the available pixels in a uniform, rectilinear tessellation, evenly parsing out the available space to running programs. Tiling was invented as an idealistic means to solve the orientation and navigation problems caused by overlapping windows. Navigation between tiled windows is much easier than between overlapped windows, but the cost in pixels is horrendous. And besides, as soon as the user moves neatly tiled windows, he is thrust right back into overlapping window excise (see Chapter 10). Tiling died as a mainstream idiom, although it can still be found in the most interesting places: Try right-clicking on the current Windows taskbar.